On “Love as Valuing a Relationship”

Niko Kolodny’s thesis in his essay “Love as Valuing a Relationship”, is that “…one’s reason for loving a person is one’s relationship to her…” . Given the length of Kolodny’s article, there is not time to examine all of his claims in detail, so I will focus on his own theory, and not his various criticisms of other theories of love. I will argue that while Kolodny’s thesis has genuine problems as a theory of what constitutes love, due to certain “bootstrapping” problems, his thesis avoids these problems as a theory of what gives reasons for love.

What is love, according to Kolodny? Kolodny claims “Love is both a final valuation of a relationship, from the perspective of a participant in that relationship, and a non-final, non-instrumental valuation of one’s “relative” (the covering term I will use for the other participant).” He further writes “love consists (a) in seeing a relationship in which one is involved as a reason for valuing both one’s relationship and the person with whom one has that relationship, and (b) in valuing that relationship and person accordingly.” Kolodny is inconsistent between saying that relationships provide reasons for love, and that valuing a relationship constitutes love. So while he here seems to be giving conditions for the existence of love, in other places he argues that having a relationship given these conditions provides reasons for love.

Love, for Kolodny, does not consist in just any relationship. The relationships Kolodny is interested in are further characterized by persisting over time, being between non-substitutable entities, and being dependent on facts about the past. These characteristics are still insufficient for love, as Kolodny admits, “Not every interpersonal relationship, even in the narrower sense of a relation that satisfies these three conditions, provides reasons for love.” Finally, the relationships Kolodny is interested in can be had independent of one’s attitudes. Kolodny writes: “Whether Ivan is my brother does not depend on how we feel about one another; it depends on a biological tie, or a fact about our upbringing. Any plausible account of familial love must view its grounds as being independent of one’s caring.”

Given the insufficiency of these characteristics, we might wonder if Kolodny has said enough to isolate the kinds of relationships he is interested in. One question we might ask is which historical facts are these relationships dependent on? While Kolodny writes “Kevin is my friend only if there has been a historical pattern of attitudes and actions between us. Sarah is my mother only if she raised me, gave birth to me, or supplied the egg from which I developed.”, he does not seem to account for the possibility that a historical fact a relationship can depend on is love itself. Further, some relationships seem constituted by the fact that one or more members of the relationship love the other member. While a historical pattern of attitudes and actions might exist between Billy and Sue, an actual romantic relationship does not seem to exist between them unless they love each other. If such a situation is plausible, then there is reason to think that for some relationships, if there is no love, then there is no relationship of that kind. I will describe such relationships as “constituted by love”.

Whether there are relationships constituted by love matters, for if there are, then love cannot be constituted by the relationship. Suppose some relationships are constituted by love. Then by definition, if there is no love, then there is no relationship. Under Kolodny’s theory, only when there exists a relationship is there something for love to consist in, since love consists in valuing a relationship in the right way. So, if there is a relationship constituted for love, then only when there is love is there a relationship, and there is love only when the relationship is valued in the right way. Assuming a relationship cannot be valued until it exists, then a love-constituted relationship cannot be valued until it exists. The relationship can never arise to be valued though, for the relationship is constituted by love, which consists in valuing the relationship. So Kolodny’s theory is committed to denying that there are relationships constituted by love, or to denying that a relationship cannot be valued until it exists. If there is good reason to think some relationships are constituted by love and that a relationship cannot be valued until it exists, then there is reason to deny Kolodny’s theory.

There is reason to think we cannot value a relationship until it exists, for whether what we are valuing before the relationship exists is the relationship or some imagined relationship is unclear. Further, supposing the relationship does not exist, if we valued the relationship, then we either value some non-existent thing, which seems absurd, or we do value some existing thing, which contradicts our supposition. So there is at least prima facia reason to think we cannot value a relationship until it exists.

Reflecting on the nature of certain relationships seems to provide some motivation for thinking love constitutes some relationships. While Kolodny writes “For the time being, I will focus on friendship, romantic relationships, and family relationships as paradigm cases.”, the former two relationships seem good candidates for relationships constituted by love. For we might wonder why a relation between two people is a romantic relationship if there is no love between the two people, as seen in the Billy and Sue case.

Further, a supposedly romantic relationship seems to change depending on whether love is reciprocal or not. If Billy loves Sue, but Sue does not love Billy, the relationship between the two seems more of a crush than that of a romantic relationship. Why a romantic relationship would not change into a crush, or even drop away when who loves whom in a relationship changes seems unexplained by Kolodny’s theory. The lack of explanation seems to weaken Kolodny’s position, for if we thought love constitutes certain relationships, then we would be inclined to deny that a romantic relationship persists despite changes in loving, and Kolodny has not provided a good reason to deny this.

Kolodny somewhat address these concerns in reply to the objection of “bootstrapping” he considers. The objection of bootstrapping holds that “Relationships cannot be reasons for falling in love, because they do not exist until one has fallen in love.” to which Kolodny conciliatorily replies “Nevertheless, I believe that there are reasons for acquiring the emotional vulnerability that first establishes a friendship or romantic relationship, and that these reasons are remarkably similar to the reasons for the emotional vulnerabilities that perpetuate the relationship, once established.”

In his reply, Kolodny seems to take “emotional vulnerability” as the feature that establishes friendships and romantic relationships. If we thought these kinds of relationships are constituted by love however, then this reply does not avoid the charge of “bootstrapping”, for unless love consists in these emotional vulnerabilities, we might deny that the relationships established by emotional vulnerability are friendships or romantic relationships. Further, someone who thought some relationships are constituted by love might additionally hold that, in some circumstances, you are emotionally vulnerable because you are in love. The “remarkable similarity” between reasons for emotional vulnerability before and after the relationship is established could then be easily explained, for the advocate could hold that the reasons are remarkably similar because they are the same; loving a person makes you emotionally vulnerable to them before and after a relationship is established. So as a theory of what love consists in, Kolodny’s position seems to have genuine problems.

The problem of bootstrapping considered so far arises from taking Kolodny’s theory to account for what love consists in. If Kolodny’s theory is considered more as an account for when there are reasons for love, then it is unclear to me that the problem of bootstrapping even arises. For if relationships are reasons for love, rather than love consisting in valuing relationships, nothing seems to prevent reasonless love from arising. Such love might then establish a relationship constituted by love, which then could serve as a reason for the love. Kolodny need not deny the existence of relationships constituted by love then. As such, the problem of bootstrapping is only a problem for Kolodny if he takes love to consist in valuing a relationship, or if he thinks all love must be based on reason.

Given his general emphasis on providing reasons for love, Kolodny’s position would be stronger if he focused more on arguing what reasons for love are, rather than trying to articulate what love consists in. Kolodny might then simply ignore the problem of bootstrapping, accepting that some love is reasonless, yet still maintaining that relationships provide reasons for certain kinds of love. By recognizing it as an objection, Kolodny’s theory seems to concern itself with what love consists in, a burden not needed to be taken up in arguing for his thesis. Cutting the section on what love consists in, and shortening his response to the problem of bootstrapping could then focus his essay.

Works Cited
Kolodny, Niko. “Love as Valuing a Relationship”. In The Philosophical Review, Vol. 112., No 2. 2003