The question of love from Tolstoy to Einstein

Author: Ali Hussein Publication date: 2018 Category: Social Sciences Number of pages: 325 Publisher: Al-Mada ***Life is love, and love is life. "This phrase I read years ago, and it is by the Indian thinker Nisargadatta Maharaj. I paused at it many times, asking: what is love?" This is a question that writers and thinkers have pondered, trying to solve its mystery. Ovid, who appeared more than a thousand years ago, leaving law and politics aside to dedicate himself to writing his encyclopedia "The Art of Love," attempted to understand the secret of love. Through a poetic trilogy fully dedicated to the concept of passion: "Love's Lamentations, The Science of Love, and The Cure of Love," we find that love for Ovid is not just decoration of life as the philosopher Epicurus wrote, but it is life itself. For him, there is no complete life without love and the constant suffering of love. As for Socrates, he depicted love as a great demon, and his student Plato believed that the soul reaches goodness through love. Books often place us at the heart of the most famous love story linking two philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as the significant relationship between the German philosopher Heidegger and the philosopher Hannah Arendt. Heidegger saw that Arendt was spreading what he called emotional thought in his writings, meaning he spoke of the moment of inspiration that Arendt represented in his life. Love was a moment that beautified both of their lives. Heidegger believes that nothing leads more to the heart of the world than love. When passions stirred a figure like Tolstoy, he withdrew to write the epic of love in Anna Karenina: "At the station platform, I glimpsed his figure. Strange, what brought him here? I didn't know you were traveling. Why are you here?" I asked him, and he looked into her eyes and said: "You know I came because of you. I cannot avoid that."***