OK, two last things

Having signed off prematurely yesterday I find two things in my email this morning that I want to bring to the attention of the one or two people who might read this but not get the philosophy news that I get. First, there's a very interesting review of Avner Baz's new book here. It's interesting because it's an informative review, because the book sounds good, because the review includes some biographical information about J.L. Austin, and because it cites Tommi Uschanov (see note 4). UPDATE: The reviewer, Sari Nusseibeh, is Austin's son-in-law.

Secondly, there's this call for abstracts on love:

CFA: Love and its Objects: What Can We Care For? (publisher pending)

Abstracts are invited for a collection of essays on the philosophy of love.

Recent research in the philosophy of love has focused on reasons of and for love. Without wanting to exclude reflections on this topic, we are looking instead for essays that concentrate on the relation between love and its different objects: we love others as friends, and we are sometimes encouraged to love others as fellow humans; we love our children and parents, and this love often undergoes deep transformations over time; we love others romantically, maybe erotically; we are sometimes said to love or not to love our selves; we are sometimes said to love - not just like - our pets, animals, landscapes, justice and wisdom. Is it really love that we are talking about in all of these cases? How do the differences in the objects of love shape and inflect love itself and how can these different kinds of love be compared?

The core of the volume will consist of (a) essays within the analytic tradition (broadly construed) e.g. essays that touch upon work in the philosophy of love by Frankfurt, Velleman, Kolodny and Helm; together with (b) contributions from the allied Wittgensteinian tradition drawing upon themes from Gaita and Diamond which dovetail well with recent analytic debates. Proposals for historical studies will be given consideration if they connect up with these same debates. The editors are also open to the possibility of including some essays which attempt to bridge the analytic/continental divide.

Possible topics include the following:

Friendship, Love of one’s neighbor, Erotic love, Self-love and love of others, Loving children, loving parents, Family relationships, Loving the good, loving the bad, Loving animals, Reciprocity in loving persons and in loving animals, Loving non-sentient objects: country, nature, wisdom, 

Wrongdoing and its impact upon love, Love as a reactive attitude, Love as a person-focused response

Irreplaceability of the objects of love, Love’s intentionality and love’s reasons, Love de re and de dicto

Submission details: Send abstracts of 350-500 words to kamila.pacovska@upce.cz by 31^st August 2012. Full papers (6000-8000 words inclusive of notes & bibliography) will be due at the end of April 2013.

Christian Maurer, University of Fribourg (Suisse).

Tony Milligan, University of Aberdeen.

Kamila Pacovská, University of Pardubice.

The question of how the differences in the objects of love shape and inflect love itself is one I've thought about before, or tried to. It once struck me that I loved each member of my family (my wife and two children) in a different way. But I later realized that I was only describing each person, not really my love for that person. That's how it seemed at the time, anyway. Now I think that perhaps it was both, or that the two cannot be separated completely. I hope someone figures it out (if that hasn't been done already).