Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love PDF Author: Andrew Shaffer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062036610
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Few people have failed at love as spectacularly as the great philosophers. Although we admire their wisdom, history is littered with the romantic failures of the most sensible men and women of every age, including: Friedrich Nietzsche: "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." (Rejected by everyone he proposed to, even when he kept asking and asking.) Jean-Paul Sartre: "There are of course ugly women, but I prefer those who are pretty." (Adopted his mistress as his daughter.) Louis Althusser: "The trouble is there are bodies and, worse still, sexual organs." (Accidentally strangled his wife to death.) And dozens of other great thinkers whose words we revere—but whose romantic decisions we should avoid at all costs. Includes an excerpt from Andrew Shaffer's new book Literary Rogues.

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love PDF Author: Andrew Shaffer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062036610
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book

Book Description
Few people have failed at love as spectacularly as the great philosophers. Although we admire their wisdom, history is littered with the romantic failures of the most sensible men and women of every age, including: Friedrich Nietzsche: "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." (Rejected by everyone he proposed to, even when he kept asking and asking.) Jean-Paul Sartre: "There are of course ugly women, but I prefer those who are pretty." (Adopted his mistress as his daughter.) Louis Althusser: "The trouble is there are bodies and, worse still, sexual organs." (Accidentally strangled his wife to death.) And dozens of other great thinkers whose words we revere—but whose romantic decisions we should avoid at all costs. Includes an excerpt from Andrew Shaffer's new book Literary Rogues.

Socrates in Love

Socrates in Love PDF Author: Armand D’Angour
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408883902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
An innovative and insightful exploration of the passionate early life of Socrates and the influences that led him to become the first and greatest of philosophers Socrates: the philosopher whose questioning gave birth to the ideas of Western thought, and whose execution marked the end of the Athenian Golden Age. Yet despite his pre-eminence among the great thinkers of history, little of his life story is known. What we know tends to begin in his middle age and end with his trial and death. Our conception of Socrates has relied upon Plato and Xenophon – men who met him when he was in his fifties and a well-known figure in war-torn Athens. There is mystery at the heart of Socrates' story: what turned the young Socrates into a philosopher? What drove him to pursue with such persistence, at the cost of social acceptance and ultimately of his life, a whole new way of thinking about the meaning of existence? In this revisionist biography, Armand D'Angour draws on neglected sources to explore the passions and motivations of young Socrates, showing how love transformed him into the philosopher he was to become. What emerges is the figure of Socrates as never previously portrayed: a heroic warrior, an athletic wrestler and dancer – and a passionate lover. Socrates in Love sheds new light on the formative journey of the philosopher, finally revealing the identity of the woman who Socrates claimed inspired him to develop ideas that have captivated thinkers for 2,500 years.

Love As Human Freedom

Love As Human Freedom PDF Author: Paul A. Kottman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 150360232X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Rather than see love as a natural form of affection, Love As Human Freedom sees love as a practice that changes over time through which new social realities are brought into being. Love brings about, and helps us to explain, immense social-historical shifts—from the rise of feminism and the emergence of bourgeois family life, to the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor. Drawing on Hegel, Paul A. Kottman argues that love generates and explains expanded possibilities for freely lived lives. Through keen interpretations of the best known philosophical and literary depictions of its topic—including Shakespeare, Plato, Nietzsche, Ovid, Flaubert, and Tolstoy—his book treats love as a fundamental way that we humans make sense of temporal change, especially the inevitability of death and the propagation of life.

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.

Love Voltaire Us Apart

Love Voltaire Us Apart PDF Author: Julia Edelman
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 9781785782244
Category : Interpersonal relations
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The paperback edition of Julia Edelman's brilliant book, in which she expands upon her hit New Yorker article and hilariously imagines relationship advice from history's greatest minds

American Philosophy

American Philosophy PDF Author: John Kaag
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713111
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The epic wisdom contained in a lost library helps the author turn his life around John Kaag is a dispirited young philosopher at sea in his marriage and his career when he stumbles upon West Wind, a ruin of an estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that belonged to the eminent Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was one of the last true giants of American philosophy and a direct intellectual descendent of William James, the father of American philosophy and psychology, with whom Kaag feels a deep kinship. It is James’s question “Is life worth living?” that guides this remarkable book. The books Kaag discovers in the Hocking library are crawling with insects and full of mold. But he resolves to restore them, as he immediately recognizes their importance. Not only does the library at West Wind contain handwritten notes from Whitman and inscriptions from Frost, but there are startlingly rare first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As Kaag begins to catalog and read through these priceless volumes, he embarks on a thrilling journey that leads him to the life-affirming tenets of American philosophy—self-reliance, pragmatism, and transcendence—and to a brilliant young Kantian who joins him in the restoration of the Hocking books. Part intellectual history, part memoir, American Philosophy is ultimately about love, freedom, and the role that wisdom can play in turning one’s life around.

Nietzsche on Love

Nietzsche on Love PDF Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781734452570
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Friedrich Nietzsche presented many of his greatest insights in pithy, well-turned short phrases that do not follow any philosophical dogma. Instead, his chastening but ultimately life-affirming philosophy puts forth true love and friendship as our best hope in dark times. Here are Nietzsche's key sayings about love from the vast body of his philosophical writings, which have influenced politics, philosophy, art and culture like few other works of world literature. As the first edition of its kind, this collection presents Nietzsche's thoughts on love not as academic philosophy but as a guide to life. At turns delightful and astute-and always wise-Nietzsche on Love offers an original and startling glimpse into what one of the world's foremost thinkers says about the fundamental experience of our lives.

Wake Up and Live!

Wake Up and Live! PDF Author: Dorothea Brande
Publisher: Gildan Media LLC aka G&D Media
ISBN: 1722526270
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Born in Chicago, Dorothea Brande (1893-1948) was a widely respected journalist, lecturer, editor, fiction writer and writing instructor. Brande is widely known for her enduring guide to the creative process, Becoming a Writer, originally published in 1934 and still popular today. In 1936, Brande published an inspirational masterwork of practical psychology, Wake Up and Live! which she wrote during the Great Depression. Wake Up and Live! opened the eyes of thousands of people to a whole new idea of living, as it taught them how to concentrate on the things that really matter. Her most successful book, with more than 34 printings and over 1 million copies sold, it was an inspiration and lesson to all that success is within reach of everyone. For many years, Wake Up and Live!, with its simple and sound advice for personal excellence, rivaled the popularity of popular works such as Think and Grow Rich and How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is considered one of the greatest success guides ever written. Now, this beautifully designed classic of self-improvement, can help you revolutionize your existence and lead you to find the success you desire and so rightly deserve. In this remarkable work you will learn: Why Do We Fail? The Will to Fail Victims of the Will to Fail The Rewards of Failure Righting the Direction The System in Operation Warnings and Qualifications On Saving Breath The Task of the Imagination

New Philosophies of Sex and Love

New Philosophies of Sex and Love PDF Author: Sarah LaChance Adams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786602237
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Our amorous and erotic experiences do not simply bring us pleasure; they shape our very identities, our ways of relating to ourselves, each other and our shared world. This volume reflects on some of our most prevalent assumptions relating to identity, the body, monogamy, libido, sexual identity, seduction, fidelity, orgasm, and more.The book covers common conflicts and confusions and includes work by established scholars and innovative new thinkers. Philosophically challenging but highly readable, the volume is ideal for a wide range of courses on love and sex, including those taught in philosophy and gender studies.

The Reasons of Love

The Reasons of Love PDF Author: Harry G. Frankfurt
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826063
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Bullshit, a profound meditation on how and why we love In The Reasons of Love, leading moral philosopher and bestselling author Harry Frankfurt argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love. Through caring, we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns, and it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. Love is a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what we love—and self-love, as distinct from self-indulgence, is at heart of this concern. The most elementary form of self-love is no more than the desire to love, and self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives.