Thinking About a Word—Love, for Example. (January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Forsberg, Niklas
• Is Part Of: Metaphilosophy. Volume 48:Number 1/2(2017)
• Page Start: 30
• Page End: 46
• Publication Date: 2017-01
• Subjects: context sensitivity -- Harry Frankfurt's theory of love -- Iris Murdoch -- love -- moral vision -- rationalism -- rationality about love -- reasons for love -- theories of love -- Troy Jollimore's theory of love; Philosophy -- Periodicals; 105
• DOI: 10.1111/meta.12222
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0026-1068

Abstract

Abstract: What is it we do when we philosophize about a word? How are we to act as we ask the philosophical question par excellence, "What is … ?" These questions are addressed here with particular focus on Troy Jollimore's Love's Vision and contemporary theories of love. Jollimore's rationalist account of love, based on a specific understanding of "reasons for love, " illustrates a particular philosophical mistake: When we think about a word, we are prone to believe that even though "the sense of the word" that we investigate may be up for grabs, the other words we use when we do these investigations are not. Jollimore's exploration of love is guided by specific conceptions of "reasons" and "rationality" that remain unquestioned. The article argues that we may have to rethink a great number of words as we embark on the task of uncovering the sense of one word.