Loveunconditional selfless unchanging sincere and totally acceptingis worshipped today as the Wests 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 heritageTracing over 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 Godso 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 Aristotles perfect friendship and Ovids celebration of sex and the chase to Rousseaus personal authenticity Nietzsches affirmation Freuds 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.
