Love: A History

Love unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally acceptingis 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, the author, philosopher, 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, the author shows how our ideal of love developed from its Hebraic and Greek origins. Brilliantly, the author 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, the author 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.