Irrational Love: Taking Romeo and Juliet Seriously

McKeever, Natasha; Saunders, Joe

doi:10.1080/09672559.2022.2121895

Irrational Love: Taking Romeo and Juliet Seriously

McKeever, Natasha; Saunders, Joe

Authors

Natasha McKeever

Dr Joe Saunders joe.saunders@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Abstract

This paper argues that there are important irrational elements to love. In the philosophical literature, we typically find that love is either thought of as rational or arational and that any irrational elements are thought to be defective, or extraneous to love itself. We argue, on the contrary, that irrationality is in part connected to what we find valuable about love. We focus on 3 basic elements of love: 1) Whom you love 2) How much you love them 3) How much of a role love plays in your life And in each case, we argue that love can be irrational and valuable.

Citation

McKeever, N., & Saunders, J. (2022). Irrational Love: Taking Romeo and Juliet Seriously. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 30(3), 254-275. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2022.2121895

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jul 22, 2022
Online Publication Date	Sep 15, 2022
Publication Date	2022
Deposit Date	Sep 12, 2022
Publicly Available Date	Mar 13, 2023
Journal	International Journal of Philosophical Studies
Print ISSN	0967-2559
Electronic ISSN	1466-4542
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	30
Issue	3
Pages	254-275
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2022.2121895

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© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.