Reasons and Fittingness

Abstract

AbstractAsking whether there are reasons to love others, or whether love can be appropriate or fitting, is pointless if we are completely in the dark about the nature of normative reasons and fittingness. Informed by the philosophy of normativity, this chapter provides some apparatus essential for the discussion over reasons for love to go forward. The chapter motivates a link between normative reasons and fittingness, elucidates the notion of reason at play in the debate, and provides a discussion of the various background conditions on reasons. The latter task will turn out to be particularly crucial in the context of a defense of the rationality of love.