About this course
It is hard to deny that love takes center stage in the great human drama. This ever-present, gripping, yet elusive force shapes our lives, ourselves, our pursuits, and, of course, our relations with others. Love even finds its way into our anxieties, our delusions, our hopes, and our greatest efforts at self-improvement. In this course, we uncover a secret European history about love that has shaped the present in untold ways.
As we follow love on various historical stages – from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages, the romantic era, the post-romantic period, and into the present – we pay close attention to the stories we have told ourselves about love. Our love stories reveal that we conceive of the human condition as desiring, striving, and longing, but also as avoiding reality and the concrete commitments that tie us to finitude. We read responses to this escapism in the form of a moral call to respond to the other, also when this means respecting difference and the other’s independence. Throughout, we gain tools for thinking seriously about love today.
Syllabus
Faculty
Jakob Due Lorentzen
FacultyPh.D. in Philosophy and Aesthetics, Aarhus University, 2021. Cand.Mag. in Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, 2004. M.A. in Philosophy, Stony Brook University, 2002. Program Director, European Humanities, DIS, 2007-2017. Program Director, Communication, DIS, 2008-2013. External Lecturer of Philosophy, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen. With DIS since 2006.