Love

Abstract

This chapter focuses on basic characteristics of relational love—love between a lover and a beloved. Relational love is our usual notion of love but there is another aspect of love, what I call ‘lovingness’ (Chapter 2). The analysis of love will have the following broad theoretical features: The notion of love has multiple criteria of application such that love can be understood not merely as susceptible to rival conceptions but to rival concepts. These criteria of application are combinatorially vague. Love is an essentially contested concept. Love is a prototype concept. The relative importance of the various criteria of love is exhibited by investigating the varying roles they play in the multifarious virtues where love in some form is salient. No one criterion of love is deemed to be more important than another in all contexts and all forms of love.