Love

Simon May is visiting professor of philosophy at King's College London, and Birkbeck, University of London.

"May could just have achieved the seemingly impossible and produced a truly original philosophy of love... May is able to draw out what is true in each age’s perception of love, discard what is misleading, and synthesize the result into the most persuasive account of love’s nature I have ever read."—Financial Times"Rich, provocative and illuminating."—Jane O’Grady, Times Higher Education"Intellectually engaging . . . Provocative."—Charlotte Allen, The Wall Street Journal"May could just have achieved the seemingly impossible and produced a truly original philosophy of love... May is able to draw out what is true in each age’s perception of love, discard what is misleading, and synthesise the result into the most persuasive account of love’s nature I have ever read."—Financial Times"It’s a big question: what is love? May plunders Western poetry, philosophy and psychology to find answers, tracing our understanding from religious to romantic to ossified. Thought-provoking stuff."—Holly Kyte, Sunday Telegraph"This book deserves to rank with Denis de Rougemont’s classic Love in the Western World. Readers…will gain much from May’s well-crafted study."—Library Journal"[May’s] discussion…provides a coherent narrative that is aided by his illustrative writing."—Publishers Weekly"Almost intimidatingly erudite and wide-ranging… May asks why attitudes to love haven’t changed over the centuries when those things associated with it, like sex and marriage, have changed enormously. We still expect too much from it, a hangover from Romanticism, and must abandon the old opposites (love as self-sacrificing, love as self-pleasing) for a new theory of love."—Lesley McDowell, Sunday Herald "a challenging and thought-provoking study" — Good Book Guide"A powerfully demystifying critique . . . that aims to show what love can and cannot mean in our lives."—John Gray'A beautifully written and fascinating account of the cultural history of love. Simon May gives a vindication of love that is both deeply insightful and inspiring, and, whether you believe that God is love or that Love is god, you will find your portrait in this book and rejoice in it.' - Roger Scruton'May's enquiry into the nature of love is an amazing tour de force: surprising, provocative, refreshing and instructive by turns, it surpasses everything hitherto written on this subject in its scope and ambition.' - A.C. Grayling 'Simon May's Love is that rarest of achievements: scholarship as inspired illumination. Fluent, witty, humane, May explores Western concepts of love from the Torah to Romanticism and on to the “fascinating paradox” that the liberation of sex and marriage in our day coexists with retrograde, and at times destructive, notions of love. May offers a corrective, and the reasoning that takes us there is an utterly riveting adventure.' -Wendy Steiner, author of The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art