Love reveals persons as irreplaceable

Elizabeth Drummond Young

pp. 177-191

in: Christian Maurer, Tony Milligan, Kamila Pacovská (eds), Love and its objects, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

It is a deeply held intuition that our loved ones are irreplaceable. Assuming there is more to this than sentimentality, how are we to understand this philosophically? One straightforward suggestion is that we see our loved ones as having a set of characteristics only they possess and in virtue of which they are unique and therefore irreplaceable. If we push this thought to a radical conclusion by saying that if that were the case we should be able to love an exact replica of our loved one, many would find the idea at best disquieting, if not repugnant. It doesn't seem to capture the sense of irreplaceability that the intuition wants to illuminate.¹