Drawing from influential literary representations of romantic love, such as Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, to the psychological and political explanations offered by Freud and Marx, Armstrong slowly pieces together an argument about how we might think about love with more complexity and nuance. From this Armstrong generates a series of vignettes, or short, interconnected essays on subjects such as infatuation, romance, tragic love, charity, sexuality, maturity and the place of love in the meaning of life. Conditions of Love takes a number of perspectives on love derived from popular discourse, philosophy, psychology, political theory and literature. Like the more well-known Alain De Botton, he tackles the common dilemmas of life in a way that is both accessible and literary.Ĭonditions of Love is a slim volume ostensibly limited to a “philosophy of intimacy” however, with remarkable economy, it covers a lot of ground and triggers a series of reflections on the role of the imagination in reading. John Armstrong is one of a flourishing breed – the philosopher who is also a fine writer and able to communicate the concerns of philosophy to a wider non-specialist audience. “…this poor capacity to interpret complex and unfamiliar meanings is a source of endless loss” – I.A.
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