About Love: Reinventing Romance for Our Times

Romantic love may begin with sexual passion, but it is guided and nurtured by ideas the lovers have about their selves and the world, according to this University of Texas philosophy professor. Solomon defines romantic love as an emotional process that is reciprocal and appropriate only between equals. A lover may complement what is best in us, embody values we share or encourage ideals we strive after. In any event, love endures only when it forges a conceptual bond, each person viewing the other's existence as necessary to complete one's self. In this wise, witty, adventurous essay, Solomon sheds light on love at first sight, whether opposites attract, counterfeit emotion, the euphemism (and act) of ""sleeping together,'' possessiveness, the need of lovers for privacy and the importance of fights in a healthy relationship. His re-visioning of love favors Plato's concept of the merger of two souls over Freud's view of love as sublimated erotic feeling. Literary Guild alternate. (May)