The Philosophy of Love and Affection
Good Fit
- Readers who want to look at love and affection through a philosophical question and historical stories
- Readers who want to read historical love stories such as Ovid, Abelard and Heloise, Petrarch and Henry VIII
- Readers who like short stories and maxims and open an essay-style book when needed
Not a Fit
- Readers looking for academic philosophy, precise references and a systematic theory
- Readers looking for relationship advice based on contemporary psychological research
The foreword begins by setting famous sayings side by side: Denis de Rougemont says «in no age has so much been said about love and so little drawn from it», Pascal «we are born with the character of love», Octavio Paz «love is a choice», Unamuno «love kills happiness», Aristotle and Goethe «to love means to suffer». The author puts a question to each saying: is love innate, is there love without desire, can love that is not shared still be love? The aim of the book is put as offering «a sip of the water of affection».
The «Mythology» chapter deals with Eros, born of Aphrodite's marriage to ugly Hephaestus and her betrayals, with Apuleius's tale of Eros and Psyche, with Hesiod's account in which Mother Earth and Eros form out of Chaos, with Plato's view of Eros as the son of the goddess of poverty Penia and the god of plenty Poros, and with Empedocles's idea of the clash of love and strife. The author writes that mythology makes no difference between love and affection, that philosophers later split it into destructive Eros and constructive Agape, that mythology is not scientific, and that the source of love is the human being living in society.
«Pages from the History of Love» consists of short historical stories, each ending with a maxim that begins «From the history of love:». The first story is Socrates and the young Alcibiades: in the «Symposium» Plato writes how Alcibiades fell in love with Socrates and tried to seduce him but Socrates was unmoved; the author also relays Gerald Messadie's version, in which Socrates says «I love two things in the world: philosophy and Alcibiades». The second story is Ovid, the poet exiled to Romania at 51 by Emperor Augustus because of «The Art of Love», and the lines he wrote to his wife in «Letters from the Black Sea»; he dies in the ninth year of exile, aged 60.
Pliny marries 14–15-year-old Calpurnia at 39; the wish for a child is not fulfilled, and the author interprets this as «true affection makes every problem unimportant», quoting from Pliny's letters. In the story of Abelard and Heloise we get a teacher and pupil 22 years apart, a secret love, a child born in 1118, Heloise's «the word mistress pleases me more», Fulbert having Abelard castrated, the monastery, the letters and the joining of two tombs in Paris in 1817. The author sums it up as «love that does not care for the institution of marriage is love that has leapt across the ages».
Petrarch is a «platonic lover»: he writes poems for Laura, whom he saw only once in a church and never spoke to. Bembo and Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, fall in love at first sight in 1502 and correspond under false identities. In the story of Henry VIII the marriage that began happily with Catherine of Aragon turns to Anne Boleyn because Catherine could not bear a son, and Catherine sends a farewell letter saying «I loved and love my lord king as much as a woman can love a man». The story of Henry IV and Gabrielle d'Estrées begins with the jealousy of the 37-year-old king for the 17-year-old girl.
- Short historical stories: each is two to four pages and ends with a maxim
- Quotations from the lovers' own letters and poems (Ovid, Pliny, Heloise, Petrarch, Bembo)
- A foreword built as a map of thought, a run of sayings and questions (Pascal, Paz, Unamuno, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer)
- «From the history of love:» maxims at the end of each section
- An opening with Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu's poem «On Love»
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Abelard and Heloise marry in secret, and Heloise's uncle Fulbert, in revenge, has Abelard's house raided one night and has him castrated. Abelard withdraws to the Saint-Denis monastery and persuades Heloise to become a nun. The lovers, who do not see each other for years, write letters. Heloise asks for «a few comforting words», Abelard dies in 1142 at Cluny, Heloise dies about 22 years later and is buried in the same monastery. It takes 650 years for the two lovers to be united: in 1817 their tombs in Paris are joined in a single monument.
Henry VIII marries Catherine of Aragon for love, the marriage is happy for many years, and the philosopher Erasmus holds it up as a model marriage. Then Henry cools towards Catherine, who cannot give him a son, and secretly marries a lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, because the Pope does not approve the divorce. Catherine sends a farewell letter in January 1536 and dies on 7 January. About a month later Henry accuses Anne of adultery and has her executed; he then marries Jane Seymour (dies in childbirth in 1537), Anne of Cleves (divorced), Catherine Howard (executed) and Catherine Parr, and dies in 1547 after six marriages. The author's maxim: «The most rotten love is love built on property.»
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