Customer Reviews

A Phenomenology of Love and Hate (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy)

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This heady book uses the tool of phenomenology to describe the dry logic of love, and of hate. Phenomenology is the philosophical view that takes the intuitive sense of conscious experience and describes it. When you love or hate something, whether it be sexual love or full-blown hate, what is the precise relationship between you and the thing independent of external factors.

Whew. It's a tall order that Peter Hadreas fills eloquently in A Phenomenology of Love and Hate, and if you can afford the price for what's between the covers, expect to be satisfied. He examines personal love- `the cherishing of another person'-, sexual love, nudity, incest and on to terror. The author smoothly blends the emotions of these extremes in wandering a line of philosophers from ancient through present times, but keep your dictionary handy.

I recently sat, chatted, and was enthralled by an impromptu classical piano recital by the author in his San Francisco living room. His persona, like the book, is hermetically sealed in a philosopher's study of the details of the cracks of the known universe. Phenomenologists oppose the unobservable & speculative for the empirical, so I sat on the floor next to an equally affixed wire-haired terrier concentrating on the classical excerpts with alternating pnenomonelogy explanation including quotes from the book, and trying to separate my enjoyment for the show from the melodies and discourses to understand my awareness.

At the conclusion, I shook the author's hand and concluded to reread his scholarly book.