My paper traces the genealogy of prevailing conceptions of love and argues that they
constitute the last genuinely universal religion in the contemporary West. I identify six
distinct conceptions of the nature of love since Plato and Hebrew Scripture before
suggesting that none of them does justice to what love is primarily about, which is not
possessing beauty or goodness, or achieving reciprocal goodwill between people of
similar virtue, or finding sexual satisfaction, or procreating, or unconditional and
selfless giving. Rather love is the rapture we feel for, and the consequent desire to
care for, people who, or things that, inspire in us a powerful feeling (or hope) of
‘ontological rootedness’ – that is, the feeling that our life is indestructibly anchored in
a reality whose value we take to be both supreme and stable.
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