The Metaphysics Of The Love Of The Sexes

Is Love an Illusion ? What is the relationship between Love and Sexual Impulse ? Schopenhauer gives us a new way of thinking about relationships between men and women.

"Schopenhauer innovates by introducing the issue of sexuality into western philosophy. Of course, his assessment of it is not an encouraging one. For him, it embodies the will to life more strongly than any other urge or desire; hence it is responsible for the misery of the human condition more than anything else. Even the most elevated form of romantic love is nothing but a mental addition or justification for the natural need for sex and the species' desire to maintain itself. After succumbing to our sexual desires, he says, we realize that we have once again been deceived by the instinct of survival that seeks procreation through us. The lessening of sexual desire with age is thus to be welcomed as a liberation. Needless to say, Schopenhauer remained celibate throughout his life." Schopenhauer, New world encyclopedia.

Emmanuel Levinas is best known for having reintroduced the question of ethics into the Continental philosophical tradition. In The Metaphysics of Love, however, Stella Sandford argues that an over-emphasis on ethics in the reception of Levinas's thought has covered over both the basis and the details of his philosophical project--a metaphysics which affirms the necessity to think of an unqualified transcendence as a first principle. Sandford's book is at the same time a powerful feminist critique of both Levinas's gendered philosophical categories and the attempt to reclaim aspects of this philosophy for feminist theory.

Beginning with a discussion of Kant, Schopenhauer, and others about the morality of sex and the morality of compassion, Explorations in Love and Sex offers a panoramic view of the philosophy of love from its beginnings in Plato up to the present. It examines the nature and limitations of sexual pluralism, and elaborates on Irving Singer's earlier ideas about appraisal and bestowal. The book's chapters are both philosophical and historical, and speak to general readers who wish to better understand the curious set of emotions called love.

A controversial philosopher and critic of modern Western civilization, Julius Evola (1898-1974) writes about the mystical and spiritual expression of sexual love. This in-depth study explores the sexual rites of sacred traditions, and shows how religion, mysticism, folklore, and mythology all contain erotic forms in which the deep potentialities of human beings are recognized.

In the fourth edition of The Philosophy of Sex, distinguished philosophers and social critics confront a variety of issues, including prostitution, adultery, masturbation, homosexuality, and the different attitudes men and women have about sex. The fourth edition includes an entirely new section on Kant and sex, as well as new essays by Michael E. Levin, Cheshire Calhoun, Irving Singer, Pat Califia, and Alan Soble. Visit our website for sample chapters!

The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays from leading philosophers on the nature and value of love.