Love

Who were some philosophers who wrote on love?

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It is close to being true that (x)(Px ---> Wx), where "P" = "is a [great] philosopher" and "W" = "wrote about love," and "x" ranges over, say, human beings. Just to mention a few from the history of Western philosophy (and theology, which is also philosophy): Plato (Symposium, Phaedrus), Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics), St. Paul (1 Cor 13), St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Michel Montaigne, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and Soren Kierkegaard. In the 20th Century, philosophers who wrote about love include Bertrand Russell, Simone de Beauvoir, Anders Nygren, Gene Outka, Robert Solomon, Harry Frankfurt, and many others. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on love that will be helpful, as does Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopedia. Many philosophers who wrote about love are discussed or included in two of my books, The Structure of Love (Yale, 1990) and Eros, Agape, and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love (Paragon House, 1989).

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