What is *In Praise of Love* by Alain Badiou about?

*In Praise of Love* explores love as a radical, risk-filled truth procedure that challenges modern safety-first attitudes. Through dialogues, Badiou critiques consumerist dating (e.g., online platforms like Meetic) and argues love is a transformative, enduring process born from difference, not sameness. He frames love as a political act that reorients perspectives from "One" to "Two," fostering shared truths.

Who should read *In Praise of Love*?

This book suits philosophy enthusiasts, readers questioning modern relationships, and fans of Badiou’s *Being and Event* trilogy. It’s ideal for those interested in love’s ties to politics, art, or existential reinvention. Critics of transactional dating cultures will find his arguments particularly resonant.

Is *In Praise of Love* worth reading?

Yes, for its incisive critique of risk-averse romance and its defense of love as a collaborative, world-changing force. Badiou’s blend of philosophy, politics, and cultural analysis offers fresh insights, making it a standout in contemporary thought.

What are the main ideas in *In Praise of Love*?

Key concepts include: - **Love as an event**: A rupture that initiates a shared truth. - **The "Two" perspective**: Viewing the world through difference, not identity. - **Critique of "safety-first" love**: Contrasting Meetic’s risk-free matchmaking with love’s inherent uncertainty. - **Endurance over ecstasy**: Love as a lasting construction, not fleeting passion.

How does Badiou define love in the book?

Badiou defines love as a truth procedure where two people create a new perspective on the world by embracing difference. It’s a "construction, a life being made... from the perspective of Two," demanding continuous effort to sustain its transformative potential.

What does Badiou say about online dating?

He criticizes platforms like Meetic for promoting "zero-risk" love, comparing them to "smart bombs" in warfare. Such systems prioritize compatibility metrics over the unpredictable, transformative encounter essential to love’s truth.

What is the "event" in Badiou’s philosophy of love?

The "event" is a sudden, unpredictable rupture (e.g., falling in love) that challenges existing norms. For love, it marks the beginning of a truth procedure—a journey to build a shared reality from difference.

How does Badiou relate love to politics?

Both love and politics involve creating new possibilities through collective action. Just as politics prescribes rupture with the status quo, love reorients individuals toward a collaborative "Two" perspective, challenging societal atomization.

In praise of love

Alain Badiou

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Overview of In praise of love

In "In Praise of Love," philosopher Alain Badiou challenges our swipe-right culture with a radical proposition: true love requires risk, not algorithms. Can we still experience the world "from the point of view of two" in our narcissistic, consumer-driven society?

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Chapter 1

Love's Radical Promise in a World of Safety

In a culture obsessed with risk-free experiences, Alain Badiou's "In Praise of Love" stands as a defiant manifesto. This slim yet profound work has become something of a philosophical cult classic since its publication, resonating with readers from diverse backgrounds-from university philosophy departments to celebrities like Angelina Jolie, who reportedly called it "transformative" for her understanding of relationships. Originally stemming from a public dialogue at the Avignon Festival on July 14th (Bastille Day)-a date Badiou deliberately chose to celebrate love's "cosmopolitan, subversive energy" rather than nationalistic fervor-the book challenges our contemporary approach to love with intellectual rigor and poetic sensitivity. As philosopher Slavoj Zizek noted, "Badiou's little book might be the most important work on love since Roland Barthes' 'A Lover's Discourse'," highlighting its cultural significance in an age where dating apps and consumer approaches to relationships have fundamentally altered how we connect.

Chapter 2

The Modern Assault on Love's True Nature

Love today faces a dual threat that strikes at its very essence, fundamentally challenging how we experience and pursue romantic connections. The first danger comes in the form of what might be called the "safety paradigm," exemplified by dating websites promising relationships without risk-"Get love without chance!" and "Be in love without falling in love!" These slogans reveal a profound cultural shift: the desire to experience love's rewards without its inherent uncertainties. Dating profiles promising compatibility based on algorithms and extensive questionnaires represent a modern version of arranged marriages, though performed in the name of individual security rather than family obligation. Apps like Match.com and eHarmony epitomize this approach, reducing complex human chemistry to data points and personality metrics, promising to eliminate the messiness of authentic connection through scientific precision. The second threat is perhaps more insidious-the reduction of love to merely one pleasure among many, a variant of hedonism that can be easily discarded when inconvenient. This approach fundamentally avoids the genuine encounter with otherness that constitutes love's transformative power. When difficulties arise, as they inevitably do, this philosophy makes it disturbingly easy to discard partners who no longer satisfy, placing the burden of suffering entirely on the other person. The rise of hookup culture and "ghosting" practices exemplify this commodification of relationships, where people are treated as disposable experiences rather than full human beings worthy of genuine engagement and consideration. What's striking is how these seemingly opposite approaches-calculated safety and casual hedonism-converge in modern attitudes toward relationships. Both ultimately reject the risk and adventure that make love meaningful. Both deny the possibility that love might demand something of us beyond our immediate comfort or satisfaction. The liberal and libertarian positions meet in this denial, promoting either meticulously planned relationships or casual arrangements that avoid passion's deeper commitments. Social media and dating apps further reinforce these tendencies, creating an illusion of infinite choice while simultaneously reducing human connection to surface-level interactions. This modern assault on love manifests in various cultural phenomena: the rise of "relationship coaching" that treats love as a skill to be optimized, the proliferation of dating advice that focuses on strategic game-playing rather than authentic connection, and the growing tendency to view relationships through the lens of cost-benefit analysis. Even marriage, once viewed as a sacred commitment, is increasingly approached with prenuptial agreements and exit strategies, reflecting our collective unwillingness to embrace uncertainty. Caught in this vicious circle, love requires philosophical defense-not to preserve it as a museum piece but to reinvent it for our time. As Arthur Rimbaud powerfully declared, "love needs re-inventing." The task before us is to reclaim risk and adventure against the tyranny of safety and comfort, to rediscover love as a radical act of courage in a world increasingly organized around the elimination of uncertainty. This means challenging the dominant narratives that reduce love to either a scientific formula or a casual pleasure, and instead embracing its potential for transformation, growth, and genuine human connection.

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Chapter 3

Love as Philosophical Truth-Seeking

Philosophy's relationship with love has always been complex and contradictory, oscillating between reverence and skepticism. Consider Jacques Lacan's provocative claim that "there is no such thing as a sexual relationship." This statement can be understood in two crucial ways. First, love emerges precisely to fill the emptiness created by sexuality's inherent incompleteness-sex is subject to repetition because it circles around a fundamental void, never quite achieving the total fusion it seems to promise. Second, while desire focuses fetishistically on particular body parts or qualities, love reaches toward something more profound-the very being of the other person who has erupted into and disrupted one's life, transforming our entire way of experiencing the world. Three competing philosophical interpretations of love have dominated Western thought, each capturing an aspect of the phenomenon while missing its deeper significance. The romantic interpretation celebrates the ecstatic moment of encounter, the thunderbolt of passion that transforms everything - think of Plato's description of souls recognizing their other half, or Stendhal's crystallization process. The commercial or legalistic perspective reduces love to a contract between equal parties, each seeking fair exchange, as seen in modern dating apps and marriage contracts. The skeptical interpretation, exemplified by philosophers like Schopenhauer, dismisses love entirely as mere illusion, a pretty veil thrown over basic sexual drives and evolutionary imperatives. Against these limited views, love emerges as something far more profound-a quest for truth. But what truth? Specifically, the truth of experiencing the world from the perspective of difference rather than identity, from two rather than one. Love becomes an existential project that constructs a world from a decentered point of view, moving beyond mere survival or self-identity. This new perspective transforms everything: work, art, politics, and daily life take on new meaning when viewed through the lens of love's dual perspective. This distinguishes my view from thinkers like Emmanuel Levinas, who sees love primarily as an ethical experience of otherness ultimately grounded in God. I reject theological interpretations that represent the "revenge of One over Two"-attempts to subordinate love's multiplicity to some higher unity, whether divine or social. Love isn't primarily about communion or self-sacrifice but about constructing something new in the world. It's not an experience but an event with multiple resonances in reality, an ongoing process of creation rather than a momentary feeling or ethical obligation. This creative aspect manifests in everything from the private language lovers develop to the new social circles and projects they generate together. Love thus emerges as a philosophical operator that allows us to think differently about truth, identity, and difference. It challenges both individualistic and collectivist paradigms, suggesting instead a way of thinking and being that starts from two rather than one or many. This has profound implications for how we conceive of human relationships, social structures, and even political possibilities.

Chapter 4

From Chance Encounter to Eternal Truth

Love must be approached through two fundamental insights: first, it involves separation based on difference (typically sexual difference) between two distinct individuals; second, because of this fundamental disjuncture, love takes the form of a contingent encounter with almost metaphysical significance. This encounter cuts diagonally through powerful oppositions, initiating a process of experiencing the world from the perspective of Two rather than One. The romantic notion of love as fusion-where everything dissolves into a magical moment outside reality-fails to capture love's full existential dimension. While artistically beautiful, this interpretation misses love's tenacious construction over time. Love isn't just the ecstatic beginning but a persistent process that triumphs over obstacles erected by time and space. It invents a different way of enduring in life, creating an unknown duration that fundamentally reinvents existence. Against the skeptical tradition claiming love merely disguises sexual desire, I maintain that within declared love, the declaration itself produces effects of desire, not the other way around. The surrender of bodies becomes the material symbol of love's totality, distinguishing it from friendship. In lovers' physical connection, love permeates desire-the ritual of bodies expresses the promise to reinvent life, with love remaining present even in the most passionate moments. Love functions as what I call a "truth procedure"-an experience that constructs a certain kind of truth. This truth is simply the truth about Two, the truth deriving from difference itself. Love that accepts the challenge, commits to enduring, and embraces experiencing the world from difference's perspective produces a new truth about difference. This explains why love stories universally captivate humanity. What's universal isn't some particular content but the fact that all love suggests a new experience of truth about being two instead of one. Love demonstrates that we can encounter the world other than through solitary consciousness. People love truths, even unknowingly, because they recognize in love stories the possibility of transcending isolation.

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Chapter 5

The Declaration: From Chance to Destiny

The declaration of love is vital because it's inscribed in the event's very structure. Love begins with a contingent, random encounter-games of chance that must eventually transform into a lasting process. A chance meeting at a cafe, a random introduction through friends, or an unexpected conversation at a party - these serendipitous moments somehow become the foundation for profound connection. This raises a profound metaphysical question: how can pure chance become the foundation for constructing truth? How can something completely unpredictable become the entire meaning of two lives engaged in experiencing the world's constant rebirth through their different perspectives? This transition from chance to destiny is what makes love declarations so perilous and frightening. The declaration isn't necessarily a single moment but can be protracted and confused, unfolding through subtle gestures, half-spoken words, and meaningful silences. Sometimes it emerges gradually through shared experiences, other times it bursts forth in a moment of courage or vulnerability. It represents extracting something enduring from mere chance-a commitment, a fidelity. Fidelity means transforming a random encounter into something resilient, as if necessary, as if the universe had conspired to make this meeting inevitable. When lovers say "I will always love you," they're locking chance into eternity's framework, transforming the arbitrary into the essential. Love is precisely this: a declaration of eternity to be fulfilled within time, a bold claim that what began as accident will become destiny. It demonstrates how eternity can exist within life's timespan-happiness itself! Like political enthusiasm, artistic pleasure, or scientific discovery, love proves time can accommodate eternity, that the infinite can manifest in finite moments. This fidelity extends beyond promises of sexual exclusivity to encompass the commitment to construct something lasting. Love isn't primarily about exclusivity but about creation-building a world from the perspective of difference, seeing reality through the lens of shared experience while maintaining individual uniqueness. The promise "I will always love you" doesn't simply mean "I won't sleep with anyone else" but rather "I will continue to reinvent life with you, seeing the world anew through our difference, creating a shared narrative that transforms both our lives." Consider how we experience time differently in love. Moments of intense connection seem to escape ordinary temporality, creating what poets have called "eternal moments" - those precious instances where time seems to stand still or expand infinitely. A simple shared glance can contain universes of meaning; a brief touch can feel like it lasts forever. Yet love also extends through time, transforming days and years through its persistent presence, weaving through the fabric of daily life with both dramatic moments and quiet constancy. This dual relationship to time-both transcending it and working within it-gives love its unique power to change how we experience existence itself, making the ordinary extraordinary and the momentary eternal. The declaration of love thus becomes a bridge between chance and destiny, between the accidental and the essential, between time and eternity. It transforms the arbitrary into the necessary through the power of commitment and the courage to claim that what began by chance will continue by choice.

Chapter 6

Love and Politics: Two Truths of Collective Experience

Politics constitutes another truth procedure centered on the collective, testing what people can achieve together. While love examines whether two people can make difference creative, politics explores whether masses can create equality. Just as family exists to socialize love's impact, the State exists to repress political enthusiasms. The family functions as the "State of love"-often betraying love's original promise just as the State betrays political hope. Both love and politics involve point-by-point processes requiring constant vigilance. Politics aims to discover collective capability, not power itself, just as love aims to experience the world through difference, not merely ensure species reproduction. A crucial distinction: unlike love, politics necessarily involves enemies-not just electoral opponents, but those whose decisions we cannot tolerate affecting us. In politics, struggle against enemies constitutes the action, while in love, rivals remain external to its definition. Love isn't necessarily peaceful and can involve violent arguments, but its dramas remain internal-representing the sharpest experience of identity battling difference. Two political notions compare to love's dialectics: "communism" (integrating differences within collectivity) and "fraternity" (friendly co-presence of differences). Christianity captured love's power by elevating it to transcendence, directing its intensity toward faith. We must bring love back to earth as a positive, creative experience of difference without requiring transcendence. Similarly, historical communism misused love through personality cults and party fetishism. Love and political passion should never be confused-politics confronts hatred, not love, and must precisely define enemies rather than expand them. The relationship between love and politics becomes particularly evident in revolutionary periods. The French Revolution, for instance, transformed not only political structures but also conceptions of love and marriage. By establishing divorce and civil marriage, revolutionaries challenged the traditional view of marriage as an unbreakable sacrament, opening space for love based on mutual choice rather than family arrangement. Similarly, the sexual liberation movements of the 1960s connected political freedom with new forms of loving relationships. Each political transformation creates possibilities for reimagining love, just as new forms of love can inspire political change.

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Chapter 7

Art's Capture of Love's Intensity

Art does complete justice to events, restoring their intense power in ways politics cannot. While history orders political events retrospectively, art captures their full sensory dimension - the textures, emotions, and vivid details that make experiences real and immediate. Andre Breton recognized art's profound connection to love-both represent moments when events break through ordinary existence, creating ruptures in the fabric of everyday life. Love, like great art, cannot be reduced to any law or system; it defies categorization and systematic analysis. The Surrealists championed "l'amour fou" (mad love) as an event beyond all order and law, finding in it nourishment for their poetic revolution in both language and existence. Works like Breton's "Nadja" illustrate the poetics of mysterious encounters that become mad love-chance meetings that transform into destiny through the intensity of passion and imagination. In these narratives, seemingly random street encounters become portals to profound connection, and ordinary objects take on magical significance through love's transformative lens. The Surrealists saw in love the same disruptive power they sought in their artistic practice-the ability to shatter conventional reality and reveal hidden truths. While Surrealists celebrated love's miraculous encounter, I advocate for a concept less miraculous and more laborious-constructing eternity within time through the experience of the Two, point by point. Love isn't simply a miracle but requires sustained work: being at one with yourself and the other, thinking, acting and changing together while maintaining individual identity. This involves daily negotiations, mutual growth, and the constant challenge of seeing the world through both unified and distinct perspectives. Happiness follows not as a sudden gift but as the immanent reward for this ongoing labor of love. Literature contains surprisingly little about love's endurance over time. Theatre often depicts young lovers triumphing over family opposition (the encounter), while great novels frequently focus on love's impossibility, tragedy or ending. Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Anna Karenina - these stories celebrate love's intensity but rarely its longevity. The positive duration of love-particularly married life-has rarely inspired great artistic works. Yet Samuel Beckett, chronicler of despair, writes of love's obstinacy in works like "Happy Days," where love remains the powerful element structuring an apparently catastrophic existence. His character Winnie, buried up to her neck in earth, still finds meaning through her relationship with Willie. What would an art of love's duration look like? Perhaps it would focus not on the dramatic beginning or tragic end but on the countless small moments where love renews itself-the shared morning coffee, the gentle care during illness, the silent understanding during grief. It would capture the daily decisions to see the world through difference, the persistent work of creating a shared perspective without eliminating uniqueness. Such art might seem undramatic by conventional standards, yet it would capture the true miracle of love: not its explosive beginning but its tenacious endurance through time. This art would celebrate the quiet heroism of couples who choose each other again and again, building a shared world through countless small acts of attention and care.

Chapter 8

Theatre: Love's Physical Embodiment

My love for theatre predates and exceeds my love for philosophy. In youth, I was fascinated by how language and poetry link inexplicably to the body-theatre was already a metaphor for what love would become. In theatre, thought and body become indistinguishable, exposed to the other in ways that transcend simple material presence. It's thinking-in-the-body, embodied thought. The stage becomes a sacred space where ideas take physical form, where abstract concepts dance and breathe through human vessels. Theatre, like love, requires rehearsals. The relationship between thought and physical movement is complicated, needing both spontaneity and premeditation. Each gesture must appear natural yet be precisely calculated, just as lovers learn to navigate the delicate dance of intimacy. Love similarly demands care and re-takes-"Tell me again that you love me" or "Say it better"-where physical desire is reinforced by constantly renewed declaration. The theatre of love is a powerful game of love and chance, where every performance risks failure yet holds the possibility of transcendence. Love is a thought that has a unique, violently powerful relationship to the body. As Fernando Pessoa said paradoxically, "Love is a thought"-not merely about body, desire and feeling. Theatre explores the abyss separating individuals and the fragile bridge love throws between solitudes. Without love stories, theatre wouldn't amount to much-classical comedies fundamentally tell of young people undermining arranged marriages, the struggle of chance love against implacable law. From Romeo and Juliet to A Midsummer Night's Dream, theatre has always been the arena where love battles social constraints. Theatre embodies a love that belongs to fraternity-it's a community and the aesthetic expression of brotherhood. There's something communist in all theatre, making the held-in-common prevail over selfishness. Every production requires collective effort, from stagehands to leading actors, each contributing to a shared vision. Love is similarly communist if we accept that its real subject is the becoming of the couple rather than merely satisfying individuals. The theatrical ensemble mirrors the loving couple: distinct individuals merging into something greater than themselves. Yet theatrical community is precarious. The melancholy when a company breaks up after a tour mirrors love's struggle against separation. Each performance is unique and unrepeatable, like moments of love that can never be perfectly recreated. The actor's love requires surrendering one's body to language and ideas-philosophers too must bare themselves in public speaking, transferring thought through the body. This vulnerability, this willingness to be seen and judged, links the lover, the actor, and the philosopher. Philosophy requires seduction, as Socrates recognized when connecting love to philosophical discovery: "anyone who doesn't take love as their starting-point will never discover what philosophy is about." The theatre becomes the perfect laboratory for understanding love's dual nature as both thought and physical reality, idea and embodiment, individual expression and collective experience.

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Chapter 9

Love as Political Resistance

Love must be reinvented and defended as a point of resistance against market obscenity and political disarray. France embodies both revolutionary spirit and reactionary tendencies-these two histories are entwined, with reactionary responses following revolutionary moments. Love has always been linked to historical events-romanticism connected to 19th century revolutions, Breton to anti-Fascism, May '68 to sexual experimentation. In reactionary contexts, identity politics resurfaces. Nicolas Sarkozy's regime exemplified this return to identity, targeting foreigners and promoting "safe" love aligned with security initiatives. When identity logic dominates, love is threatened. Love's subversive relationship to law must be defended. People in love trust difference rather than suspecting it; reactionaries are suspicious of difference in the name of identity. The defense of love becomes a practice of challenging the identity cult with love of what is different, unique, unrepeatable. The public fascination with celebrities' love lives can be read politically as distraction, but also as evidence of love's universality-even powerful figures suffer in love, connecting them to ordinary people. This apparent commonality in passion also demystifies authority figures, showing they aren't special and can be humiliated like anyone else. The visibility of love, fortified by Christianity, belongs to the boundless field where political courage is fashioned, reminding us that enemies have no transcendental power. Consider the intense love between Queen Regent Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin during the Fronde rebellion in 17th century France-to the rioters, both obstacle and rhetorical weapon. Only the theater properly accounts for these ambiguous connections between politics and love. To love is to struggle beyond solitude with everything that animates existence. "I love you" becomes: in this world there is the fount you are for my life-I see our bliss, yours first, like Mallarme's "naked ecstasy" in the wave. In our age of calculated relationships and casual connections, defending love's radical nature becomes a political act. To insist on love's transformative power-its ability to create truth through difference-challenges the dominant ideologies of our time. Against the market's reduction of relationships to transactions and nationalism's fear of difference, love offers a different vision: a world built from the perspective of Two, where difference becomes creative rather than threatening. This is why love must be praised, defended, and continuously reinvented-not as private sentiment but as public commitment to a different way of being in the world.

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Key Themes in In praise of love

risk-free love
encounter with otherness
commodification of relationships
reinventing love
truth procedure

Quotes from In praise of love

Love today faces a dual threat that strikes at its very essence.
Love emerges precisely to fill the emptiness created by sexuality's inherent incompleteness.
Love becomes an existential project that constructs a world from a decentered point of view.
Love isn't primarily about communion or self-sacrifice but about constructing something new in the world.

Characters in In praise of love

Alain BadiouAuthor and philosopher defending love's radicalism
Arthur RimbaudPoet who declared that love needs reinventing
Jacques LacanPsychoanalyst who analyzed sexual relationships
Slavoj ZizekPhilosopher who commented on the book's importance

About the Author

Alain Badiou, the acclaimed French philosopher and author of In Praise of Love, is renowned for his radical reinterpretations of ontology, politics, and human connection.

A founder of the Université de Paris VIII’s philosophy faculty alongside Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, Badiou’s work bridges rigorous mathematical frameworks—particularly set theory—with explorations of truth, ethics, and revolutionary change.

In Praise of Love crystallizes his view of love as a transformative "truth procedure" that disrupts societal norms, reflecting his broader philosophical project outlined in his seminal Being and Event trilogy.

A lifelong advocate for communism and critic of postmodern relativism, Badiou has shaped contemporary debates on art, science, and emancipatory politics through works like Theory of the Subject and The Communist Hypothesis. His ideas are taught globally, with Being and Event alone translated into over 20 languages.

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"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

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"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

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"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

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"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

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"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

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"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

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"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

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483

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Chapter 2

In praise of love

OverviewOverview of In praise of love

One book. Many ways to hear it.

Love's Radical Promise in a World of Safety

The Modern Assault on Love's True Nature

See every word as you hear it

Love as Philosophical Truth-Seeking

From Chance Encounter to Eternal Truth

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The Declaration: From Chance to Destiny

Love and Politics: Two Truths of Collective Experience

See every word as you hear it

Art's Capture of Love's Intensity

Theatre: Love's Physical Embodiment

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Love as Political Resistance

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Key Themes in In praise of love

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1,000,000+ curious minds.

1,000,000+ curious minds.

One book. Many ways to hear it.

Love's Radical Promise in a World of Safety

The Modern Assault on Love's True Nature

See every word as you hear it

Love as Philosophical Truth-Seeking

From Chance Encounter to Eternal Truth

Get more out of In praise of love

The Declaration: From Chance to Destiny

Love and Politics: Two Truths of Collective Experience

See every word as you hear it

Art's Capture of Love's Intensity

Theatre: Love's Physical Embodiment

Get more out of In praise of love

Love as Political Resistance

You made it to the end of In praise of love

Users also liked

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Overview of In praise of love