Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy"I believe that Luhmann is the only true genius in the social sciences alive today. By this, I mean that not only is he smart, extremely productive, and amazingly erudite, though all this is true enough, but also that he has, in the course of an improbable career, elaborated a theory of the social that completely reinvents sociology and destroys its most cherished dogmas." So wrote Stephen Fuchs in his Contemporary Sociology review of Luhmann's major theoretical work, Social Systems (Stanford, 1995). In this volume, Luhmann analyzes the evolution of love in Western Europe from the seventeenth century to the present. Reviews "Luhmann's unique, monumental, theory-building effort is best described as a consistent attempt to deploy the tools and the inspirations of three strategies: modern information theory, structuralism, and evolutionary theory. . . . Perhaps nothing conveys more poignantly Luhmann's unusual blend of scientific precision with artistic sensibility than his replacement of Parson's 'reciprocity of perspective' with his own 'interpersonal interpenetration.' The first is cool, calculating, cognitive, and dispassionate; the second connotes a richness of relationship that leaves no human faculty unmoved. . . . Luhmann's work is important because, arguably, it comes closer than all other sociological strategies to restoring the lost link between academically reputable social theorizing and the subjective experience of life." --American Journal of Sociology "There is a dearth of analytical writing about the emotions and sentiments that seem to motivate most human action, at least in everyday discussion, although some researchers are making some efforts to remedy this situation. Luhmann's Love as Passion is an outstanding contribution to this emerging trend . . . full of novel information and fascinating ideas." --Contemporary Sociology |
Contents
Preface to the English Edition | 1 |
Personal and Impersonal Relationships | 12 |
Love as a Generalized Symbolic Medium | 18 |
The Evolution of Communicative Capacities | 34 |
The Evolution of the Semantics of Love | 41 |
Freedom to Love | 48 |
The Rhetoric of Excess and the Experience | 58 |
From Galantry to Friendship | 76 |
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Common terms and phrases
2nd edition action amour passion amoureuse des Gaules attribution basis becomes behaviour beloved bien Brégy c'est Cantenac characteristics Christian Thomasius codification communication complex concept context Courtly Love demands difference differentiation eighteenth century enhancement environment example fact Family femmes formulated Friedrich Schlegel friendship function galantes galantry Gaules Histoire amoureuse historical Ibid ideal impersonal improbable incommunicability individual inner experience insincerity interpenetration intimacy intimate relationships Jaulnay l'amour L'Astrée Lettres Liebe literature longer lovers Luhmann Madame de Villedieu Madeleine de Scudéri Marquise de Lambert means medium moral nature Niklas Luhmann notion novel OEuvres complètes one's oneself orientation paradox Paris particularly partner personal relationships plaisir possible précieuses precisely problem qu'il Questions d'amour quoted from OEuvres Rabutin reference relations Romantic love Romanticism self-referential semantics of love seventeenth century sexuality siècle sincere social reflexivity social system society Sociological structure symbolic media temporal theory tradition unity virtue York