Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

by John Armstrong

Book Overview

'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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393057593
• ISBN13: 9780393057591
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

love's increase

'..... there seems to be a rarer - but still real - possibility of love growing over time and becoming stronger and deeper.' Anyone who can write this has an extraordinary view of love - challenging the common view that it must fade and be replaced by a comfort of familiarity. Armstrong links this growing love to music (which makes so much sense to me) and katabasis (a new word for me - but a feeling I know so well) giving me such strong encouragement in my feeling that real love can never die - one I find so much opposition to in the community around me. I picked up John Armstrong's book because I have been doing some work with Dr Francis Macnab, whose book 'Hungry for Love' had been an awful confrontation. At every step of the way it seemed I was in opposition to Dr Macnab although I actually like the man. Was it his ideas that confronted me, or was it something about my view of love? (I now believe Dr Macnab's audience - perhaps subconsciously defined by Dr Macnab himself - is all those people for whom 'love' has failed. I am simply not one of them.) There is so much insight in this slender book of John Armstrong that I recommend all should read it - those in love, those hoping to be in love, those recovering from disappointment and those who seem to have lost love. I learned much about myself by reading this book, and that is useful. But most of all I keep coming back to the radiant message '..... there seems to be a rarer - but still real - possibility of love growing over time and becoming stronger and deeper.' If only we could all achieve it! other recommendations: Francis Macnab - Hungry for Love Ivan Turgenev - Spring Torrents (quoted by Armstrong) Ernest Hemingway - Spring Torrents (a rather different novel) Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone Anna Kavan - A Scarcity of Love Alma Schindler (Mahler) - Diaries

Beautiful reality check

I was given this by a flatmate for Christmas a couple of years ago after she was given a copy and adored it. I love this book, it's a reality check on all the overblown, hyped up expectations we have about love and romance these days but manages to show that the real thing (facing each other over the breakfast table for the next 50 years) has a grace and beauty all its own. Clearly whoever I lent it to loves it as well, I haven't seen it in AGES!!

The Lure of Candlelight Explained via the Western Tradition

Armstrong brilliantly brings key texts in philosophy and theology (especially Augustine), novels, and paintings to bear on the topic of love. It is an intelligent but also accessible collection of brief meditations on what it means to seek and receive love. Armstrong's emphasis on the role of virtue (broadly defined in a classical rather than Puritanical sense) is especially useful.

a lovely book =)

i know people arent suppose to judge books by its cover - i picked this up because i was attracted to 'jean - auguste-dominique ingres' work - (cover) ... i wasnt a an avid reader then...but this book- i got more than i expected from its cover. The essays included within each chapters were well satisfying to read word form word...Armstrong includes renown characters like Socrates, Eros, ...from other literatures like - wuthering heights...i got my money's worth with this book! i loved reading it...

Remarkably wise

The critic from "Publishers Weekly" quoted above must have been having a bad day when he or she read this book. Generally, that review manages to miss the point. Armstrong doesn't "critique" Socrates or Stendahl, etc.; he uses them to interrogate our experience of love and finds the kernel of truth they each captured, while also synthesizing these (and many other) perspectives into a coherent picture. There is nothing murky here, and certainly no failure to think through the positions. I'm a pretty fierce critic myself, and the clarity and coherence of this book seem to me to pass muster.I picked this up while canvassing possible resources for my students in an advanced applied ethics course, hoping it would help with a section on sexuality. For that, it isn't to the point-that's not really the topic of the book. But I'm glad I found it, and I'll be recommending it to students and friends alike as a source of wisdom about love.The question Armstrong sets himself is, What makes it possible for people to love each other, over the long haul, in satisfying ways? "Falling in love" rarely lasts, as we all know-the heat of early romance fades when faced with broader realities. Armstrong points out that modeling love on this transient incandescence means we simply cannot understand how to love-when we try to see enduring love as some sort of dilute form of romantic intoxication, we are trying to make it something it is not. I don't know of another book that casts such a broad net in considering love. Armstrong understands, as almost no contemporary psychologists or therapists do, the history of human efforts to understand love. Thus, he includes in his thinking experiences, problems, and insights that escape the blinkered views of contemporary ideologies. A fair number of Greeks, for instance, had some interesting thoughts about love and its place in individual lives and in human relationships. As I've already mentioned, Armstrong sets these many experiences and insights side-by-side, uses them to interrogate our experience, and takes from each some guidance on his question. He thus unites his broad understanding of our history with contemporary psychology and sociobiology to produce a remarkably complex, nuanced account.Yet the writing is clear, simple, and engaging. To synthesize so much diverse, often-subtle material into a complex and sophisticated account, then to write in a style that seems effortless-quite an accomplishment.This could have been called "Love's Little Instruction Book for the Highly Intelligent." Devoid of smarm, rich in compassion, and informed by the best that has been thought or said on the subject across human history-well, it won't be jumping off the racks of the check-out line a Wally World, but it ought to have a honored place on the shelves of every well-educated person.