Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion

Synopsis

What Is Love's Real Aim? Why Is It So Ruthlessly Selective In Its Choice Of Loved Ones? Why Do We Love At All? In Addressing These Questions, Simon May Develops Radical New Understanding Of Love As The Emotion We Feel Towards Whomever Or Whatever We Experience As Grounding Our Life--as Offering Us A Possibility Of Home. He Sees Love As Motivated By A Promise Of Ontological Rootedness, Rather Than, As Two Thousand Years Of Tradition Variously Asserts, By Beauty Or Goodness, By A Search For Wholeness, By Virtue, By Sexual Or Reproductive Desire, By Compassion Or Altruism Or Empathy, Or, In One Of Today's Dominant Views, By No Qualities At All Of The Loved One. After Arguing That Such Founding Western Myths As The Odyssey And Abraham's Call To Canaan In The Bible Powerfully Exemplify His New Conception Of Love, May Goes On To Re-examine The Relation Of Love To Beauty, Sex, And Goodness In The Light Of This Conception, Offering Among Other Things A Novel Theory Of Beauty--and Suggesting, Against Plato, That We Can Find Those We Love Both Beautiful And Ugly At The Same Time. Finally, He Proposes That In The Western World Romantic Love Is Gradually Giving Way To Parental Love As The Most Valued Form Of Love: Namely The Love Without Which One's Life Is Not Deemed Complete Or Truly Flourishing. May Explains Why Childhood Has Become Sacred And Excellence In Parenting A Paramount Ideal--as Well As A Litmus Test Of Society's Moral Health. In Doing So, He Argues That The Child Is The First Genuinely Modern Supreme Object Of Love: The First To Fully Reflect What Nietzsche Called The Death Of God.