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Auteur

Mari Ruti is associate professor of critical theory at the University of Toronto, where she teaches contemporary theory, continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, and gender and sexuality studies. She is the author of Reinventing the Soul: Posthumanist Theory and Psychic Life and A World of Fragile Thing: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living.

We are conditioned to think love's purpose is to heal wounds, make us happy, and give our lives meaning. When the opposite occurs, and love causes us to feel fractured, disenchanted, and full of existential turmoil, our suffering is compounded by the sense that love has failed us, or that we've failed to experience what so many others effortlessly enjoy. In this eloquently argued, psychologically-informed book, Mari Ruti portrays love as a much more complex, multifaceted phenomenon prompting us to access the depths of human existence. Love's ruptures are as important as its triumphs, and sometimes love succeeds because it fails. At the heart of her argument is a meditation on interpersonal ethics that acknowledges the inherent opacity of human interiority and the difficulty of taking responsibility for what we cannot fully understand. Nevertheless, the fact that humans are not always rational in love does not absolve us of ethical accountability. In Ruti's view, we need to work harder to map the unconscious patterns motivating our romantic behavior. As opposed to popular spiritual approaches that urge us to live fully in the now, Ruti sees the past as a living component of the present. Only when we learn to catch ourselves at those moments when the past speaks in the present can we keep from hurting the ones we love. Equally important, transcending our individual histories of pain means facing the unconscious demons that dictate our relational choices. Written with substance and compassion, The Summons of Love reveals the enlivening and transformative possibilities of romance.

Introduction Love as an Existential Nudge An Invitation to Self-Actualization The Risks of Love Love's Panoramic Calling Love as a Gamble 1. The Hall of Mirrors The Quest for Wholeness The Beloved as Mirror The Pitfalls of Narcissism The Specificity of Desire The Speck of Corruption 2. The Patterns of Passion The Compulsion to Repeat Repetition as World-Structuring Missing Our Step Riding the Turbulence Managing the Repetition 3. The Sliver of Eternity The Human and the Divine The Nick of Time The Fall into Tenderness The Process of Becoming The Reinvention of Identity 4. The Midst of Life The True Self The Touch of Madness The Flight from Passion Beyond Romantic Nihilism Passion's Enduring Imprint 5. The Edge of Mystery The Enigma of the Other Messages That Motivate The Clearing of Unknowability The Softness of Silence The Craving for Solitude 6. The Ambivalence of Ideals Between Reality and Fantasy The Generosity of Ideals Ideals That Deplete Keeping Desire Alive Love beyond Ideals 7. The Intrigue of Obstacles Jumping Hurdles When Satisfaction Threatens The Desire to Desire The Bedrock of Desire Love's Apprenticeship 8. The Initiations of Sadness The Aftermath of Loss From Sadness to Creativity Moving beyond Melancholia Giving Up Pain The Wisdom of the Past 9. The Lessons of Love The Transience of Romance The Mission of Love Respecting Love's Rhythm The Fidelity to Love Love as a Process Conclusion The Ethics of Relationality A Call for Accountability Steering Clear of Masochism The Other Side Continuing to Care

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