Conditions of Love, the Philosophy of Intimacy is the first book I’ve read from John Armstrong but it won’t be the last. Reading this made me think about what love is and how strange it is that we don’t have an answer to this question.
When you think about what love is, what appears in your mind? I bet it is different from everyone else’s because no one gave the same answer to this question for hundreds of years.
Conditions of Love tries to explain what is it to love another person with various examples. I like that there is not a true answer but there are many layers to many of the answers. Armstrong used literature for his examples so I think all of the readers out there would enjoy this book a lot.
Conditions of Love
‘What is it to love another person?’ This is to raise one of the deepest, and most puzzling, questions we can put to ourselves. Love is a central theme in the autobiography we each write as we try to understand our lives; but we may feel that we become only more confused the more we reflect upon it. Love is closely connected with our vision of happiness; yet there is no one we are more likely to hurt, or be hurt by, than the person we love. If love is something we all want, why is it so hard to find and harder to keep? Love is one of humanity’s most persistent and most esteemed ideals, but it is hard to say exactly what this ideal is and how–if at all–it relates to real life.
John Armstrong
John Armstrong is a British writer and philosopher living in Hobart, Australia. He was born in Glasgow and educated at Oxford and London, later directing the philosophy program at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
