Rethinking Kolodny's Relationship Theory of Love

What reasons do we have and why do we have these reasons when we love? Niko Kolodny in his 2003 essay argues that one’s reason for loving a person is contingent on one’s relationship with the beloved. Although he demonstrated a prima facie reason to think that love is a valuation of a relationship from the perspective of the subject and non-instrumental valuation of one’s beloved, Kolodny is inconsistent between saying that relationships provide reasons for love, and that valuing a relationship constitutes love—a problem that could have been avoided if he concentrated more on arguing what reasons for love are, rather than attempting to understand what love consists in. Kolodny’s thesis clearly has genuine “bootstrapping” problems as a theory of what constitutes love. I propose a more nuanced approach to Kolodny’s account with the claim that love is an emotional attitude. Because a comprehensive account of relationship theory of love is best understood not as a claim about the subject’s beliefs, but as a claim about the function of love.