Amo, luego existo: Los filósofos y el amor (I Think, Therefore I Am: Philosophers and Love)

Author: Manuel Cruz
Genre: Essay
Publisher: Espasa, 252 páginas
Reader: Christina MacSweeney

In Amo, luego existo, a reformulation of Descarte’s ‘I think, therefore I am’, Manuel Cruz, Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, questions whether philosophy has paid sufficient attention to the concept of love. He explores this concept through the lives and works of such great thinkers as Plato, St Augustine, Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir and Foucault, giving a short outline of their lives as they relate to such aspects of love its idealisation in Platonic love, carnal desire in St Augustine and sexuality in Foucault. Each section of the book consists of a short introduction to the theme, a review of the thinker’s life and it’s relationship to their writings on the topic of love, followed by a short ‘reflection’ on how this may relate to fundamental questions which underlie our experience of love.

In the epilogue to the book, Cruz summarises these different conceptions of love and suggests that it has survived as a concept due to its ability to adapt to changing situations. Within the contemporary world of global capitalism he sees a suspicion of the lover since happiness is based on consumption and is not self-generated. Neither is there an expectation that love will last, as it is a ‘high-risk investment’. To be happy in this modern world, we must, he suggests, know what we want and know how to desire.

While based on sound philosophical thought, Cruz’s work is an accessible account of love throughout history without any of the dumbing down that this might suggest. Each section recounts the lives of the famous protagonists, offering detail which is both instructive and interesting. By relating his investigation to thoughts which are commonly expressed about love, he draws in the reader progressively into a deeper consideration of the topic. The prose style is also highly-readable and difficult concepts explained with no sense of being patronising. This book will be of great interest to all those who wish to go beyond the self-help clichés of the state of loving another individual and reflect upon its concepts and contradictions.