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All the great ideals that gave life meaning in earlier societies - God, the nation, revolution, freedom, democracy - are in disarray today, questioned by many and rejected by those who have lost faith in them. But there is another value, rooted in the birth of the modern family and in the passage from traditional to modern marriage, that has transformed our lives in profound and often unrecognized ways: love. It affects not only our personal lives but many aspects of our social and collective life too, from art and education to politics.
In this book Luc Ferry shows how the quiet rise of love as the central value in modern societies has created a new principle of meaning and a new definition of the good life that requires a completely different kind of philosophical thinking. It forms the basis for a new philosophy for the twenty-first century and a new kind of humanism for the modern world - not a humanism of reason and rights, but a humanism of solidarity and sympathy. The ideal that this new humanism realizes is no longer that of nationalisms and revolutions, of the perpetrating of organized violence in the name of deadly principles that are pursued over and above humanity. Rather, it is about preparing and ensuring a future for those we love most: our future generations.
- Sales Rank: #780497 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Polity
- Published on: 2013-05-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.30" h x .85" w x 6.20" l, .93 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 200 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
"Highly recommended - Ferry challenges readers to consider love as no longer lurking on the periphery of philosophic consciousness, but instead as providing a new definition of the good life."
Choice
"On Love is thrilling - fireworks of ideas, flashing sabres, and a hell of a good gallop."
Times Higher Education
"The great value of Ferry's work lies in his vitality of thought. His celebration of love guarantees that philosophy will remain alive and well throughout the 21st century. And that, to many of us, is something to cherish."
Wichita Eagle
"With his usual clarity, rigour, and intelligence, Luc Ferry in his new book tackles the daunting topic of love, its history in modern culture and society, and its role and benefits for the present and the future. For Ferry, love offers not only the possibility of surpassing the broken ideals of the past, but of founding a new humanism in the century ahead. Highly recommended."
Richard J. Golsan, Texas A&M University
"With great clarity and an extraordinary sense of historical synthesis, Luc Ferry traces the genealogy of love in the West, right up to its contemporary status where it has triumphed as the apotheosis of our civilization."
Pascal Bruckner, Le Nouvel Observateur
About the Author
Luc Ferry is a prominent French philosopher who served as the Minister for Youth, National Education and Research in France from 2002-2004. His many books in English include A Brief History of Thought and Learning to Live: A User’s Manual.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A Humanism of Love
By Robin Friedman
The French philosopher Luc Ferry (b. 1951) served as French Minister of Education from 2002 -- 2004 under Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin. The author of many books, Ferry is known for his development of a philosophy based on secular humanism. My first reading of Ferry was of his new book, "On Love: A Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century" (2013). It is a highly ambitious, suggestive work in which Ferry outlines a philosophical approach of secular humanism based upon love rather than upon reason and law. Ferry suggests that reason and law formed the basis of secular humanism during the Enlightenment. The book is largely in the form of an essay and a conversation. As such it is informal and tends to ramble. At times, Ferry engages in discussion with another French philosopher, Claude Capelier, who also wrote a Preface to the book. The discussion portions of the book are usually insightful but occasionally distracting. Andrew Brown translated the book from the French. The book is lively and reads well while conveying complex ideas.
The book is short but dense. It begins with a provocative introduction titled "A Brief History of the Meaning of Life." Ferry faults much contemporary philosophy for avoiding fundamental questions. The first goal of his book is to establish philosophy as a secular discipline which provides for "a non-religious quest for the good life." At the outset, then, Ferry pits philosophy as an alternative to revealed religion as a source for finding meaning in one's life. Meaning is developed from the inside, so to speak, by a person recognizing what is valuable, rather than imposed transcendentally by God.
The second of Ferry's two major goals is to establish love as the main source by which people today find meaning in their lives. Ferry's claim straddles between description -- people in fact find love as the source of meaning -- and prescription -- or what Ferry believes people should do. The "love" to which Ferry refers is, in essence, romantic love, the love between a man and a woman or, indeed, one person for another person. Love is the basis for a meaningful life, for Ferry.
Most of the book develops this claim through a variety of frequently extraordinary (some are less so) philosophical, historical, and anthropological analyses. Ferry sees broadly five competing philosophical positions beginning with the ancient Greeks, in which human happiness was based on conformity to the physical universe, proceeding through Christianity, which replaced the universe with the will of God, through the Enlightenment and secular humanism. The fourth stage, Nietzsche and continuing through Heidegger and beyond "deconstructed" the metaphysics of the Enlightenment and of religion. The fifth stage, which Ferry announces, is based on a philosophy of love of a person without metaphysical trappings.
Ferry supports his philosophical account with a fairly straightforward account of the nature of romantic love. The key moment came from when marriages moved from arrangements, based on religion, family, and economics, to romantic choice, the feeling of one person for another. (Ferry identifies this shift as the source of the movement for same sex marriage, but he does not dwell on the point.) The shift to marriage based on love and choice was part of a change to a culture of personal autonomy.
In a long discussion in the book, Ferry tries to show, with mixed success, how a philosophy based on the primary character of romantic love gets reflected in political institutions. His analysis shifts quickly from one's romantic partner to the children of the union. Modern couples are fanatically devoted to their offspring, Ferry argues with a good deal of force. Then he argues somewhat less convincingly for a projection from the personal to the political sphere -- making the world a better place for one's children and, by extension, for the children of others.
Romantic love, in the person of one's beloved and one's children supersede for Perry abstractions for which too many people in the past were willing to die. These abstractions include primarily patriotism on the right and revolution on the left. Commitments of people have moved over time from the abstract and metaphysical, such as nature or God, to the intimately personal, a change Ferry endorses.
As a former Minister of Education, Ferry is at his best in discussing his claim that people have become child-centered as it relates to education. His discussion becomes textured, drawing on elements of the prior philosophical stages he identified to combat certain excesses of child-centeredness. In a final section, Ferry discusses how some of the best modern art and literature rise past the prevailing philosophy of relativism and deconstruction to support what he sees as a love-centered humanism. This discussion tends to become arid, but I was pleased to learn that Ferry shares my admiration for the American novelist Philip Roth. Ferry says that in Roth, "we're no longer in the first humanism of reason and law, nor in pure deconstruction, but in what is a much wider and deeper approach to human being."
The book manages to be engaging, polemical, and learned. It offers challenging claims that might help readers understand themselves differently than they did before reading the book. I was pleased to have the opportunity to get to know Ferry's work through the Amazon Vine program.
Robin Friedman
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Not what I was hoping for
By julesinrose
This subject matter interests me greatly, but I was (rightly) reticent to order this book. I generally find Western philosophy hard to read, and that translated from the French even more difficult. However, I believe that that academes have pretty much abandoned discussions that may relate to the lived life and true meaning and am delighted when any intellectuals put aside science and so-called "political science" to think about modern life.
The introduction is excellent and thought provoking, but I didn't expect the conversational format, and probably would have passed on the book if I had understood that this is the presentation. I'd love to listen, but to read? Simply not my cup of tea. And to indite myself further, much of this book sails over my head; I do not have an advanced degree in philosophy and many of references are lost on me in spite of my being fairly well read.
I found myself arguing with the author straight away, but I don't review books on their viewpoints. It is interesting to note, however. I am well read in Eastern philosophy, and from the outset, I can say that a worldview based on love (though the word compassion might be used instead) is not in the least bit new. If I had been willing or able to read on, maybe I'd find the nod to this, but I suspect not.
So, I don't feel qualified to write this review, and one could fairly say that I am not. However, Amazon Vine offered this book to readers, one could even say "average readers," and out of immense curiosity, I bit. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, so I give it three stars and shame facedly say I just couldn't wade through this dense conversation between two French intellectuals. If you are well versed and well read in that which Western academia deems crucial to understandings of art, culture, and society, you will probably enjoy (and understand) this book far more than I. Hence, the middling review.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
all you need is love, love is all you need
By Case Quarter
luc ferry describes what he refers to as the four principles of philosophy: cosmology (the homeric epics), religion (judeo-christian), humanism, and deconstructionism, and provides a historical overview of each principle, before introducing his fifth principle, love, as a second humanism which ushers in the good life. the first humanism was on the right track, but, burdened by rigidity of ethical weaknesses, inevitably, fell under the hammers of deconstructionism.
deconstructionism for ferry began with nietzsche and heidegger and continued through to derrida. for ferry, deconstructionism is like good and bad cholesterol. the deconstructionism he attributes to nietzsche and heidegger is the good cholesterol and that practiced by derrida is the bad cholesterol. ferry asserts that the second humanism is in no danger, as was the first humanism, from deconstructionism. love as a philosophical principle has something for all persons and all seasons. the love ferry offers is nonreligious, friendly to believer and atheist alike. and what's more, his love is grounded on the family. in the footsteps of kant, ferry suggests a new categorical imperative: `Act in such a way that you can desire to see the decisions you take being applied also to the people you love most.' love as a second humanism `is fully open to "otherness", to the diversity of civilizations and which...cultivates, promotes and enhances a much wider range of the existence in which human beings can ... "realize themselves" `.
luc ferry's audience is the european population in general and the french people in particular. europe, he shares with his audience, is a superior civilization to all others; `it has bestowed on mankind an unparalleled culture of autonomy...by staging human daily life by means of art'. the united states falls short on two counts: slavery was not able to be abolished without waging war, and no original arts forms were ever created.
the book is structured as a conversation between ferry and claude capelier, who is unknown to me. the tone is so colloquial that at moments ferry is defensive, and other moments reveal a crotchety side of the reformer. much of what is nebulous was probably covered in his previous books, including personal battles in the public sphere and the larger troubled spots where his balm can be applied.
not wanting to appear xenophobic, I'm giving this book a fourth star.
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