Role Of Love Research Articles

Interrogating New York City: The Detective as Flâneur in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge

ABSTRACTIn Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, New York City is represented, as the epigraph suggests, as an “enigmatic suspect” in a mystery novel who hides “the real story” in many different ways. This puts the novel squarely in the category of detective fiction, albeit with Pynchon’s typical parodic tone, and also accentuates the role of New York as a secretive character, not just a location, throughout the narrative. Maxine Tarnow, the novel’s anti-detective figure, is thus obliged to acquire characteristics of that idiosyncratic urban hero, the flâneur, in order to be able to read the city and see through its phantasmagoria. It is the contention of this article that in his last novel, by emphasizing the role of love and empathy, Pynchon distances himself from the postmodernist pervasive parody and goes toward a new sensibility and moral responsibility, which are characteristics of post-postmodernist fiction.

An Introductory Note from the General Editor, with Recourse to Plato and Eukleidas

When Plato wrote the final prayer in the Phaedrus quoted on the previous page, he had recently returned from a tumultuous stay in Sicily. He went there to convince Dionysius I (the Elder) to reject his lifestyle of debauchery and turn to the philosophical life, essentially to become the first philosopher king. Dionysius did not heed Plato’s advice, and neither did his son, Dionysius the Younger. In fact, there were times during Plato’s several trips to the island that the philosopher was risking his own life to promote his idea of the just society. Plato’s name was slandered, and members of the court tried to convince Dionysius that Plato was there to help overthrow the tyrant. At one point, Plato actually had to leave Syracuse and lodge with mercenaries, some of the most ruthless characters known in antiquity. Despite the mishaps, Plato’s stay was not all bad, and evidently quite inspiring: For those of you unfamiliar with the Phaedrus, it is a dialogue that concerns Beauty in relation to the soul, and the role of love and wonder in the process of self-appropriation and acquisition of knowledge of ultimate reality, which for Plato go hand-in-hand. Throughout its pages, we are told a story of how Beauty is the only transcendental form we can glimpse here on earth, and it is through beatific vision that we are led, following Zeus and a procession of gods, to an even greater vision of the ‘colorless, formless, and truly intangible οὐσια ὄντως οὖσα.’ (247c) I find it interesting that, if we look at the numismatic context of Sicily when Plato visited, in the first quarter of the fourth century BC, we find that he was exposed to arguably the greatest numismatic masterpieces ever struck, ancient or modern. Is it any surprise, after viewing the work of artists like Kimon, Eukleidas, and Eumenes, featuring spectacular levels of craftsmanship, that Plato composed a dialogue concerning the very nature of Beauty in its relation to what he saw as the fundamental principle of human existence?

“I live a hope despite my knowing better”: James Baldwin in Conversation with Fritz J. Raddatz (1978)

This is the first English-language publication of an interview with James Baldwin conducted by the German writer, editor, and journalist Fritz J. Raddatz in 1978 at Baldwin’s house in St. Paul-de-Vence. In the same year, it was published in German in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, as well as in a book of Raddatz’s conversations with international writers, and—in Italian translation—in the newspaper La Repubblica. The interview covers various topics characteristic of Baldwin’s interests at the time—among them his thoughts about Jimmy Carter’s presidency, his reasons for planning to return to the United States, his disillusionment after the series of murders of black civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s, and the role of love and sexuality in his literary writings. A special emphasis lies on the discussion of possible parallels between Nazi Germany and U.S. racism, with Baldwin most prominently likening the whole city of New York to a concentration camp. Due to copyright reasons, this reprint is based on an English translation of the edited version published in German. A one-hour tape recording of the original English conversation between Raddatz and Baldwin is accessible at the German literary archive in Marbach.

The Roles of Love and Happiness in Divorce Decision Making

ABSTRACTLittle is known about divorce decision making, the process of deciding whether to divorce when a marriage is distressed. The focus of this qualitative study was to explore the roles of love and happiness—two Western ideals that govern contemporary marital processes—in divorce decision making. Married participants (N = 30) with recent thoughts about divorce were interviewed about their conceptions of love and happiness in their decision-making processes. The resulting categories for love included: (a) importance of love, (b) change over time, and (c) marital love. The categories for happiness included: (a) fluidity of happiness and (b) balancing happiness. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, and the Politics of Love

Does love have a place in the inherently conflictual realm of democratic politics, particularly in a racialized democracy? This article engages the question of love’s politics by way of Hannah Arendt’s critique of James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind.” Troubled by his “gospel of love,” Arendt wrote to Baldwin, warning him that in politics, love will achieve nothing “except hypocrisy.” Contra Arendt, who argues that love is antipolitical, I show how Baldwin utilizes love to reclaim the lost promise of American democracy. Synthesizing Baldwin’s essays published between 1955–1972, my argument proceeds in two parts: part 1 focuses on the psychological and embodied demands of love, which, for Baldwin, are vital in transforming the consciousness of white and black Americans. Part 2 focuses on Baldwin’s critique of property, linking the project of self-transformation to the need for structural transformation. I show how love enables us to condemn the exploitative logic of capitalism and imagine new modes of relationality. In charting this underexplored point of contact between these thinkers, this article complicates Arendt’s critique of love and sheds new light on the role of love in Baldwin’s political thought.

L'istituzione del matrimonio in Tolstoj. ‘Felicità familiare’, ‘Anna Karenina’, ‘La sonata a Kreutzer’ by Maria Zalambani (review)

REVIEWS 735 data, clear explanations, interesting theoretical approaches and by raising new questions. This book is a model of how productive results can be when linguists with various orientations collaborate. University of Chicago/La Trobe University Victor A. Friedman Zalambani, Maria. L’istituzione del matrimonio in Tolstoj. ‘Felicità familiare’, ‘Anna Karenina’, ‘La sonata a Kreutzer’. Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici, 27. Firenze University Press, Firenze, 2015. 206 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. €16.90 (paperback). After one hundred and fifty years of Tolstoi criticism of the most varied orientations, it is intriguing to be presented with a sort of return to Nikolai Dobroliubov’s real criticism, i.e. the sociologic analysis of reality with the aid of literature. In The Institution of Marriage in Tolstoi: ‘Family Happiness’, ‘Anna Karenina’, ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, Maria Zalambani, a well-known specialist of twentieth-century Russian literature and literary institutions, uses Lev Tolstoi’s family ‘trilogy’ to investigate the transformations of the marriage institution in nineteenth-century Russia. Paradoxically, while Family Happiness (1858– 59), Zalambani maintains, anticipates certain themes of the future ‘bourgeois marriage’ based on love, Anna Karenina (1875–77) witnesses the deep crisis of the traditional aristocratic ‘marriage of convenience’, while The Kreutzer Sonata (1887–91) comes to deny the institution of marriage itself. Following a short introduction, Zalambani’s first chapter illustrates the strict relationship between literature and society in tsarist Russia, and Tolstoi’s role not only in mirroring, but also in promoting, albeit unintentionally, social and cultural change. The second chapter is devoted to Family Happiness and illustrates the woman’s question from the late eighteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century. While in Russian society and, due to new ‘French influences’ (Michelet, Proudhon), especially in radical journals, the patriarchal system began to be questioned, in Tolstoi’s story the heroine Masha, who is initially in love with her husband and eager to share with him every aspect of life, eventually bends to a ‘family happiness’ that transcends conjugal love. The third and fourth chapters, on Anna Karenina and The Kreutzer Sonata, are divided into two parts: the first illustrates the kind of marriage dealt with in the novel and story respectively; the second is devoted to the reception of the works, both by contemporaries and in the following decades. Zalambani relies on early and more recent socio-historical studies in her elucidation of the many aspects of the ‘marriage of convenience’: the prevalent influence of the Church, the mechanisms of power in the patriarchal family, the difficulty of divorce and separation,theimpactofthejuridicalreformsofthe1860s.Detailedparagraphs SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 736 devoted to the reception of Anna Karenina show that almost no contemporary critic was able to fully understand Anna’s challenge to the institution itself. Both populist and conservative critics and writers (Mikhailovskii, Tkachev, Suvorin, Skabichevskii, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Turgenev, V. Markov, Vs. Solov´ev, V. Avseenko, Leont´ev, Dostoevskii) concentrated their attention on the private aspects of her drama and on the social milieu in which it is played out. With a few exceptions (A. Fet, A. B. Vano, Vl. Golitsyn), critics of every orientation agreed in condemning Anna’s immoral choice and the theme of adultery as non-Russian. After a useful reconstruction of the writing and publication of The Kreutzer Sonata, Zalambani analyses the ‘bourgeois marriage’ at the heart of Pozdnyshev’s tragedy in light of Michel Foucault’s ‘dispositif of sexuality’, and examines its various aspects (juridical innovation; the role of love and sex; divorce). The reception of the story in Russia saw the Church, religious writers and populist critics defend conjugal sex from Pozdnyshev’s/Tolstoi’s attacks, prompting readers to react with deep participation. This movement initiated a new debate about sexuality that culminated in the philosophical works of Vl. Solov´ev and V. Rozanov and which also extended into Symbolist poetry. A short final chapter, ‘Towards a conclusion’, revisits the main points of the volume, arguing that behind the ‘marriage of convenience’ and the ‘bourgeois marriage’ depicted in Tolstoi’s ‘trilogy’ the Russian family remained a disciplinary authority where no real happiness was possible. All quotations from Zalambani’s rich and varied bibliography are given in Italian translation, and in her own...

Martin Luther and Cajetan: divinity

ABSTRACTFrom the beginning of his career Martin Luther thought intensively about questions concerning the human being’s capacities for loving God and the neighbor. The relation between human nature and love was a vital issue throughout his whole theological work even though he explicitly connected it with the concept of ‘imago Dei’ only quite late. Luther discusses human nature mostly in its fallen state, where the image is almost totally lost, but presents also his view of human nature in its pure state. He avoids identifying the Divine love and the image of God. Nevertheless, love clearly belongs to the image. The article aims at investigating the reason for this view and the question of ontological difference between Christ as the essential image of God and the ‘ordinary’ human being as having the image of God. Luther’s understanding of the role of love in the relation between the human being and God will be compared with that of his Catholic contemporary, Cardinal Cajetan. The article intends,furthermore, to describe how Luther understands the restoration of the image of God through the outward means of the Gospel and Sacraments and the inner but given affects of faith and love.

Mistycyzm miłości w De virginitate św. Grzegorza z Nyssy

Primeval East Church was very careful in the use of classical greek's terms specyfying love. The article presents conception breaking above tendency − the idea of ecstatic, ardent eros in St. Gregory's of Nyssa first written tractate − De virginitate, and is intended to submit variety of types of love and role of love in virginal life. The bishop of Nyssa, seeing main purpose of all human efforts in assimilation to God, emphasizes the virtue of chastity, which increases with love. Owing to this virtue, soul-bride reflects in itself intertrinitarian relations. Through love man rises his nature, assuming triad assigned to nature of God: holiness, impeccability and chastity, and becoming completely and entirely open to experience of spiritual marriage with God.

“God is Love”

These reflections will, firstly, propose a philosophical solution to the Trinitarian problem of the “three-in-one,” and secondly, show how love is foundational to the divine being. Beginning with the Aristotelian notion of substance, I will show how substance undergoes a first modification in the consideration that substance finds its fullest realization in a person existing in a love-relation with another person. The highest instance of this, in turn, will prove to be found in persons whose very essences are constituted by such relationality and the communion resulting from it. This will force a second modification of substance: the unity of substance will turn out to have its highest instance in the moral unity of a plurality of persons existing in love—which leads to the solution of the “three-in-one” problem. I will end by reflecting on the foundational role of love with respect to absolute being.

Perspectives on love as a component of professional practice

Abstract Since children and youth are often cared for by many professionals who are trained and educated in different disciplinary traditions, it is important that child and youth care (CYC) practitioners who work alongside other professionals have knowledge of how love is understood across different disciplines. Through a review of current literature in the fields of health care, education and CYC, this article explores the perceptions of love across different fields where CYC is practised. It begins by defining love in a manner that reflects the engagement and interactions between individuals in professional and public relationships, and differentiates this from the kind of love present in private relationships. It then focuses on the ways that love is currently being talked about and practised in different professional contexts. While there is increasing openness to talk about love across the human service fields, and some similarities in the questions and assertions that are being raised, there are also differences of opinion regarding love’s place in professional practice both within and across practice domains. In contemplating the varying perceptions of love, I hope to offer the reader an opportunity to be more mindful about the role of love in their own professional practice.

Expanding the Horizon, Reawakening the Heart: Reply to Eric Chelstrom

This paper is a reply to Eric Chelstrom’s “Criticism of Cicovacki’s The Analysis of Wonder.” Chelstrom mostly critiques my reconstruction of the role of love and personality in Hartmann’s philosophy. I offer a defense of my interpretation by illuminating how Hartmann’s philosophical project differs from that of Kant. Although Hartmann does not sufficiently develop either his conception of love or his understanding of personality, I argue that both conceptions could be further elaborated and that they could serve as the ways to reintroduce Hartmann into the mainstream of the current philosophical discussion.

The Botany of Romanticism: Plants and the Exposition of Life

ABSTRACTGerman Romanticism is a thinking of life as exposed. Philosophical conceptions of botanical life are paradigmatic of this. Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel each address the plant in their respective philosophies of nature. This article traces the connections and divergences in their thinking of plants, focusing on the role of love (Goethe), lack (Hegel), and exposure (Schelling) in order to present the plant as a peculiarly apt figure for considerations of life as exposed.

Brands, love and family

Purpose– The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which love cues are used by brands targeted at multiple decision-makers in a family, specifically the mother and child.Design/methodology/approach– First, secondary database (SmartyPants, 2013) is used to identify clusters of brands with similar benefit groups (i.e. health and nutrition food, indulgence food, entertainment and technology for entertainment and learning) that are most loved by mothers and/or children. Next, a content analysis of the ads for brands in these clusters is used to identify the common positioning cues across these clusters. The data from the content analysis are used to explore the extent to which love cues (along with functional and hedonic) are used by these brands loved by mothers and children.Findings– The results of this study indicate that functional cues dominate the ads for the brands in functional product categories, as well as hedonic product categories. Love cues dominate the ads for functional brands preferred by only either moms or kids, whereas for hedonic brands, love cues dominate the ads targeted at both moms and kids.Research limitations/implications– The authors hope that this study provides an impetus for more empirical work toward understanding the role of love in positioning brands aimed at multiple family members.Practical implications– Love, the underlying thread that connects a family, can be used by brand managers to appeal to multiple family members.Social implications– Families are fundamental to the society. The authors hope that this study helps marketers appreciate that and do a better job of marketing to the families, as families also form the fundamental units of purchase and consumption.Originality/value– This study uses value congruency framework to look at the notion of love as a positioning theme for brands targeted at multiple decision-makers. Hence, the study contributes to the development of family decision-making behavior.

Role of Love in Relationship Satisfaction

Adolescent romantic relationships are marked by feelings, thoughts, or behaviors within a relationship and have been found to be associated with intimacy, passion, commitment, sexual attitudes, trust, dependence and communication. The present research is based on studying the relationship between love and relationship satisfaction of adolescents. For this purpose, Sternberg’s Triangular Love Scale and Relationship Assessment Scale were administered on a sample of 100 adolescents (age=18-22 years). Correlation was applied which showed that a significant positive correlation exists between the types of love and relationship satisfaction. The t-test revealed that no gender differences were found in their types of love and in their relationship satisfaction. The thematic analysis done using a semi-structured interview revealed that gender differences exist between intimacy and passion of adolescents.

Developing Professional Early Childhood Educators in England and Hungary: Where Has All the Love Gone?

European education agendas have emphasized the importance of early childhood education in providing the foundations for lifelong learning. Central to the success of early childhood education is the quality of provision, with the workforce being key. While qualifications levels are frequently cited as important for the quality of provision here we ask questions of the attitudinal competences required to work in early childhood in two countries: England and Hungary. This paper presents a mixed-method study that considers the attitudinal competences perceived as needed by early childhood students and how these are acquired. We focus on the role of love in early childhood education and the contrasting perceptions and experiences in England and Hungary. In Hungary love is spoken about freely, but in England managerialist and entrepreneurial discourses are creating tensions with more emotional dispositions of being caring, supportive, and empathic that early childhood practitioners uphold. In Hungary, early childhood educators are given relative autonomy in their professional roles and love is a key characteristic. We consider historical, philosophical, and political developments in the two countries to shed light on how English and Hungarian perspectives have diverged, while exploring opportunities that comparing perspectives offers for the further professional development of early childhood educators.

Longing for the Transcendent: The Role of Love in Islamic Mysticism with special reference to al-Ghazālī and Ibn al-ʿArabī

The longing for intimacy and closeness to God has perennially been one of mankind’s most pronounced characteristics. Those worshipers within the Islamic tradition that particularly focus on the interior aspects of the faith and endeavor to reach the transcendent, are commonly referred to as Sufis. Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, has devised copious theological materials and practical disciplines to attain its goal. It can be furthermore suggested that one of the ideas that appears to be most predominant in Sufi theology is characterized by the notion of love. This article examines how Sufism understands the concept of love, its close relationship to the attainment of knowledge and if it indeed succeeds in enabling humanity to achieve nearness with God.

Éros platônico e trágico no Grande sertão: veredas

<p>Examinam-se neste trabalho os elementos platônicos presentes no romance <em>Grande sertão: veredas</em>, de Guimarães Rosa. São extratos intertextuais tomados especialmente aos diálogos<em>Banquete</em> e <em>Fedro</em>. Concedemos relevo, nessa análise,ao papel do amor e da dialética ascensional em meio à escrita fragmentária do romance, que impõe ao tema mudanças significativas, aproximando-o de uma experiência trágica.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

Leveraging the potential of word of mouth: The role of love, excitement and image of fashion brands

This study seeks to test a research framework designed to explain the direct effects of fashion brand love, image and excitement upon word of mouth in two different contexts. Using data collected from two different countries (the United Kingdom and Switzerland), the survey instrument was tested for reliability and validity using confirmatory factor analysis. Hypotheses were then developed related to the consumer-brand relationship across the two countries, which were then tested using structural equation modeling. The findings showed that there is a significant relationship between excitement and brand image, brand love and word of mouth. This is particularly true in both samples. The impact of brand image on word of mouth was not found to be significant in the two countries in the study. The primary limitation of the study is that the two sampled countries were European. Additionally, the results of the study present a preliminary investigation that can only be validated through further research. The study explains the relationships among different branding constructs to maximize word of mouth in a wide range of market environments. Although aspects of consumer–brand relationships have been heavily studied in the US market, much less research exists across markets in a non-US context. This paper redresses this imbalance.

Laying Siege to the Wall of Paradise:

ABSTRACT One of the most significant and colorful events in late medieval mystical theology was the debate centering around the Benedictine monastery of Tegernsee in Bavaria, circa 1452–60, in which Carthusian Vincent of Aggsbach locked horns with cardinal-philosopher Nicholas of Cusa over the roles of love and knowledge in the process of mystical ascent. Vincent vehemently asserted the affective and fideistic mystical theology of Hugh of Balma against Nicholas's highly intellective and philosophical approach. Accounts usually depict Vincent as an embittered, lone defender of his cause and the Tegernsee brethren as wholehearted supporters of Nicholas's teachings. However, there was considerably more support for Vincent's view and rather less for Nicholas's than has generally been acknowledged, for reasons relating to church politics, theological reform, and the prevailing antischolastic mood of fifteenth-century Germany. This article reconsiders the reception of Cusa's mystical theology at Tegernsee in light of these intersecting issues.

Contentment, Satisfaction and Good-Pleasure

The article examines early Sufi notions of rida, usually translated as “contentment,” “satisfaction,” and “good-pleasure.” It does so through a close textual analysis of some of the most important works of the tradition authored up until what has been identified as the “formative period of Sufi literature,” a period which ends in the 11th century. In the process, the article situates rida within the larger context of early Islamic moral psychology as it was formulated by the fledgling Sufi tradition. The article analyses early definitions of rida, the role of rida in tribulation, contentment and the ills of complaint, the higher levels of rida, and the role of love in rida. It ends with a brief overview of the paradox of rida inherent within a largely deterministic theology which traces all acts back to God.