ABSTRACT

In this chapter I present an overview of current accounts of love’s relation to practical reasons, as well as my own qualified hybrid account. The type of love discussed here is personal and partial love, and the question addressed is whether such love is the kind of attitude that is responsive to normative or justifying reasons. Among the most widespread views we find the view that love is not reason-responsive, the view that love is responsive to reasons such as the valuable qualities of the beloved or the value of the relationship, and the hybrid account which holds that love consists both of normative and of non-normative elements. After describing these accounts and bringing up possible objections to them, I argue that love is not necessarily hybrid, since some loves are reasons-responsive, and others are not. I present evidence that love is sometimes a-rational, sometimes rational, and that one type of love may develop into the other or that love may sometimes be of a hybrid type.