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Overview"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 pathbreaking and superbly written book, philosopher Simon May does just that, dissecting our resilient ruling ideas of love and showing how they are the product of a long and powerful cultural heritage. Tracing over 2,500 years of human thought and history, May shows how our ideal 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: the intense desire for someone whom we believe can ground and affirm our very existence. The feeling that ""makes the world go round"" turns out to be a harbinger of home--and in that sense, of the sacred." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Simon MayPublisher: Yale University Press Imprint: Yale University Press Dimensions: Width: 15.70cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 23.40cm Weight: 0.680kg ISBN: 9780300118308ISBN 10: 0300118309 Pages: 304 Publication Date: 19 July 2011 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Out of Print Availability: In Print  Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock. Table of ContentsReviewsWell written and provocative, this book challenges tradition. --R./i>--R. White Choice Rich, provocative and illuminating. --Jane O'Grady, Times Higher Education --Jane O'Grady Times Higher Education Intellectually engaging. . . Provocative. --Charlotte Allen, The Wall Street Journal --Charlotte Allen The Wall Street Journal Author InformationSimon May is Visiting Professor of Philosophy at King's College, University of London. His other books include 'Nietzsche's Ethics and his War on Morality' and 'Thinking Aloud', a collection of his own aphorisms that was named a Financial Times 'Book of the Year' in 2009. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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