Love as Passion

“Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas are the two leading social thinkers in Germany today. Habermas’s writings have come to be known earlier in the English-speaking world than those of Luhmann, but this imbalance is now rapidly being redressed. Love as Passion is one of Luhmann’s most important and original books. It draws upon the general ideas which the author has established in his other books, but applies them in a very novel context—to try to understand the development of ‘love’ as a medium of the formation of personal relationships in modern societies. Mediaeval notions of love connected it with passion, a transport of delight; modern romantic love is a more banal, secular, yet pervasive ideal of ‘togetherness’ as a durable relation. The publication of this book in English will be an event of considerable significance. It will consolidate Luhmann’s reputation in the English-speaking world, and it will make a very important contribution to social theory in general and to debates about marriage and sexuality in particular.”—Anthony Giddens