The Individual as an Object of Love: The Property View of Love Meets the Hegelian View of Properties

1. Loving an Individual vs. Loving Their Properties

Why do we love Corrina? One natural answer to this question is to point to her various properties—for example, her sense of humour. This property, we might think, explains and justifies our love for Corrina, at least in part.¹

However, this property view of love gives rise to a number of problems, which seem to originate from the nature of properties and their relation to the individuals that possess them. For properties seem to be generic, in the sense that they can be shared with other individuals, whereas individuals are unique.² This gives rise to two central issues: (A) If properties are generic, then other individuals can also exemplify them, perhaps to a higher degree; (B) If properties are generic, then to be an individual would seem to involve something more than their properties, as otherwise they would be something general, not individual.

These issues generate problems for the property view of love that fall into two camps, three relating to the first issue, and three relating to the second. We can see this clearly in Jollimore’s (2011) helpful presentation of five problems, adding a sixth from Vlastos (1981) at the end.³

A.

Universality: “If Alighieri loves Beatrice for her valuable properties (if, that is, his love for her is grounded in an appraisal of her value), then anyone who accepts that Alighieri is justified in doing so is obligated to love Beatrice also.” (Jollimore 2011: 15)

Promiscuity: “If Alighieri loves Beatrice for her valuable properties (if, that is, his love for her is grounded in an appraisal of her value), then rationality will require him to love anyone and indeed everyone who possesses those properties.” (Jollimore 2011: 16)

Trading-Up: “If Alighieri loves Beatrice for her valuable properties and along comes Carmen, who has all of Beatrice’s lovable properties plus a few more, then reason will require Alighieri to abandon Beatrice in favor of Carmen (on the assumption, at any rate that he cannot love them both).” (Jollimore 2011: 17)

In all these cases, the issue that causes the problems is that properties are shareable between individuals, so that by loving one individual for some property or properties, others may be required to love them too (universality), or one may be required to love other individuals with the same properties or better ones (promiscuity, trading-up).

B.

Incompleteness: “Any list of properties identified as putative justifiers for loving some particular individual B will necessarily be incomplete, in the sense that no matter which or how many justifying considerations are cited, their totality will not rationally obligate a person to love B.” (Jollimore 2011: 14)

Inconstancy: “If Alighieri loves Beatrice for her valuable properties, then rationally he ought to stop loving Beatrice when she loses those properties.” (Jollimore 2011: 17)

Inadequacy: This problem is not in Jollimore’s list, but is identified as an issue by Vlastos in his seminal critique of Plato’s view of love in the Symposium. The problem, for Plato, is that if love is a response to beauty, then what we ideally ought to love is beauty itself, because the form of beauty is itself beautiful.⁴ However, this problem can be posed in a more general way, and motivated independently of Plato’s theory of forms.⁵ The difficulty is as follows: if we take love to be a response to the properties of the beloved that make that love fitting, this seems to fall short of loving the individual as such, as what it is to be them is not just to possess those love-worthy properties. Thus, a love grounded on those properties does not seem to be a response to the individual themselves, but instead just to certain properties belonging to them.⁶ The difficulty is therefore that on the property view of love, we love people for their properties; but then the love that this seems to make rational appears inadequate in not encompassing the individual who possesses those properties.

In all these cases in group B, the issue that causes the problem is that specific individuals appear to be more than their general properties, so that, as Jollimore says, no list of properties can rationally obligate loving. Indeed, even more challengingly, no list of properties can capture their distinct individuality, and so arguably justify loving them (incompleteness); changes in their properties does not require a corresponding change in love for them as the individual they are (inconstancy); and to love an individual’s properties is to fall short of loving them as such (inadequacy).

Faced with these problems raised by the property view of love, four broad approaches have been adopted—but all face difficulties:

2. The Metaphysics of Individuality

So what does make some thing an individual? One simple answer in this debate is that an individual is a particular bundle of properties. So Corrina is: funny, intelligent, and strong-headed. That’s it. However, one pressing question with this account is “what holds the bundle together?”, while another is the problem of individuation: could there not be other identical bundles, so Corrina might no longer be unique? One answer to this is to think of the properties not as universals (which can be shared with other individuals), but as tropes—so the brown of my hair and the brown of your hair are distinct entities. But how are these tropes individuated? For if what individuates one trope in relation to another is belonging to a different individual, it seems we can’t explain these individuals in terms of these tropes; while if tropes are distinct entities in their own right, it seems harder to explain what makes them properties at all, which are usually said to belong to individuals, rather than beings individuals themselves. Moreover, in cases where tropes are still qualitatively identical, it is not clear how appealing to this view can solve the problem of why we love Corrina in particular.

A different approach to this problem is that what makes an individual distinct from another one is not their properties, but instead the substratum in which those properties inhere, or some uniquely individuating property they possess, namely an haecceity, a Corrina-ness.²² This avoids the worry with uniqueness, as Corrina has her own distinctive substratum or haecceity, which cannot resemble that of anyone else’s. However, this also comes with a cost. If the substratum is something over and above the properties, that makes it propertyless in itself, and we then face the question of what distinguishes one bare substratum from another. How is Corrina different from Jeremy, if they are both property-less substrata? To say that each has their own haecceity, about which nothing more can be said, seems equally mysterious. But if a substratum is nothing over and above its properties, how can it be distinguished from them, in which case we seem to come back to a bundle view.

This dialectic about what makes some thing an individual suggests that none of these standard views can solve the issue of what love is a response to. And while of course much more can be said about each of these views, neither a straightforward bundle view, bare substratum view, haecceity view, nor trope view seems to offer an adequate account of the relationship between an individual and their properties when it comes to the case of love.

We therefore now want to introduce a different account of the metaphysics of an individual, one which we think could help overcome these issues. For this, we turn to a once prominent, but now overlooked position in metaphysics, Hegel’s concrete universal.²³ This is appropriate, as Hegel developed his view on the concrete universal and the metaphysics of individuals precisely in order to avoid the unsatisfactory choice between bundle, substratum and haecceity views outlined above. In exploring this metaphysical issue, we hope to be able to resolve the puzzles in the philosophy of love that we identified above.

In doing this, we do not discuss Hegel’s own views of love as such. This is partly because in his mature writings, his account of love is very brief, though suggestive.²⁴ But also, when he does discuss love, his interest is mostly focused on the “immense contradiction” it seems to involve between identity and difference:²⁵ that is, between seeking the identity involved in union with the beloved on the one hand, and on the other hand, the desire to achieve recognition from the beloved as a distinct individual, which therefore requires there to be a difference between us and them.²⁶ Hegel thus does not directly focus on the problem that is our concern here. Nonetheless, in his view, love involves a relationship of recognition between two individuals, and for that an appropriate account of this individuality is required—as Hegel puts it in his lectures on aesthetics, “But in romantic love everything turns on the fact that this man loves precisely this woman, and she him” (Hegel 1975: 567). To understand the nature of this individuality, we now turn to Hegel’s conception of the concrete universal.

3. The Concrete Universal

Hegel thinks that in order to escape the bundle, substratum and haecceity views of the individual,²⁷ we must see that universality, particularity and individuality²⁸ are importantly interdependent, such that to properly understand the concept of any of these will involve grasping its connection to the other two.²⁹ This might sound puzzling, but Hegel thinks it hits upon an important truth. And the mere idea of concepts being interrelated should not scare us. For instance, to be a cause is to be importantly interrelated to having an effect, and a proper understanding of either the concept of cause or of effect involves the other.³⁰

To see how Hegel thought this interdependence might work for universality, particularity and individuality, we must first say something briefly about Hegel’s understanding of these terms.³¹ Hegel begins by drawing an important distinction between universals which characterize the kind to which an individual belongs, and the universals which belong to individuals as their properties. Hegel typically refers to the former as the genus of the individual, but which now might be called substance universals, substance kinds, or sortals, such as cat or human being; and the latter might be called property universals.³² He also draws an important distinction between types of property universals which can be illustrated using the following examples:

1. This cat is affectionate or This cat is intelligent or This cat is aggressive

2. This cat weighs 4kg or This cat is 30cm long or This cat was born in America or This cat is mortal

The examples in group (ii) attribute a property to a cat, but that property is not itself a way of being a cat, and so does not further specify or particularize the kind; but the properties in group (i) do, as they say that the individual exemplifies cathood in a particular way—by being affectionate rather than aloof, or aggressive rather than tame—and so locate the individual within further sub-divisions of the type.³³ Hegel thus makes full use of the etymological connections of “die Besonderheit” [particularity] with “making special” and “dividing off” or “sundering”,³⁴ as through particularizing properties, individuals of the same kind are marked off from one another, which is not a feature of other properties—the property of being 30cm long might belong to Tibbles, but it does not mark off Tibbles qua cat from other cats, as it does not belong to Tibbles as a further particularization of the type.

With these differences in mind, one key way that Hegel distinguishes between universals which are abstract and universals which are concrete is that abstract universals are all exemplified by their instances in the same way (e.g., all instances of being 30cm long are the same), while concrete universals can be exemplified by their instances in different ways (e.g., Tibbles and Felix are both cats, but Tibbles is affectionate while Felix is aloof). Thus, one can adequately conceive of an abstract universal by abstracting away from the differences in the individuals in which the universal is exemplified—because there is only one way of being 30cm long, these differences are irrelevant to a full grasp of this concept. Your cat and your old school ruler are both 30cm long, and the differences between the two objects tells you little about what it means to be 30cm long—they’re irrelevant, as there is only one way to be 30cm long. By contrast, one can only adequately conceive of a concrete universal when the differences are taken into account—because there are many different ways of being a cat, and a full grasp of the concept must have some way to include these. Otherwise expressed, the differences between cats are not irrelevant to an understanding of what it is to be a cat; through learning about different cats, different breeds, genders, temperaments, and so on, we get a better understanding of what cats are.³⁵

One complication here, however, is that there are other features that Hegel associates with concrete universals, which leads him to typically refer to only substance universals as concrete, whereas our characterization of the distinction will allow it to be extended to property universals, as we shall see. For example, it could be argued, Hegel holds that concrete universals must also be essential to their instances, which is why he treats substance universals as concrete, because he takes them to be essential in this way. Now, it is indeed true that Hegel wants to be an essentialist about substance universals, which he thinks will be missed if we tread them abstractly, and so is more inclined to talk about concreteness in this context. Nonetheless, there are also some places in which he uses the language of abstract vs. concrete in connection with property universals too, where the key idea is that it can be a mistake to think of both types of universals in abstraction from their ways of being different. We can see this in the following passage:

When there is talk of concepts, one usually has in view an abstract universality and the concept would then also be customarily defined as a universal representation. One accordingly speaks of colour, plant, animal, and so forth, and these concepts are supposed to arise by way of the fact that, in the process of leaving aside the particular factor through which the diverse colours, plants, animals, and so forth are distinguished from one another, we hold fast to what is common to them. This is the manner in which the understanding construes the concept, and it is highly right for sentiment [Gefühl] to declare such concepts to be hollow and empty, mere schemata and shadows. But the universal factor of the concept is not merely something common, opposite which the particular has its standing for itself. Instead the universal factor is the process of particularizing (specifying) itself and remaining in unclouded clarity with itself in its other. (Hegel 2010a: 237, §163 Addition)

Here, Hegel gives the example of the property universal colour, alongside the substance universals plant and animal, for although colour is not a substance kind, it is still exemplified in a variety of different ways (as red, blue, and so on), and thus counts as concrete rather than abstract. We will follow Hegel in adopting this usage, and so will discuss property universals as concrete, even though other aspects of Hegel’s position explain why this use is relatively rare in his work (see Stern 2009 for further discussion). Indeed, Hegel’s primary use of the term “concrete” is to refer to the Concept, where his claim is that the moments of universality, particularity and individuality are interdependent, which then in turn requires each of these elements to be understood in non-abstract ways (see, e.g., Hegel 2010a: 238–39, §164).

With this in mind, let us run through the various interdependencies Hegel develops between substance universals (U), particularizing property universals (P), and individuality (I), which following the structure of a syllogism, Hegel often presents as a middle term (the second premise) linking two extremes (the first premise and the conclusion).³⁶ We are not looking to fully defend the various claims Hegel makes about these interdependencies here. Instead, we just want to lay out his views, before turning to show how these can help with thinking about love.

(1)  U-P-I

Here, the claim is that a substance universal must be instantiated in an individual. Cats in general, as some sort of Platonic form, do not exist. But to be instantiated in an individual, the substance universal must be characterized by particular properties, which are sufficiently particularizing to make it the case that the universal is instantiated by an individual. So, for instance, the substance universal cat is particularized into affectionate and aloof cats, tame and aggressive cats, and when further particularized, the result is individual cats which instantiate the substance universal in their own distinctive ways, making this a concrete universal.³⁷

(2)  I-P-U

Individuals must be instances of a kind, that is to say, there are no bare individuals. There are cats, and tigers, and poodles, but no bare individual animals. But to be an individual instance of a kind, this individual instance must have particular properties which distinguish it from other individuals of the same kind. Individual cats must either have different properties (e.g., one is tame and the other aggressive), or exemplify the same properties in different ways (e.g., one is tame in a cowed way, whereas the other is tame in a good-natured way), making these properties concrete universals.³⁸

(3)  P-U-I

Particular properties must be characteristics of an individual, and do not belong to them merely as a result of our attributions, but inhere in the individuals themselves. At the same, time, the world contains no floating “bigness” or “tameness”, there are only big or tame individuals. But to be an individual, the individual must be an instance of a kind, so that particular properties are not sufficient to constitute an individual on their own without the substance universal; but nor is a substance universal sufficient on its own, as it must be further particularized.³⁹

(4)  P-I-U

Particular properties can only belong to members of a kind, as all individuals are members of a kind, and particular properties only belong to individuals. So there are no “big” or “tame” bare individuals, just big or tame cats, and big or tame gophers, and so on. But kinds must be instantiated in individuals.⁴⁰

And this takes us back to where we started, namely (1) U-P-I

This might seem puzzling. If we are looking for one fundamental category, in which we then ground the other two, the interdependence that Hegel finds between universality, particularity and individuality may have an air of paradox, illustrated well in the following diagram:⁴¹

What this illustrates is that there is no one grounding category, but rather that they are interdependent, and each can be used to explain the other, which we must accept if we are to make sense of the phenomena involved. Thus, we have found, if there is to be any one element in this triad, there must be the other two. And again, perhaps this is not as mysterious as it may appear: for example, parts and wholes also seem to require one another, such that there cannot be a whole unless there are parts and vice versa, and it would seem to be a mistake to try to treat either as more fundamental than the other.⁴²

Our aim in this section has not been to defend Hegel’s position as an account of the metaphysics of individuals as such, but instead to introduce it as a way of thinking about individuals and their properties in the context of the problems concerning love presented previously.

4. Love and the Concrete Universal

How does this apply to love? Our suggestion is that in thinking about why we love a person, we move around these three categories in an analogous way.

In loving Corrina, we do not just love a bundle of properties or a bare thisness, but a person. Personhood is a substance universal, as there are many people. But personhood in general, as some sort of Platonic form, does not exist. Rather, there are only individual people like Corrina, in whom personhood is instantiated. But to be instantiated in an individual such as Corrina, personhood must be particularized in a distinctive way. How does this occur? By exemplifying different properties—Corrina is a woman, she’s funny, and so on. But how does this get us to an individual if properties are generic? On Hegel’s view, some properties themselves are concrete universals, which means that the same properties can be instantiated in individuals but in different ways. “Being funny” is thus a universal property which others can share; however, the reason we love Corrina for being funny is not for the way in which her humour resembles that of other funny people, but for her particular way of being funny. But what’s so distinctive about Corrina’s particular way of being funny? Well, it’s hers, as the individual person she is. Okay, but then what’s so distinctive about her? What makes her the individual person she is? Well, the answer is the distinctive way that she has of instantiating personhood—which takes us back to the beginning. And so in thinking about the object of love, we continually move through the interdependent categories of universality, particularity, and individuality.

The Hegelian account which treats universals as concrete rather than abstract thus gives us an account of the metaphysics of an individual, without needing to bring in a haecceity or bare substratum. This allows us to explain why we love Corrina, and not a comedian who shares some of her properties, because what we love is her—but to be “her” is not to be some mysterious haecceity, but the way she is a person that differentiates her from others, such as her way of being funny.⁴³ So what we love is the whole person, not their individual properties, but what it is to be a person is not to be something over and above those properties, so we can quite rightly appeal to such properties to give reasons for our love.⁴⁴ But those properties are not simply a group of properties bundled together, where one of those properties might belong in the same way to something else: Corrina’s humour is her humour. And this is not only because her humour is intimately connected with other properties she possesses and the comedian does not (which a sophisticated bundle theorist can allow). It is because when we hear her make a joke, she does so in such a way that we find Corinna in it, making the joke hers in a way that no comedian can replicate⁴⁵—while at the same time “being Corinna” is not some mysterious thisness which we cannot articulate, as we would have plenty to say about what makes Corinna distinctive if we were asked, including how her humour differs from that of other people, which might involve its relation to other properties of hers such as her warmth and perceptiveness, or features of the humour itself, such as its unique timing. So while a comedian can be funnier than Corrina, they can’t be funny in the way Corrina is funny, in the way that humour is expressive of and particular to her. For, when we answer the question of why we love Corrina by saying she is funny, what we mean is not just that she is humorous, but that the humour is distinctively hers: in responding to Corinna’s sense of humour we are responding to a sense of humour of a particular sort that only Corinna could have, because part of what makes that sense of humour the sense of humour that it is, is precisely that it is Corinna’s; while at the same time we are responding to Corinna because that particular sense of humour is part of what makes her the person that she is.

What makes this Hegelian account illuminating, we think, is the way in which Hegel’s account treats some property universals as particularizing, but treats other properties differently. Consider again Hegel’s distinction between an abstract universal like weighing 63kg, and a concrete universal like being funny. It is possible to give being funny as a reason to love Corinna, but it would be odd to give weighing 63kg or being born in Idaho as a reason to love her. Why? On the Hegelian account, this is because weighing 63kg or being born in that place has little to do with her particular way of being a human being, and cannot do so as it is exemplified in the same way in all human beings of that weight and place of birth. By contrast, humour can be a reason to love Corinna, as it can be one of ways that she is the distinctive human being she is, as her humour can be uniquely hers—and this is possible because humour is a concrete universal, which can be exemplified in different ways in different instances. As a particularizing universal, humour can thus mediate between the substance universal and the individual, constituting what it is about the individual which makes them a distinctive member of the kind to which they belong, and thus bridging the gap between the universality of the substance universal and the singularity of the individual.

Hegel’s position can therefore be contrasted with other options in the following way: On the other views, “A is F” says that F belongs to A, as something attached to the individual as a property, either to the individual substratum or to the individual haecceity, or as part of the bundle that constitutes A—so “being aggressive” belongs to Tibbles in just the same way as it belongs to Felix. But on the Concrete Universal view, if F is a particularizing property, then F is A’s way of being a G, so that A’s individuality is expressed through its Fness—so “being aggressive” is Tibbles’s way of being a cat, which as such will be distinct from Felix’s way of being a cat, as “being aggressive” is a concrete universal and so can be instantiated in different ways.

So likewise, when we talk about loving Corinna for her humour, humour is not just attached to Corinna (as on the non-Concrete Universal views), which could then also be said of the comedian—but rather her humour is her way of being the person that she is, so her individuality is expressed through this humour, making it hers, even though others can also be funny. Thus, on our view, humour is a generic property that can be instantiated in lots of different people. But when it is instantiated, it becomes an individual’s way of being funny, and so is not generic anymore. Moreover, it has to be instantiated; contrary to the Platonic view, there is no “humour as such” for you to love. Nonetheless there is something that is the same between Corinna and the comedian but also different: they are both funny, but Corinna is funny in her way, the comedian in his. Therefore when you love Corinna for her humour, it is still her that you love.

Having shown how the Concrete Universal view plays out when we think of loving Corrina, we can now see how that view solves the two groups of problems presented in §1:

The problems in group A all arise because it was assumed that properties are shareable, so that if I love Corinna for her humour, I would have reason to love a comedian likewise (promiscuity), or more if they are funnier (trading-up), or we all have reason to love her just as I do (universality). This might be right in cases where humour is operating as an abstract universal—for example, all Seinfeld-style observational comedy is funny in the same way; so if you love someone for this, then you would have reason to love anyone who has it as well, as would everyone else, and would have reasons to trade up to Seinfeld himself if you can. However, what the Concrete Universal view brings out is that humour can also be conceived as a concrete universal, where these problems do not arise. For, when working as a concrete universal, it makes sense to attribute humour to two individuals, but not in the same way, as they are both funny, but in different ways. Thus, in explaining our love for Corrina, humour is not operating as an abstract universal that is identical in all its instances, but rather as a concrete universal that can be instantiated in different individuals in different ways, that are expressive of the nature of the individual to which they belong. As a result, Corrina’s humour is hers, which gives us no reason to love a comedian who is also funny or even funnier, but in their own distinctive way.

The problems in group B all arise because specific individuals appear to be more than their general properties, so that no list of such properties can exhaust their individuality and so rationally justify loving them (incompleteness); changes in their properties do not require a corresponding change in love for them qua individuals (inconstancy); and to love an individual’s properties is to fall short of loving them as such (inadequacy). The way that the Concrete Universal view deals with this group of problems is to challenge the clear distinction between an individual and their properties on which they arise when it comes to reasons for love. If an individual and some of their properties are interdependent in the way the view suggests, then to love Corinna for her humour is equally to love Corinna, not something separable from her, as it is this property (amongst others) that constitutes her individuality in the first place. By contrast, if the reasons to love were related to abstract universals, such as weighing 63kg, then all these problems in group B would apply, as such properties are not fundamentally related to what makes the individual into the individual they are—but of course, in a way that the Hegelian view explains, such abstract universals are not our reasons to love, precisely because they do not sufficiently relate to the individuality of the beloved.

This approach thus enables us to give the following response to the problems of incompleteness, inconstancy and inadequacy. The problem of incompleteness is that no list of properties can capture someone’s distinct individuality, and so justify loving them. In a sense, the Concrete Universal view agrees with this; a mere list of properties does not capture someone’s distinct individuality. To capture someone’s individuality, we instead think of properties as particularized in distinctive ways. Corrina is funny, in her own particular warm and perceptive way. And this understanding of who she is, in terms of her individuality, that is, the way she particularizes a range of universal properties, can justify loving her. The problem of inconstancy is that if we love someone for their valuable properties, then we should stop loving them when they lose these properties. As we will explain more fully in the next section, the Concrete Universal view treats properties as inter-connected within individuals, and therefore makes love based on these properties more tenacious. Finally, the Concrete Universal view overcomes the problem of inadequacy, as to love Corinna for her humour is not to fall short of actually loving her, for on the Concrete Universal view, being funny is her way of being the person she is, and hence an individual in the first place.

Thus, our view is: the objections that have been raised against the property view of love have arisen because the Hegelian idea that individuality, particularity, and universality are interdependent has been overlooked, and with it the idea that universals must be treated as concrete rather than abstract, which Hegel thinks is required to make sense of this interdependence. How exactly does this Hegelian machinery help, and which parts of Hegel’s idea solve which issues? The issues in group A are caused by the thought that properties are abstract and hence instantiated in the same way in every instance; and these issues are then solved by Hegel’s non-abstract view of the relevant properties. And the issues in group B are caused by the potential tension between either loving an individual or their properties, which are then solved by seeing that individuality, particularity, and universality are interdependent. In laying out this interdependence, Hegel relies upon universals being concrete in two respects, both at the level of properties and substance universals. If the properties that provide reasons for love were not concrete, we would run into the problems in group A. And to solve the problems in group B, we need to treat those properties and individuals as interdependent. The way Hegel does this is by treating properties as expressing the nature of the individual as the kind of thing it is. And at the most general level, if we don’t accept Hegel’s account of substance universals, then we end up with an inadequate conception of the individual, such as the bundle, substratum or haecceity views, which we discussed above.

There might be other views that could solve one or other set of problems. For instance, some trope view might be able to claim that properties are not shareable, and thereby avoid the problems in group A. But this still leaves unresolved the problems in group B, which concern how an individual is related to their properties, or tropes. As we see it, the advantage of Hegel’s position is that it solves both sets of problems through providing a metaphysical account of what an individual is that views individuality, particularity, and universality as interdependent, using the distinctive conception of both property and substance universals as concrete that we have outlined above.

To bring out the distinctive nature of our position here, it is helpful to contrast our account of what it means to love an individual with Velleman’s. Velleman (1999) develops a Kantian account of love, looking to juxtapose love and respect. He views respect as a response to the “intelligible essence of a person” (Velleman 1999: 344). He thinks that respect, for Kant, is “a reverence as the awareness of a value that arrests our self-love” (Velleman 1999: 360), and that love does something similar: “love is likewise the awareness of a value inhering in its object; and I am also inclined to describe love as an arresting awareness of that value” (1999: 360). He claims that:

All that is essential to love, in my view, is that it disarms our emotional defenses toward an object in response to its incomparable value as a self-existent end. But when the object of our love is a person, and when we love him as a person—rather than as a work of nature, say, or an aesthetic object—then indeed, I want to say, we are responding to the value that he possesses by virtue of being a person or, as Kant would say, an instance of rational nature. (Velleman 1999: 365)

However, Velleman recognizes that this account doesn’t seem able to account for selectivity of love:

Why, then, do we love only some people? And why do we say that we love them for their distinctive qualities, such as their senses of humor or their yellow hair? (Velleman 1999: 370)

Here is his answer:

The immediate object of love, I would say, is the manifest person, embodied in flesh and blood and accessible to the senses. The manifest person is the one against whom we have emotional defenses, and he must disarm them, if he can, with his manifest qualities. Grasping some-one’s personhood intellectually may be enough to make us respect him, but unless we actually see a person in the human being confronting us, we won’t be moved to love; and we can see the person only by seeing him in or through his empirical persona.

Hence there remains a sense in which we love a person for his observable features—the way he wears his hat and sips his tea (in the lyrics of the jazz era), or the way he walks and the way he talks (in the lyrics of rock and roll). But loving a person for the way he walks is not a response to the value of his gait; it’s rather a response to his gait as an expression or symbol or reminder of his value as a person. (Velleman 1999: 371)

On this account, then, there is a way in which we do love Corrina for her sense of humour. But for Velleman, we’re not really responding to the value of her sense of humour, as ultimately, our love is love for her value as a person, something that is shared by all people.

However, in response it can be argued that while this is an admirable account of respect,⁴⁶ it seems lacking as an account of love. After all, we love individual people, and their particular properties, not their intelligible essences. And on our account, what a person really is, is not some abstract universal essence, but instead the exemplification of a concrete universal, and thus an individual person with particular properties that between them make her the distinctive person that she is on the one hand, and thus make those properties hers on the other. We thus value Corrina’s sense of humour not because it is a “reminder” to us of her value as a person in general, but because it is a reminder to us of her, and her value is what we witness in the eyes of love. By ultimately abstracting away from those properties and the way they relate to Corrina herself, and thereby trying to make the intelligible essence of the person into an object of love, Velleman therefore seems to fail to make sense of that love, and to merely capture a relation of respect instead.

Moreover, our view makes clear that while rejecting a view like Velleman’s, we should take care not to be drawn to the other extreme. For example, Zangwill writes in response to Velleman:

We do not respond to the particularities of others as absences that allow their universal valuable nature to get through to us, in the way that we value high desert ground for receiving radio waves from outer space, because there are fewer distortions from the atmosphere than elsewhere. (Zangwill 2013: 301)

And he goes on to make the following point:

But that positive value [that Velleman thinks love is a response to] is something fundamentally generic, the same in all persons. The particularity of other people, that which makes them distinctive, plays only a facilitating role for Velleman. This seems wrong. Love is a celebration of particularity, not of what is universal and generic. (Zangwill 2013: 302)

Now, we agree that love does concern particulars, but worry that in saying that “love is a celebration of particularity, not of what is universal and generic”, Zangwill moves away from Velleman’s extreme to an extreme of his own.⁴⁷ Why? Because there is also a place for the universal and generic in love. So while in a way Zangwill is right that love is a celebration of particularity, this doesn’t altogether exclude the universal and generic, as properties of the loved one can in some sense be shared with others, but not in a way that robs the loved one of their individuality. This is why there is also something right in Velleman’s view, and our Hegelian approach can do justice to both Velleman’s and Zangwill’s insights. In loving Corrina, I do celebrate her personhood as something that I and others share with her (I see that as something we have in common, and I wouldn’t love her if she wasn’t a person), but I also see it as something distinctive to her which I also celebrate (as she is a person in ways that I and others are not)—and both aspects seem important.

Hegel’s account can thus give us a way to do justice to the sameness between us (we are all persons) while also doing justice to our differences (Corrina exemplifies personhood in ways I and others do not), and to keep such apparently contradictory ideas in play at the same time. For, while Hegel holds that abstract universals have to be the same in all their instances, concrete universals do not,⁴⁸ which leaves space for Corrina to be a person like me, but also a person who is different from me—and from all other persons. And this then explains why in loving her I do not thereby equally have a reason to love all those individuals who share personhood with Corrina—because at the same time they lack the particular form of personhood which is exemplified by her alone, which must be the case if Corrina is to be an individual at all.⁴⁹

We therefore think that this Hegelian approach provides a way of making sense of loving an individual, which despite its paradoxical air is not at odds with the everyday ways in which we talk about love.

5. Responses to Objections

In this final section, we want to consider several possible objections to our account.

An initial worry is that perhaps we have tied our love of Corrina, and her personal identity, too tightly to a particular property, namely her humour. There are two issues here. The first concerns whether humour is an appropriate ground for love, and how this relates to its particularity. In considering this, it is important to distinguish the following questions:

1. Does Property P distinguish an individual from others, sufficient to make loving the individual for that property amount to loving them?

2. Is P a proper ground for love?

In thinking about whether some property can provide a good reason to love someone, we contend that this property needs to be concrete (1 above), but also the right kind of property (2 above). Otherwise expressed, we think that being a concrete property universal is necessary for being an appropriate ground of love, but that doesn’t make it a sufficient condition, so that that not all concrete property universals are appropriate grounds. For instance, a person could be a murderer in a distinctive way, like Hannibal Lecter, but that does not provide a good reason to love them. Our concern in this paper is primarily with the first of these issues (1), and so we leave aside which concrete properties are the appropriate grounds of love. As noted at the outset, humour serves in our discussion as a placeholder for any property which is a proper ground for love.

The second issue is that while properties can change, personal identity and romantic love can be tenacious, and persist through changes in one’s properties (the inconstancy problem). Imagine, for instance, that Corrina underwent some personal tragedy, and lost her sense of humour, becoming more serious. It would be odd if our account implied that she would no longer be the same person, or that we should stop loving her. In response to this worry, we should emphasize that, in saying that her sense of humour is part of what makes Corinna the person she is, we do not mean that it has to be the only thing—so Corinna could lose her sense of humour and remain distinctive from others, and so still be recognizably herself. Put another way—her sense of humour is one of the properties that distinguishes her from other individuals, but she could lose that property and still be sufficiently distinguished from other individuals to be Corinna rather than someone else.

In addition, on our account, loving people for their properties can be tenacious, as people’s properties are often inter-connected. You love Corrina for her humour, and that means that you love Corrina’s distinctive way of being funny, which is warm, creative, and intelligent. Now perhaps her humour fades, but on this view, part of the reason why you loved her humour was that it is warm, creative, intelligent (and so on); and these qualities could still remain, and perhaps find a different outlet or expression (with Corrina now writing or painting in a warm, creative and intelligent way).⁵⁰

At this point, however, one might worry that our account has overshot its target. After all, while we want an account of love that doesn’t readily recommend trading-up, inconstancy, and promiscuity (in the relevant sense), we also want an account that can accommodate love justifiably ending in certain cases. But we can say something about this. For if Corrina’s properties changed substantially for the worse, and she became cold and cruel, rather than warm, creative and intelligent, this then could provide reasons for your love of her to pass or fade.⁵¹

We think that our account can also make sense of some cases in which trading-up seems more intelligible (and less objectionable), namely, when what we relate to is not an individual as such, but just to certain properties—for example, I go running with Dominic, but only because he runs at the same pace as me, and is available at 5p.m., where it is just these properties that form the basis of our running relationship, not his individual way of exemplifying them. In this case, it does make rational sense to switch to Charlie if I find such properties in more abundance there (perhaps Dominic starts to run faster, and is only now available at 8a.m.)—but then, on the Hegelian account, I am not really abandoning Dominic for Charlie, but just swapping one set of properties for another. However, this is not a case of love, as to love an individual is to love more than any such bundle, because this bundle consists purely of abstract universals which invite the problems discussed above, including the worry that this is not to love a person but to love properties instead.

Finally, one might wonder whether we need to invoke Hegel in order to make sense of what it means to love an individual. Clausen (2019: 358–66), for instance, has put forward a holistic account, where loving an individual is not just loving their independent properties, but loving them as a whole, or organic unity. We are sympathetic to this account, and think that Clausen helpfully captures some of the phenomenology of the proper object of love. However, she does not say anything about the metaphysical issue of how a single individual can be a combination of many properties, or what makes this possible if properties can also be shared, or why some properties are typically part of the unity we love (such as humour) whereas others are not (such as weighing 63kg).⁵² We therefore see our account as complementing Clausen’s approach, by offering a metaphysics of the individual, and of the relationship between individuals and properties, which can do justice to the holistic account that she puts forward.

So then, what is it that we love? In part, individuals and their properties—where, as Hegel shows us, in the case of loving an individual for the properties that form the reason for our love, neither should be thought of as separable from the other.