Love: A Very Short Introduction

Do we love someone for their virtue, their beauty, or their moral qualities? Are love’s characteristic desires altruistic or selfish? What do the sciences tell us about love? Many of the answers given to such questions are determined not so much by the facts of human nature as by the ideology of love. Love: A Very Short Introduction considers some of the many paradoxes raised by love, looking at the different kinds of love—affections, affiliation, philia, storge, agape—before focusing on eros, or ‘romantic’ love. It considers whether our conventional beliefs about love and sex are deeply irrational and argues that alternative conceptions of love and sex may be worth striving for.