Title: Love: A History Author(s): Simon May Publisher: Yale University Press publications ISBN: 9780300118308 Date: 2011 Pages: 313 Size: 1.06 Mb Format: PDF Quality: High Language: American English Love unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally acceptingis worshipped today as the West's only universal religion. To challenge it is one of our few remaining taboos. In this pathbreaking and superbly written book, the author, philosopher, does just that, dissecting our resilient ruling ideas of love and showing how they are the product of a long and powerful cultural heritage.Tracing over 2,500 years of human thought and history, the author shows how our ideal of love developed from its Hebraic and Greek origins. [+/-] Brilliantly, the author explores the very different philosophers and writers, both skeptics and believers, who dared to think differently: from Aristotle's perfect friendship and Ovid's celebration of sex and "the chase," to Rousseau...