Love as Passion: The Codification of IntimacyIn this important book Niklas Luhmann - one of the leading social thinkers of the late 20th century - analyses the emergence of ‘love' as the basis of personal relationships in modern societies. He argues that, while family systems remained intact in the transition from traditional to modern societies, a semantics for love developed to accommodate extra-marital relationships; this semantics was then transferred back into marriage and eventually transformed marriage itself. Drawing on a diverse range of historical and literary sources, Luhmann retraces the emergence and evolution of the special semantics of passionate love that has come to form the basis of modern forms of intimacy and personal relationships. This classic book by Luhmann has been widely recognized as a work of major importance. It is an outstanding contribution to social theory and it provides an original and illuminating perspective on the nature of modern marriage and sexuality. |
Contents
The Evolution of Communicative Capacities | |
The Evolution of the Semantics of Love | |
Freedom to Love | |
The Rhetoric of Excess and the Experience of Instability | |
En Route to Individualization | |
The Incorporation of Sexuality | |
The Discovery of Incommunicability | |
Romantic Love | |
Love and Marriage | |
What Now? | |
Love as a System of Interpenetration | |
Notes | |
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Common terms and phrases
action adaptive capacity amour passion amoureuse des Gaules attribution basis become behaviour beloved Brégy Cantenac capacity characteristics codification complex concept context courtly love Crébillon demands difference differentiation eighteenth century enhancement environment example fact Family formulated freedom Friedrich Schlegel friendship function galantes galantry Gaules Histoire amoureuse historical ideal impersonal improbable incommunicability individual inner experience insincerity interpenetration intimacy intimate relationships involved Jaulnay l'amour Lettres Liebe literature longer love affairs love and marriage lovers Luhmann Madame de Villedieu Madeleine de Scudéri means medium moral nature Niklas Luhmann notion novel one’s oneself orientation paradox Paris particular partner personal relationships plaisir possible précieuses precisely problem Questions d'amour Rabutin reason Receuil reference relations reprinted role Romantic love Romanticism self-referential semantics of love Semantik seventeenth century sexuality siècle sincere social reflexivity social system society Sociological specific Stendhal structure symbolic media systems theory temporal theoretical theory traditional unity virtue