The Summons of Love

Philosopher Ruti, of the University of Toronto, seeks to rationalize the irrational by weighing in on the paradoxically destabilizing dimensions of the call of love. Among the heavy-hitting thinkers summoned are Adorno, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, de Beauvoir, and Barthes. At the core of this book is the notion of interpersonal responsibility and accountability between lover and beloved. The Freudian "compulsion to repeat" past relationships is up for full examination, as are fantasies of self-completion while maintaining fidelity to the overwhelming, enthralling, external tug of eros. The tough ethicist in Ruti comes out in her existential impatience with "infinite forgiving" and its masochistic implications. Laced with critical theory, the work attempts to segment, understand, and explain behavior connected with the most glorious but little understood impulse and riddle involving choice versus destiny at the core of human existence. Ruti is simultaneously clarifying and obscuring, perhaps inevitably in keeping with her subject. (Aug.)