Simon May - Love A History [2011][A]

Description
Product Details
Book Title: Love: A History
Book Author: Simon May
Hardcover: 294 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (July 19, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0300118309
ISBN-13: 978-0300118308

Loveunconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally acceptingis worshipped today as the Wests 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 Godso 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 Aristotles perfect friendship and Ovids celebration of sex and the chase, to Rousseaus personal authenticity, Nietzsches affirmation, Freuds 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.

Reviews
May could just have achieved the seemingly impossible and produced a truly original philosophy of love... May is able to draw out what is true in each ages perception of love, discard what is misleading, and synthesise the result into the most persuasive account of loves nature I have ever read.Financial Times

This book deserves to rank with Denis de Rougemonts classic Love in the Western World. Readerswill gain much from Mays well-crafted study.Library Journal

Rich, provocative and illuminating.Jane OGrady, Times Higher Education

[Mays] discussionprovides a coherent narrative that is aided by his illustrative writing.Publishers Weekly

Well written and provocative, this book challenges tradition.R. White, Choice

Intellectually engaging. . . Provocative.Charlotte Allen, The Wall Street Journal

About the Author
Simon May is visiting professor of philosophy at Kings College London, and Birkbeck, University of London.