Philosophy of Love & Pleaure

[owl_of_minerva]

A non f-locked post, just for fun.

This summer I'm teaching an introductory freshman course on philosophy; it's a required core course, so I have a lot of non-majors. I've taught this course a number of times before, and I've decided to totally revamp the syllabus. Instead of focusing on the nature of the soul & freedom, I'm going to focus on love & pleasure.

So far, I have the following (mostly in excerpts): Plato, Phaedrus and Symposium; some Biblical bits from OT & NT; Augustine in excerpt (any specific recommendations are good!) ; Aquinas in excerpt on the nature of love & friendship (already know which bits I'll use); Descartes in excerpt from Passions of the Soul; a little Freud (from Civilization & its Discontents?); Kierkegaard excerpts from Diary of a Seducer and Works of Love.  Anything obvious I'm leaving out?  Any further suggestions?   Keep in mind this is a very very very intro-level course, and since it's only over 5 weeks, students don't have that much time to absorb.   Given the heavy Christian emphasis (which is inevitable given I'm required to include medieval philosophy), any commentary on love from non-Christian sources would be great, too. Is there any Buddhist stuff on love or pleasure that would be fun?

Comments

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

For Augustine, how about some of the self-loathing from the Confessions? I hope he later had more balanced things to say on the topic, but I only read the Confessions.

From the Buddhist writers you're mostly going to get non-attachment stuff. Thich Nhat Hanh, who advocates "engaged Buddhism," does have positive and accepting things to say about the emotions - let me know if you'd like me to look up specific passages. I have three or four of his books.

It would be nice to include some women. How about de Beauvoir?

[max-ambiguity.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's not introductory enough, but I would immediately think of Gilles Deleuze's Coldness and Cruelty (and de Sade, but he isn't really a philosopher, is he?). Because I'm cruel.

[noetickerf.livejournal.com]

there's an interesting decision to be made w/r/t plato, whether one is going to attempt to confine the discussion to eros, or to introduce care as well.

something to take into account augustine's chiastics of love

something from the philokalia, medieval love mysticism, dante, the troubadors

lacan via zizek if necessary; zupancic has a nice article called, i think, "the perforated sheet" that touches badiou's dense formalization of love in "the scene of two". unfortunately the badiou probably can't be read directly in intro.

sartre & de beauvoir (i'll name specific texts later if desired.)

agamben's insanely beautiful essay "the face" in means without end.

irigaray's to be two is significantly more significant than her usual fare.

cavell's wittgensteinian account of the denial of love in shakespeare's tragedies, in the claim of reason and disownning knowledge.

there's a short easy piece directly on love from hegel's early writings, but there may be something better from the actual romantics that i don't know about...or even in faust.

triple underlined for emphasis: levinas. seriously.

i'll get you some asian stuff later, if you like. it would be nice to have at least the yoga/tantra dialectic represented (abhinavagupta is good for this)...and (more or less the same choice facing one as with plato) to open things up to the ontological function of karuna (compassion) coming out of nagarjuna and tsong kapha.

possible: barthes on the pleasure of the text

possible: marcuse (eros & civ.), dorothy dinnerstein (the mermaid & the minotaur), brown (life against death). these are somewhat similar in orientation (freudian liberators, eros/thanatos folks).

i don't know if you'll believe me, but luhmann's book on love is actually an amazing read, packed with useful insights, however peculiar his methodology may finally be...

probably some students will have read, and may be attached to fromm's art of loving, or c.s. lewis' the four loves, so it might be useful to look at these in the course of your own preparation, just to know where they're coming from.

there is contemporary "analytic" work on love, as well, which can be useful as a foil. i can be more specific if any of this interests you.

[didymus3000.livejournal.com]

Augustine, DDC, book I - on uti/frui. and how that fits with love of god and neighbor. helps to explain the homo-erotic parts of the confessions.

that's about as philosophical as i get... at least these days.

[phronesis.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised you aren't including Aristotle's Ethics Book 8. Also if you are going to be reading Kierkegaard including Schlegel's Lucinda could be fun.