The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy

Download or read book The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy written by Herman de Dijn and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause." Spinoza's definition of love manifests a major paradigm shift achieved by seventeenth-century Europe, in which the emotions, formerly seen as normative "forces of nature," were embraced by the new science of the mind.This shift has often been seen as a transition from a philosophy laden with implicit values and assumptions to a more scientific and value-free way of understanding human action. But is this rational approach really value-free? Today we tend to believe that values are inescapable, and that the descriptive-mechanical method implies its own set of values. Yet the assertion by Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Enlightenment thinkers that love guides us to wisdom-and even that the love of a god who creates and maintains order and harmony in the world forms the core of ethical behavior-still resonates powerfully with us. It is, evidently, an idea Western culture is unwilling to relinquish.This collection of insightful essays offers a range of interesting perspectives on how the triumph of "reason" affected not only the scientific-philosophical understanding of the emotions and especially of love, but our everyday understanding as well.