Philosophy of Love

Philosophy of Love PDF Author: Irving Singer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262261162
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
The author of the classic philosophical treatment of love reflects on the trajectory, over decades, of his thoughts on love and other topics. In 1984, Irving Singer published the first volume of what would become a classic and much acclaimed trilogy on love. Trained as an analytical philosopher, Singer first approached his subject with the tools of current philosophical methodology. Dissatisfied by the initial results (finding the chapters he had written “just dreary and unproductive of anything”), he turned to the history of ideas in philosophy and the arts for inspiration. He discovered an immensity of speculation and artistic practice that reached wholly beyond the parameters he had been trained to consider truly philosophical. In his three-volume work The Nature of Love, Singer tried to make sense of this historical progression within a framework that reflected his precise distinction-making and analytical background. In this new book, he maps the trajectory of his thinking on love. It is a “partial” summing-up of a lifework: partial because it expresses the author's still unfolding views, because it is a recapitulation of many published pages, because love—like any subject of that magnitude—resists a neatly comprehensive, all-inclusive formulation. Adopting an informal, even conversational, tone, Singer discusses, among other topics, the history of romantic love, the Platonic ideal, courtly and nineteenth-century Romantic love; the nature of passion; the concept of merging (and his critique of it); ideas about love in Freud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dewey, Santayana, Sartre, and other writers; and love in relation to democracy, existentialism, creativity, and the possible future of scientific investigation. Singer's writing on love embodies what he has learned as a contemporary philosopher, studying other authors in the field and “trying to get a little further.” This book continues his trailblazing explorations.

Philosophy of Love

Philosophy of Love PDF Author: Irving Singer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262261162
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Get Book Here

Book Description
The author of the classic philosophical treatment of love reflects on the trajectory, over decades, of his thoughts on love and other topics. In 1984, Irving Singer published the first volume of what would become a classic and much acclaimed trilogy on love. Trained as an analytical philosopher, Singer first approached his subject with the tools of current philosophical methodology. Dissatisfied by the initial results (finding the chapters he had written “just dreary and unproductive of anything”), he turned to the history of ideas in philosophy and the arts for inspiration. He discovered an immensity of speculation and artistic practice that reached wholly beyond the parameters he had been trained to consider truly philosophical. In his three-volume work The Nature of Love, Singer tried to make sense of this historical progression within a framework that reflected his precise distinction-making and analytical background. In this new book, he maps the trajectory of his thinking on love. It is a “partial” summing-up of a lifework: partial because it expresses the author's still unfolding views, because it is a recapitulation of many published pages, because love—like any subject of that magnitude—resists a neatly comprehensive, all-inclusive formulation. Adopting an informal, even conversational, tone, Singer discusses, among other topics, the history of romantic love, the Platonic ideal, courtly and nineteenth-century Romantic love; the nature of passion; the concept of merging (and his critique of it); ideas about love in Freud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dewey, Santayana, Sartre, and other writers; and love in relation to democracy, existentialism, creativity, and the possible future of scientific investigation. Singer's writing on love embodies what he has learned as a contemporary philosopher, studying other authors in the field and “trying to get a little further.” This book continues his trailblazing explorations.

Philosophy and Love

Philosophy and Love PDF Author: Linnell Secomb
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780748671854
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Philosophy and Love introduces historical and contemporary philosophical reflections on love. It brings together philosophy with cultural analysis to provide an accessible and engaging account of conventional theories of love as well as the controversial reformulations evident in same-sex desire, cross-cultural love and internet romance. Starting with Plato, but focusing especially on contemporary European philosophy, this book introduces figures such as Nietzsche, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Derrida and Fanon. Explaining these philosophical approaches in clear and accessible terms, Philosophy and Love also engages with cultural productions - ranging from Sappho to Frankenstein, and from Hiroshima Mon Amour to Desperate Housewives - enabling an exchange between philosophical and cultural theories. Love stories are also central to this interdisciplinary book, revealing the ethical and the political as well as the personal implications of lover's discourses. Embracing both the sentimental and the political this deconstructive reading discloses the paradoxes, conflicts and intensities of the love relation. Features Introduces and explains the philosophies for beginners. Focuses on current controversial issues. Provides a philosophical overview alongside examples from popular culture.

The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy

The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy PDF Author: Herman de Dijn
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 905867651X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
"Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause." Spinoza's definition of love manifests a major paradigm shift achieved by seventeenth-century Europe, in which the emotions, formerly seen as normative "forces of nature," were embraced by the new science of the mind.This shift has often been seen as a transition from a philosophy laden with implicit values and assumptions to a more scientific and value-free way of understanding human action. But is this rational approach really value-free? Today we tend to believe that values are inescapable, and that the descriptive-mechanical method implies its own set of values. Yet the assertion by Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Enlightenment thinkers that love guides us to wisdom-and even that the love of a god who creates and maintains order and harmony in the world forms the core of ethical behavior-still resonates powerfully with us. It is, evidently, an idea Western culture is unwilling to relinquish.This collection of insightful essays offers a range of interesting perspectives on how the triumph of "reason" affected not only the scientific-philosophical understanding of the emotions and especially of love, but our everyday understanding as well.

The Philosophy of (erotic) Love

The Philosophy of (erotic) Love PDF Author: Robert C. Solomon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
Solomon and Higgins have chosen excerpts from the great philosophical texts and combined them with the most exciting new work of philosophers writing today. It examines the mysteries of erotic love from a variety of philosophical perspectives and provides an impressive display of wisdom that the world's best thinkers have brought, and continue to bring, to the study of love.

Conditions of Love

Conditions of Love PDF Author: John Armstrong
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9780140294712
Category : Love
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
What does it really mean to love another person? Is there such a thing as the 'perfect' partner? How does infatuation differ from the real thing?The need to love is central to our idea of happiness, yet it sometimes seems that the more we reflect on it the more elusive it becomes. In this lucid and graceful meditation on the deeper meanings of intimacy, John Armstrong explores the ideas that have shaped how we view affairs of the heart. Drawing on poetry, novels, philosophy, paintings and music, he shows how love is inextricably bound up with perception and the imagination: that loving a real, complicated person and being understood and valued by them in turn is not something we find, but rather something we create.

The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy

The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy PDF Author: Adrienne M. Martin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317291301
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1047

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy collects 39 original chapters from prominent philosophers on the nature, meaning, value, and predicaments of love, presented in a unique framework that highlights the rich variety of methods and traditions used to engage with these subjects. This volume is structured around important realms of human life and activity, each of which receives its own section: I. Family and Friendship II. Romance and Sex III. Politics and Society IV. Animals, Nature, and the Environment V. Art, Faith, and Meaning VI. Rationality and Morality VII. Traditions: Historical and Contemporary. This last section includes chapters treating love as a subject in both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions. The contributions, all appearing in print here for the first time, are written to be accessible and compelling to non-philosophers and philosophers alike; and the volume as a whole encourages professional philosophers, teachers, students, and lay readers to rethink standard constructions of philosophical canons.

Philosophy of Love in the Past, Present, and Future

Philosophy of Love in the Past, Present, and Future PDF Author: André Grahle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100053751X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This volume features original essays on the philosophy of love. The essays are organized thematically around the past, present, and future of philosophical thinking about love. In Part I, the contributors explore what we can learn from the history of philosophical thinking about love. The chapters cover Ancient Greek thinkers, namely Plato and Aristotle, as well as Kierkegaard’s critique of preferential love and Erich Fromm’s mystic interpretation of sexual relations. Part II covers current conceptions and practices of love. These chapters explore how love changes over time, the process of falling in love, the erotic dimension of romantic love, and a new interpretation of grand-parental love. Finally, Part III looks at the future of love. These chapters address technological developments related to love, such as algorithm-driven dating apps and robotic companions, as well as the potential of polyamory as a future romantic ideal. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in moral philosophy and social and political philosophy who are working on issues related to the philosophy of love.

Thinking About Love

Thinking About Love PDF Author: Diane Enns
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027107616X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Does love command an ineffability that remains inaccessible to the philosopher? Thinking About Love considers the nature and experience of love through the writing of well-known Continental philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Evolving forms of social organization, rapid developments in the field of psychology, and novel variations on relationships demand new approaches to and ways of talking about love. Rather than offering prescriptive claims, this volume explores how one might think about the concept philosophically, without attempting to resolve or alleviate its ambiguities, paradoxes, and limitations. The essays focus on the contradictions and limits of love, manifested in such phenomena as trust, abuse, grief, death, violence, politics, and desire. An erudite examination of the many facets of love, this book fills a lacuna in the philosophy of this richly complicated topic. Along with the editors, the contributors are Sophie Bourgault, John Caruana, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Marguerite La Caze, Alphonso Lingis, Christian Lotz, Todd May, Dawne McCance, Dorothea Olkowski, Felix Ó Murchadha, Fiona Utley, and Mélanie Walton.

What Love Is

What Love Is PDF Author: Carrie Jenkins
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046509886X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
A rising star in philosophy examines the cultural, social, and scientific interpretations of love to answer one of our most enduring questions What is love? Aside from being the title of many a popular love song, this is one of life's perennial questions. In What Love Is, philosopher Carrie Jenkins offers a bold new theory on the nature of romantic love that reconciles its humanistic and scientific components. Love can be a social construct (the idea of a perfect fairy tale romance) and a physical manifestation (those anxiety- inducing heart palpitations); we must recognize its complexities and decide for ourselves how to love. Motivated by her own polyamorous relationships, she examines the ways in which our parameters of love have recently changed-to be more accepting of homosexual, interracial, and non-monogamous relationships-and how they will continue to evolve in the future. Full of anecdotal, cultural, and scientific reflections on love, What Love Is is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what it means to say "I love you." Whether young or old, gay or straight, male or female, polyamorous or monogamous, this book will help each of us decide for ourselves how we choose to love.

In Praise of Love

In Praise of Love PDF Author: Alain Badiou
Publisher: New Press/ORIM
ISBN: 1595588892
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
The renowned French philosopher’s “ode to love’s power to unite in the face of eternity, and its optimism in the face of pain” (Publishers Weekly). In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen as a mere variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud’s famous line “love needs reinventing,” In Praise of Love is the celebrated French intellectual’s passionate treatise in defense of love. For Badiou, love is an existential project, a constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging them “to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one.” This, Badiou believes, is love’s most essential transforming power. Through thought-provoking dialogue edited from a conversation between Badiou and Truong, a vibrant cast of thinkers are invoked: Kierkegaard, Plato, de Beauvoir, Proust, and more, create a new narrative of love in the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise, Badiou’s “paean to the anticapitalist, antiessentialist, unifying power of love” urges us not to fear it but to see it as a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others and to move away from an obsession with ourselves (Publishers Weekly). “Finally, the cure for the pornographic, utilitarian exchange of favors to which love has been reduced in America. Alain Badiou is our philosopher of love.” —Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless