Love As Human Freedom

Square One: First-Order Questions in the Humanities

by Paul Kottman

Rather than see love as a natural form of affection, Love As Human Freedom sees love as a practice that changes over time through which new social realities are brought into being. Love brings about, and helps us to explain, immense social-historical shifts—from the rise of feminism and the emergence of bourgeois family life, to the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor. Drawing on Hegel, Paul A. Kottman argues that love generates and explains expanded possibilities for freely lived lives. Through keen interpretations of the best known philosophical and literary depictions of its topic—including Shakespeare, Plato, Nietzsche, Ovid, Flaubert, and Tolstoy—his book treats love as a fundamental way that we humans make sense of temporal change, especially the inevitability of death and the propagation of life.

Genres: Philosophy, Love

255 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 30, 2017

About the author

Paul Kottman is associate professor of comparative literature and chair of liberal studies at the New School. His books include Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare: Disinheriting the Globe (2009).

Reviews

[Luby K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating topic and chosen literature; irritating style and drawn-out sentences.