{"product_id":"love-simon-may-9780197650530","title":"Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion","description":"What is love's real intent? Why can love be so ruthlessly selective? How is it related to sex, beauty, and goodness? And is the child now the supreme object of love? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn addressing these questions, Simon May develops a radically new understanding of love as the emotion we feel towards whomever or whatever we experience as grounding our life--as offering us a possibility of home in a world that we supremely value. He sees love as motivated by a promise of \"ontological rootedness,\" rather than, as two thousand years of tradition variously asserts, by beauty or goodness, by a search for wholeness, by virtue, by sexual or reproductive desire, by compassion or altruism or empathy, or, in one of today's dominant views, by no qualities at all of the loved one. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAfter arguing that such founding Western myths as the \u003cem\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/em\u003e and Abraham's call by God to Canaan in the Bible powerfully exemplify his new conception of love, May goes on to re-examine the relation of love to beauty, sex, and goodness in the light of this conception, offering among other things a novel theory of beauty--and suggesting, against Plato, that we can love others for their ugliness (while also seeing them as beautiful). \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFinally, he proposes that, in the Western world, romantic love is gradually giving way to parental love as the most valued form of love: namely, the love without which one's life is not deemed complete or truly flourishing. May explains why childhood has become sacred and excellence in parenting a paramount ideal--as well as a litmus test of society's moral health. In doing so, he argues that the child is the first genuinely \"modern\" supreme object of love: the first to fully reflect what Nietzsche called \"the death of God.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eReaders will find \u003cem\u003eLove\u003c\/em\u003e \"Excitingly new, yet immediately recognizable--that's the paradox at the very heart of love, and it is what Simon May has achieved.\" --\u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Simon May\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0197650538\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780197650530\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/06\/2022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 304\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.05lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.90d","brand":"Simon May","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44054778478847,"sku":"9780197650530","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_fcc947c2-f55d-4395-b9dd-e557a8406490.jpg?v=1685031939","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/love-simon-may-9780197650530","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}