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6 - Irreplaceability

Tony Milligan
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
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Summary

Suppose a man says to a woman that she has “the most beautiful eyes in the world” and the woman says to the man that he is “wonderful in a way that nobody else is”. Do we take these statements at face value? It would be odd to do so. The woman might rush off and compare her features and dimensions with photographs of various other women who exemplify and fix her standard for beauty. But it would be odd to suppose that the man is applying any precise standard at all, that he is even familiar with all the eyes in the world or that he is commenting only about her eyes rather than commenting about who she is and what she means to him. Utterances of this sort do not indicate that the speaker has set himself up as a judge of some extensive competition in which the rest of humanity are unwitting entrants. If asked, “Why are my eyes so beautiful?”, he might reply, “because they are yours”, and the obvious circularity here would reinforce the point that while he is commenting about her beauty, he is not engaging in a strict and literal description that is focused on precisely one aspect of her anatomy. It would similarly be odd for the man to puzzle about the true nature of his own wonderfulness in the light of her comments and to do so in order to gain personal insight.

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Love , pp. 95 - 115
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2011

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  • Irreplaceability
  • Tony Milligan, University of Aberdeen
  • Book: Love
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844655076.006
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  • Irreplaceability
  • Tony Milligan, University of Aberdeen
  • Book: Love
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844655076.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Irreplaceability
  • Tony Milligan, University of Aberdeen
  • Book: Love
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844655076.006
Available formats
×