Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-up (Irving Singer Library) - Hardcover

Singer, Irving

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9780262195744: Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-up (Irving Singer Library)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262195747 ISBN 13: 9780262195744

Publisher: Mit Pr, 2009

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In 1984, Irving Singer published the first volume of what would become a classic and much acclaimed trilogy on love. Trained as an analytical philosopher, Singer first approached his subject with the tools of current philosophical methodology. Dissatisfied by the initial results (finding the chapters he had written "just dreary and unproductive of anything"), he turned to the history of ideas in philosophy and the arts for inspiration. He discovered an immensity of speculation and artistic practice that reached wholly beyond the parameters he had been trained to consider truly philosophical. In his three-volume work The Nature of Love, Singer tried to make sense of this historical progression within a framework that reflected his precise distinction-making and analytical background. In this new book, he maps the trajectory of his thinking on love. It is a "partial" summing-up of a lifework: partial because it expresses the author's still unfolding views, because it is a recapitulation of many published pages, because love -- like any subject of that magnitude -- resists a neatly comprehensive, all-inclusive formulation. Adopting an informal, even conversational, tone, Singer discusses, among other topics, the history of romantic love, the Platonic ideal, courtly and nineteenth-century Romantic love; the nature of passion; the concept of merging (and his critique of it); ideas about love in Freud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dewey, Santayana, Sartre, and other writers; and love in relation to democracy, existentialism, creativity, and the possible future of scientific investigation. Singer's writing on love embodies what he has learned as a contemporary philosopher, studying other authors in the field and "trying to get a little further." This book continues his trailblazing explorations.

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About the Author:

Irving Singer was Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He was the author of the trilogies The Nature of Love and Meaning in Life, Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up, Mozart and Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas, all published by the MIT Press, and many other books.

From School Library Journal:

This is an account of a life devoted to the idea of love and the love of ideas. As a young philosopher with an empiricist outlook, Singer first tackled the tangled ideas encapsulated in the word love with the techniques of logical analysis. The associated concepts include romanticism and sex, but they also include togetherness, community, basic human worth, and God. They resisted his analyses. The empiricism is still there, but what comes out now is a taste for John Dewey's pragmatism and a passion for history. During a long career at MIT, Singer has produced two trilogies, The Nature of Love and Meaning in Life, and a string of other works that extend to music and film. The present short work sums up much of this with relaxed charm. Singer's conclusion is that the study of love shows us an irreducible pluralism of justifiable human values. The pluralism cannot be overcome by system builders, but the system builders do not labor in vain, for they sharpen the choices, and the strength of their contrasting arguments shows us why there is a pluralism. Nearly everyone can learn something from this book.—Leslie Armour, Dominican Univ. Coll., Ottawa
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