<研究論文(原著論文)>なぜ君でなくてはいけないのか: 愛の対象の代替不可能性について

Abstract

Is love irreplaceable? If so, what condition is required for love to be irreplaceable? The two competing theories of love, reasons view and no-reasons view, differ in their approach to the question. According to the reasons view, the lovable qualities of beloved or relationships of lovers are the reasons that justify the occurrence and continuation of love. Our feeling that love is irreplaceable is also fully explained in terms of such qualities or relationships. On the other hand, according to the no-reasons view, the reasons to love either do not exist at all or at least contain elements that cannot be qualitatively described, i.e., “I love you because you are you”. In this paper, I show the case of love that cannot be explained by the reasons view, and argue that particularity of the object itself is the ground of love. As a result, what will be defended is the existence of a truly irreplaceable love and a certain kind of no-reasons view which captures it. The flow of this paper will be as follows. First, we survey the debate between the reasons view and the no-reasons view, and set up a framework for our discussion (Section 2). Then, we examine how the no-reasons view and reasons view explain our feeling that love is irreplaceable (Section 3). Next, by taking up the case of love that cannot be explained by the reasons view, we show that there is truly irreplaceable love which is such that only the no-reasons view can capture (Section 4). Finally, we conclude that love toward the individuality of the beloved is to be understood as a volitional attitude, not an emotion al one (Section 5)