Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy / Edition 1

by Niklas Luhmann, Jeremy Gaines, Doris L. Jones

Overview

In this important book Niklas Luhmann - one of the leading social thinkers of the late 20th century - analyses the emergence of ‘love' as the basis of personal relationships in modern societies. He argues that, while family systems remained intact in the transition from traditional to modern societies, a semantics for love developed to accommodate extra-marital relationships; this semantics was then transferred back into marriage and eventually transformed marriage itself. Drawing on a diverse range of historical and literary sources, Luhmann retraces the emergence and evolution of the special semantics of passionate love that has come to form the basis of modern forms of intimacy and personal relationships.

This classic book by Luhmann has been widely recognized as a work of major importance. It is an outstanding contribution to social theory and it provides an original and illuminating perspective on the nature of modern marriage and sexuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745600789
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	03/19/2012
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Niklas Luhmann was Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Bielefeld University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition 1

Introduction 8

1 Society and Individual 12
Personal and Impersonal Relationships

2 Love as a Generalized Symbolic Medium of Communication 18

3 The Evolution of Communicative Capacities 34

4 The Evolution of the Semantics of Love 41

5 Freedom to Love 48
From the Ideal to the Paradox

6 The Rhetoric of Excess and the Experience of Instability 58

7 From Galantry to Friendship 76

8 Plaisir and Amour 84
The Primary Difference

9 Love versus Reason 94

10 En Route to Individualization 97
A State of Ferment in the Eighteenth Century

11 The Incorporation of Sexuality 109

12 The Discovery of Incommunicability 121

13 Romantic Love 129

14 Love and Marriage 145
The Ideology of Reproduction

15 What Now? 155
Problems and Alternatives

16 Love as a System of Interpenetration 172

Notes 179

Index 240

Editorial Reviews

"There is a dearth of analytical writing about the emotions and sentiments that seem to motivate most human action, at least in everyday discussion, although some researchers are making some efforts to remedy this situation. Love as Passion is an outstanding contribution to this emerging trend . . . full of novel information and fascinating ideas."— Contemporary Sociology

From the Publisher

Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas are the two leading social thinkers in Germany today. Habermas’s writings have come to be known earlier in the English-speaking world than those of Luhmann, but this imbalance is now rapidly being redressed. Love as Passion is one of Luhmann’s most important and original books. It draws upon the general ideas which the author has established in his other books, but applies them in a very novel context—to try to understand the development of ‘love’ as a medium of the formation of personal relationships in modern societies. Mediaeval notions of love connected it with passion, a transport of delight; modern romantic love is a more banal, secular, yet pervasive ideal of ‘togetherness’ as a durable relation. The publication of this book in English will be an event of considerable significance. It will consolidate Luhmann’s reputation in the English-speaking world, and it will make a very important contribution to social theory in general and to debates about marriage and sexuality in particular.

Anthony Giddens

"There is a dearth of analytical writing about the emotions and sentiments that seem to motivate most human action, at least in everyday discussion, although some researchers are making some efforts to remedy this situation. Love as Passion is an outstanding contribution to this emerging trend . . . full of novel information and fascinating ideas."

Contemporary Sociology