Abstracts are invited for a collection of essays on the philosophy of love.
Recent research in the philosophy of love has focused on reasons of and for love. Without wanting to exclude reflections on this topic, we are looking instead for essays that concentrate on the relation between love and its different objects: we love others as friends, and we are sometimes encouraged to love others as fellow humans; we love our children and parents, and this love often undergoes deep transformations over time; we love others romantically, maybe erotically; we are sometimes said to love or not to love our selves; we are sometimes said to love - not just like - our pets, animals, landscapes, justice and wisdom. Is it really love that we are talking about in all of these cases? How do the differences in the objects of love shape and inflect love itself and how can these different kinds of love be compared?
The core of the volume will consist of (a) essays within the analytic tradition (broadly construed) e.g. essays that touch upon work in the philosophy of love by Frankfurt, Velleman, Kolodny and Helm; together with (b) contributions from the allied Wittgensteinian tradition drawing upon themes from Gaita and Diamond which dovetail well with recent analytic debates. Proposals for historical studies will be given consideration if they connect up with these same debates. The editors are also open to the possibility of including some essays which attempt to bridge the analytic/continental divide.
Possible topics include the following:
Friendship
Love of one’s neighbor
Erotic love
Self-love and love of others
Loving children, loving parents
Family relationships
Loving the good, loving the bad
Loving animals
Reciprocity in loving persons and in loving animals
Loving non-sentient objects: country, nature, wisdom
Wrongdoing and its impact upon love
Love as a reactive attitude
Love as a person-focused response
Irreplaceability of the objects of love
Love’s intentionality and love’s reasons
Love de re and de dicto
Submission details: Send abstracts of 350-500 words to kamila.pacovska@upce.cz by 31st August 2012. Full papers (6000-8000 words inclusive of notes & bibliography) will be due at the end of April 2013.
Christian Maurer, University of Fribourg (Suisse).
Tony Milligan, University of Aberdeen.
Kamila Pacovská, University of Pardubice.
