Conditions Of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy - Softcover

John, Armstrong

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393331733 ISBN 13: 9780393331738

Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1980

Synopsis

'What is it to love another person?' This is to raise one of the deepest, and most puzzling, questions we can put to ourselves. Love is a central theme in the autobiography we each write as we try to understand our lives; but we may feel that we become only more confused the more we reflect upon it. Love is closely connected with our vision of happiness; yet there is no one we are more likely to hurt, or be hurt by, than the person we love. If love is something we all want, why is it so hard to find and harder to keep? Love is one of humanity's most persistent and most esteemed ideals, but it is hard to say exactly what this ideal is and how--if at all--it relates to real life.

About this title

Review:

Love may be a serious drug, but, as John Armstrong divulges in his artful, quietly impassioned treatise on its philosophical qualities, Conditions of Love, its intoxicating qualities can still be distilled and soberly considered. Armstrong, already the author of the discerningly reflective The Intimate Philosophy of Art, is proving himself the master of his form: elegant, scholarly studies that wear their learning lightly, but surely. In turning his focus from looking at art to the art of loving, he provides the perfect median between the two, and dissects what we perceive of as love, and how it stands up to our demanding preconceptions. With calm assurance, he leads us through the froth to the substance of its being, from the evasive nebulousness of its definition, to its place within an evolutionary framework, in doing so touching on theories of experimental psychology also considered by Geoffrey Miller in The Mating Mind. If that perhaps takes the romance out of love, then Armstrong argues that we need to, if we are to strip bare our adolescent notions to reveal a mature, sustainable version which will endure. Backing up his evocations with considered and illuminating reference to the best efforts of the writers and painters, from Plato, Ovid, Turgenev and Goethe, to Ruskin and Chardin, who contribute to our celebration, but also our stereotypes, of love, Armstrong argues for personal responsibility, and a rejection of the restless masochism which drives so many to seek out an idealised partner, or inadvertently seek refuge in the despair of infatuation. As his title puts it, love is best considered as conditional rather than existing as a precondition, and if handled altruistically, can reap the rewards the artists exalt. In marrying the carnal and the cardinal with a poet's sensibility and a philosopher's rigour, much as Alain de Botton did in Essays in Love, John Armstrong guides us towards a more mature, imaginative future, less rosy, but perhaps more rooted. Love may, ultimately, perhaps definingly, prove ineffable, but Conditions of Love charges us with the power to facilitate its bloom, and the inspiration to achieve it. --David Vincent

Review:

“ The reader is attracted, amused, encouraged to respond, left fulfilled and eager for more” -- The Independent on Sunday

“ Wise, discursive...It is powerful and valuable” -- The Sunday Times

“Armstrong is perceptive and tender” -- The Evening Standard

“Armstrong’s tone is never patronising and touches on genuinely interesting points” -- Times Educational Supplement

“Wryly right” -- The Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0393331733
• ISBN 13: 9780393331738
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176