ABSTRACT
The answer almost always given to the question, ‘Is love an emotion?’, is ‘Yes’. Certainly love is bound up with hopes and fears, joys and sorrows. Given the close relation in which love stands to emotions, this answer is, perhaps, natural. Still, it presents problems, especially this: emotions have belief-based intentionality and rationality; love, at least often, does not. For this reason and others, I will argue that the answer is ‘No’. Love, I think, is not an emotion but a complex conative state, a set of desires. This answer enables us to understand the intentional and rational features of love, and much else besides—including the range of love-related emotions.
