An illuminating exploration of how love has been shaped, idolized,
and misconstrued by the West over three millennia, and how we might
differently conceive it 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.
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