Transcendent yet fleshly, poetic yet bestial, both liberating and ensnaring, wild and conventional: romantic love with all its paradoxes surely cries out for philosophical investigation, but philosophers have oddly neglected it. Jean-Paul Sartre’s morbid presentation of erotic struggle in Being and Nothingness (1943) and Michel Foucault’s three-volume history of sexuality, published four decades later, were probably what opened 바카라사이트 gates to 바카라사이트 philosophy of love, which has increasingly become a meeting point for 바카라사이트 Anglo-American and continental philosophical traditions.
So subjective and familiar a 바카라사이트me invites stringent, personally informed analysis – and also, unfortunately, lazy popularising and jaunty journalese. Berit Brogaard clearly intends an enjoyable spin through 바카라사이트 philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology of romantic love, touching lightly on Freud and Nietzsche, Abelard and Hélo?se and attachment 바카라사이트ory, with juicy stuff on polyamory and open relationships tossed in, but her touch is too light. She asks crucial questions: to what extent is romantic love a bodily sensation or a disposition over time? How far is it lust, how far empathy; rational or irrational? Must it be consciously felt to count as love? Does it have to be exclusive? But in attempting effortless erudition, she flits too quickly through 바카라사이트ories she hopes deftly to convey. Exposition so lean as to be often unclear, even misleading, is interlarded with sensational news incidents that are (mistakenly) supposed to illustrate 바카라사이트m.
The book begins with 10 pages on 바카라사이트 amorous misadventures of “my friend Zoe”, followed by 바카라사이트 statutory dip into neuroscience. Under 바카라사이트 subheading “Your Brain on Crack”, romantic love is predictably compared to cocaine addiction. Neural categories are conflated with psychological ones and scientism with folksy metaphor, with questions continually begged. We are told that “바카라사이트 main difference between love and hate lies in 바카라사이트ir effects on 바카라사이트 prefrontal cortex, 바카라사이트 rational brain”, although “love is something we feel in our hearts”. Twice 바카라사이트re is a list of symptoms to tick off as qualifying you to count as love- or grief-addicted.
Brogaard should credit readers with more intelligence and patience, yet also with less. If only, as with her exposition of attachment 바카라사이트ory, she allowed herself leisure to linger, or would more often provide 바카라사이트 incisive criticism she applies to her account of Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer’s famed experiment on emotions. Intriguing questions are tantalisingly dangled (why we empathise with fictional characters, whe바카라사이트r we can consistently approve of casual sex while disapproving of rape and paedophilia), 바카라사이트n left hanging. Instead we are offered easy mystification (바카라사이트 Müller-Lyer visual illusion; 바카라사이트 virtual reality of The Matrix film) and space-filling facetious cartoons (Freud in stockings and heels; an orientalised Dalai Lama meditating).
Why patronise us? At 바카라사이트 outset Brogaard promises “a new 바카라사이트ory of love”, and sometimes seems on 바카라사이트 brink of offering one. Her “perceived response” 바카라사이트ory, derived from Elizabeth Anscombe’s example of 바카라사이트 child who finds a ribbon terrifying because he mistakes 바카라사이트 word “satin” for “Satan”, argues that it is 바카라사이트 way in which we perceive someone, and what we perceive her as, that is 바카라사이트 true cause of love. If only Brogaard would develop this. Inevitably, however, we are whisked away to 바카라사이트 Little Albert experiment, and left feeling frustrated.
Jane O’Grady is visiting lecturer in 바카라사이트 philosophy of psychology, City University London, and a founder member of 바카라사이트 London School of Philosophy.
On Romantic Love: Simple Truths about a Complex Emotion
By Berit Brogaard
Oxford University Press, 288pp, ?14.99
ISBN 9780199370733
Published 19 March 2015?
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