Hello Jeremy, it's great to hear from you again. I had missed your reflexions.
Have you read Eva Illouz's book The End of Love? Eva is a Marxist of sorts, not the Che Guevara kind, but more the Adorno kind. She analizes how love has become a supermarket or Amazon where we pick the product that appeals to us most and then discard it when a new product appears on the market. Eva suggests that just as we have rules for financial markets, we need rules for love. She's not talking about written laws obviously, but codes that dictate, for example, that you shouldn't dump a vulnerable person who depends on us. I agree. By the way, Eva uses the example of Russell in her book.
She's a sociologist. There are a lot of interviews in the book. She uses the Russell story as one example of a type of breakup, the sudden revelation. Another is a building up of petty grievances. I don't recall the whole list, but she doesn't go into details about Russell.
In the book I mention and in an earlier work, Why Love Hurts, Illouz analyzes Jane Austen and other 19 century sources and show that in that age promises mattered. A man who behaved like Russell would have been branded a "cad" and his social capital would have declined. A man who promised to marry a woman and then abandoned her was socially condemned. Of course there was adultery and cheating, but rules did matter. Illouz is not advocating going back to Jane Austen, but using her world to contrast it with ours.
Hello Jeremy, it's great to hear from you again. I had missed your reflexions.
Have you read Eva Illouz's book The End of Love? Eva is a Marxist of sorts, not the Che Guevara kind, but more the Adorno kind. She analizes how love has become a supermarket or Amazon where we pick the product that appeals to us most and then discard it when a new product appears on the market. Eva suggests that just as we have rules for financial markets, we need rules for love. She's not talking about written laws obviously, but codes that dictate, for example, that you shouldn't dump a vulnerable person who depends on us. I agree. By the way, Eva uses the example of Russell in her book.
Hey Amos, Hope you’re doing well!
I haven’t read the book.
Somebody has already said the same…!? Bet she didn’t reference Lytton Strachey as a potential love object! 🤣
She's a sociologist. There are a lot of interviews in the book. She uses the Russell story as one example of a type of breakup, the sudden revelation. Another is a building up of petty grievances. I don't recall the whole list, but she doesn't go into details about Russell.
In the book I mention and in an earlier work, Why Love Hurts, Illouz analyzes Jane Austen and other 19 century sources and show that in that age promises mattered. A man who behaved like Russell would have been branded a "cad" and his social capital would have declined. A man who promised to marry a woman and then abandoned her was socially condemned. Of course there was adultery and cheating, but rules did matter. Illouz is not advocating going back to Jane Austen, but using her world to contrast it with ours.
Reminds me of a quip from the famous British author and gay man, Oscar Wilde:
“When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her except continue to love her.”
https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/quote-of-the-day-by-oscar-wilde-when-a-man-has-once-loved-a-woman-he-will-do-anything-for-her-except-continue-to-love-her-the-irish-writers-timeless-lesson-on-how-love-and-relationships-change-with-time/amp_articleshow/131491936.cms
Does all this apply to any romantic relationship, or only marriages?