In a popular culture obsessed with romance and sexuality, philosophy can shed some light on the various layers and perspectives that inform our relationships. For our Sex and Sexuality issue, we've selected extracts from Western post-war theory and ideas on sex and love. Among others, Martha Nussbaum's text explores the cultural roots of our feelings; Harry Frankfurt and Robert Nozick's look into the apparent and existing tensions between self-love and love for others; Andrea Dworkin's scrutinises heterosexual desire; Talia Mae Bettcher's describes transgender sexual experience; finally, our regular speaker and contributor Kate Devlin challenges the limits of our imagination regarding sex robots.
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LOVE AS ART
"Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one 'falls into' if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.
Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love — yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love.
This peculiar attitude is based on several premises which either singly or combined tend to uphold it. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's capacity to love.
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