Abstract

Professor Morgan styles himself an amateur in his investigation of the theme of love and in this work he lives up to this role in the best senses of the term. With an inspiring enthusiasm for the theme, he brings to bear a critical analysis of the central concepts in each area. In Plato's assimilation of love to moral and intellectual striving, in the Bible's orientation of the law around love, and in Freud's genetic account of personal and social norms, Professor Morgan discerns similar attempts to reconcile reason and passion. The author is equally concerned to note the differences between the three theories of love and to resist the reduction of one to the other. Plato's Eros is fully teleological and finds its culmination in the rational impersonality of perfect form. The Bible teaches that love has no other end than its own perfection in the living, personal God. Freud sets himself against both these traditions by his materialistic bias, his emphasis on the efficient causes of love, and the irreducible dualism of Eros and Thanatos.—T. R. H.