Love: A HistoryYale University Press, 19 lip 2011 - 313 “What is love? May plunders Western poetry, philosophy and psychology to find answers . . . Thought-provoking stuff” (The Sunday Telegraph). Love—unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally accepting—is worshipped today as the West’s only universal religion. To challenge it is one of our few remaining taboos. In this path-breaking and superbly written book, philosopher Simon May does just that, dissecting our ideas of love and showing how they are the product of a long and powerful cultural heritage. Tracing over twenty-five hundred years of human thought and history, May shows how our idea of love developed from its Hebraic and Greek origins alongside Christianity until, during the last two centuries, “God is love” became “love is God”—so hubristic, so escapist, so untruthful to the real nature of love, that it has booby-trapped relationships everywhere with deluded expectations. Brilliantly, May explores the very different philosophers and writers, both skeptics and believers, who dared to think differently: from Aristotle’s perfect friendship and Ovid’s celebration of sex and “the chase,” to Rousseau’s personal authenticity, Nietzsche’s affirmation, Freud’s concepts of loss and mourning, and boredom in Proust. Against our belief that love is an all-powerful solution to finding meaning, security, and happiness in life, May reveals with great clarity what love actually is—and what it means. “The most persuasive account of love’s nature I have ever read.” —Financial Times “Intellectually engaging . . . Provocative.” —The Wall Street Journal |
Spis treści
Plato | |
Aristotle | |
Lucretius and Ovid | |
Christianity | |
Spinoza | |
Rousseau | |
Schlegel and Novalis | |
Schopenhauer | |
Nietzsche | |
Freud | |
Proust | |
Love reconsidered | |
Why Christian love isnt unconditional | |
love and the troubadours | |
from the high Middle Ages to the Renaissance | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
Inne wydania - Wyświetl wszystko
Kluczowe wyrazy i wyrażenia
affirm agape amour de soi Aquinas Aristophanes Aristotle Art of Love Augustine beauty become century Christian courtly courtly love death delight Deuteronomy divine Epicurus Eros erotic eternal ethical everything existence experience expression fear feel flourishing Freud Friedrich Schlegel friends friendship friendship-love genuine love give God's grace Greek hate Hebrew Scripture human love idea ideal imitatio dei individual inspire intimacy Jesus Leviticus lives Lord love's lover Lucretius marriage Matthew Meister Eckhart merely Mishnah Montaigne moral mystical myth Narrator Nature of Love neighbour never Nietzsche Novalis one's oneself ontological rootedness ourselves Ovid passion person philia Plato pleasure possess Proust reality recognise relationship romantic romantic love Romanticism Rousseau sake says Schlegel Schopenhauer seek sense sexual desire Singer someone soul Spinoza spiritual striving suffering supreme Symposium things Thomas Aquinas tradition trans troubadours ultimate unconditional viii virtue Western love whole woman words