Beginning on Wednesday, July 9, we will have four sessions with Dr. Peter Antich to consider the Philosophy of Love through readings of four different philosophers and/or theologians. The main structure of our readings is meant to loosely parallel Kierkegaard’s division between three stages of life: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Our readings use these stages as lenses for thinking about love. Our first reading, by Anne Carson, focuses on desire or romantic/erotic love. The second, by Kierkegaard, focuses on marriage. The third, by Meister Eckhart, examines God as love. We end with an essay by Levinas, “Peace and Proximity,” which considers the relationship between peace and love, and what is really at stake in a genuine ethical (and not merely political) peace.
