The Intimate Philosophy of Art by John Armstrong

With calm assurance, he leads us through the froth to the substance of its being, from the evasive nebulousness of its definition, to its place within an evolutionary framework, in doing so touching on theories of experimental psychology also considered by Geoffrey Miller in The Mating Mind. In turning his focus from looking at art to the art of loving, he provides the perfect median between the two, and dissects what we perceive of as love, and how it stands up to our demanding preconceptions. Armstrong, already the author of the discerningly reflective The Intimate Philosophy of Art, is proving himself the master of his form: elegant, scholarly studies that wear their learning lightly, but surely. But it is an interesting perspective on the problem of love-one that ultimately feels more personal than philosophical.Love may be a serious drug, but, as John Armstrong divulges in his artful, quietly impassioned treatise on its philosophical qualities, Conditions of Love, its intoxicating qualities can still be distilled and soberly considered. Unlike, say, Ted Cohen's Jokes, a philosophical study of jokes that is itself funny, this book is neither romantic nor sexy.

Armstrong's primary focus is on long-term romantic love (i.e., between sexual partners), but he often veers into discussing fraternal, parental, divine, and altruistic love, and he takes a page from Wittgenstein to argue that there is no one essence uniting all the ways we use the word love.

Armstrong calls this approach''pandoxist,'' which at its best is breezy and refreshing, and at its worst seems to be an excuse for not examining views critically enough. In general, the goal seems to be a gathering of miscellaneous and diverse ideas from thinkers, novelists, and artists from Augustine to Freud put to service towards a study of our most powerful emotion. He critiques Plato's''myth of original unity,'' suggesting that the right attitude may more important than the right person contemplates Stendahl's beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder theory of''crystallization'' and ponders love's relationship to charity, the meaning of life and, much too briefly, sexuality. In this meditative but somewhat murky philosophical account of love, Armstrong aims to develop a''mature conception'' of the emotion by exploring a different love-related theme in each chapter of this slim volume.

The Intimate Philosophy of Art by John Armstrong