Lovers do not relate to their beloveds as seats of valuable qualities that would be replaceable for anyone with relevantly similar or more valuable qualities. Instead, lovers take their beloveds to be irreplaceable. This has been noted frequently in the current debate on love and different theories of love have offered different explanations for the phenomenon. In this paper, I develop a more complex picture of what is involved in lovers taking their beloveds to be irreplaceable. I argue that in order to account for the beloved’s irreplaceability, a theory of love must meet two conditions: it must explain the subjective aspect as well as the moral aspect of the beloved’s irreplaceability. I show that current theories of love fail to meet these conditions, either one or both of them, and I offer an alternative account that does - an account according to which love is understood as a special kind of desire for the beloved as a person. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to give a more nuanced picture of the beloved’s irreplaceability, acknowledging in particular that there is a moral aspect to the phenomenon that has not been attended to thus far; second, to introduce and motivate a new desire-based account of love.

恋人不会把他们的爱人视为有价值品质的座位，这些品质可以被任何具有相关相似或更有价值品质的人取代。相反，恋人认为他们所爱的人是不可替代的。这在当前关于爱情的辩论中经常被注意到，不同的爱情理论对这一现象提供了不同的解释。在这篇论文中，我展开了一幅更复杂的图景，即恋人将他们的心爱的人视为不可替代的。我认为，为了解释被爱者的不可替代性，爱的理论必须满足两个条件：它必须解释主观方面以及道德方面。爱人不可替代的一面。我表明，当前的爱理论不能满足这些条件，无论是其中一个还是两个，我提供了一个替代的解释——根据这个解释，爱被理解为对被爱者作为一个人的一种特殊的渴望。本文的目的是双重的：首先，对所爱之人的不可替代性进行更细致的描绘，特别承认迄今为止尚未关注的现象存在道德方面；第二，引入和激发一种新的基于欲望的爱的描述。