Between Madness and Reason: Understanding Love
A 10-Week Course all about Love.
Each week we'll delve into aspects of this most precious commodity: The Geography of Love, The Philosophy of Love, The Science of Love, The Erotics of Love, The Customs of Love, The Kinds of Love, The Language of Love, The Art of Love, Women in Love, and Men in Love.
About the Series:
What is left to say of love? Apparently, quite a bit because we continue to celebrate and complain, rhapsodize and rue, marvel and malign this most human of emotions. Or it is less of an emotion and more of a force in the world to which we willingly—or unwillingly—succumb? Why does it have the flavor of the sacred? One reason may be that it connects us to something larger than ourselves, as we see in a verse from a sonnet of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Friedrich Nietzsche noted that “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” And already we can see the possibilities for a ten-week exploration of the meanings of love. We will take a unique thematic approach to our study and engage many disciplines and ways of knowing, from anthropology to philosophy to literature.