The Philosophy of (erotic) LoveRobert C. Solomon, Kathleen Marie Higgins What does philosophy know of love? From Plato on, philosophers have struggled to pin love to the dissecting table and view it in the cold light of logic. Yet, as Arthur Danto writes in the foreword to this volume, "how incorrigibly stiff philosophy is when it undertakes to lay its icy fingers on the frilled and beating wings of the butterfly of love." Love, elusive and philosophically intractable as it is, has long fascinated philosophers. In this collection of classic and modern writings on the topic of erotic love, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins have chosen excerpts from the great philosophical texts and combined them with the most exciting new work of philosophers writing today. The result is a broadly conceived, comprehensive, and important work, nearly as stimulating and provocative as love itself. It examines the mysteries of erotic love from a variety of philosophical perspectives and provides an impressive display of the wisdom that the world's best thinkers have brought, and continue to bring, to the study of love. "Stunning! This brilliant interdisciplinary collection is as provocative, enchanting, and richly rewarding as its topic. Unrivaled in scope and richness, blending classic and contemporary readings on love, here is a wellspring of insights for scholars, students, and general readers alike."—Mike W. Martin, author of Self-Deception and Morality. |
From inside the book
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Contents
Plato from Symposium | 13 |
Theano Letter on Marriage and Fidelity | 36 |
Augustine from The City of God | 44 |
Andreas Capellanus from On Love | 56 |
William Shakespeare Thirteen Sonnets | 72 |
John Milton on Marriage and Divorce | 79 |
Baruch Spinoza from Ethics | 85 |
JeanJacques Rousseau from the Second Discourse | 104 |
Denis de Rougemont from Love in the Western World | 214 |
JeanPaul Sartre from Being and Nothingness | 227 |
Philip Slater from The Pursuit of Loneliness | 241 |
Shulamith Firestone from The Dialectic of Sex | 247 |
Irving Singer from The Nature of Love | 259 |
Jerome Neu Platos Homoerotic Symposium | 317 |
The Rhetoric of Courtly Love | 336 |
Amelie Rorty Spinoza on the Pathos of Idolatrous Love | 352 |
G W F Hegel a Fragment on Love | 117 |
Stendhal Henri Beyle from On Love | 132 |
Carl Jung Marriage as a Psychological Relationship | 177 |
Solomon The Virtue of Erotic Love | 492 |
Source Notes and Acknowledgments | 519 |
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Common terms and phrases
activity affected Alcibiades Andreas Andreas Capellanus argues Ariadne's Aristophanes beauty Beauvoir become believe beloved bestowal body cause character child Christian claim complete conception courtly love culture D. H. Lawrence danger Diotima emotions eromenos eros erotic experience fact fear feel feminist freedom Freud give happiness hate hatred heart homosexual human ideal ideas identity individual intercourse kind live love's lover lust male marriage Martha Nussbaum means ment mind moral mother mutual narcissism nature never object of love one's ourselves pain particular passion passive Pausanias perhaps person Phaedrus philosophers Plato pleasure possession possible psychical psychological rational reason relation relationship romantic love seems sense sensual sexual instinct sexual love Shulamith Firestone Simone de Beauvoir social Socrates someone sort soul speech Stendhal story Symposium things thought tion true truth unconscious understanding virtue woman in love women