Denis de Rougemon's book: Love and the West will be the starting point of our discussion. One of the fundamental books 20. as a lucid treatise from literary history, it also aims to be a sociologically anthropological investigation of moral history and the emergence of the “West” – with particular emphasis on the analysis of two essential elements of our culture: love and marriage.
We will begin our historical research on love with the ancient Greeks, where Socrates, in Plato's dialogue symposium, reveals to us the paradoxical nature of the functioning of Eros as a love passion, which, indeed, first manifests itself as a craving for the body, but the body is never able to satisfy it to the end. The Love defended in the symposium by Socrates therefore implies a gradual elevation of the individual. ... It is this elevation that, in subsequent attempts to make sense of love as something fundamentally human, remains intriguing in various ways throughout European philosophical and literary history to this day.
"Happy love has no history. They are just novels about fatal love.
Poetry exalts love passion more than fulfilled love.
Passion means suffering. This is the most important thing.«
(Denis de Rougemon, love and the West)
Knjiga Denisa de Rougemonta Ljubezen in Zahod bo tokratna iztočnica naše diskusije. Ena temeljnih knjig 20. stoletja kot lucidna razprava iz literarne zgodovine hkrati predstavlja tudi sociološko-antropološko raziskavo nravne zgodovine in nastanka »Zahoda«, s posebnim poudarkom na analizi dveh bistvenih prvin naše kulture: ljubezni in zakona.
Zgodovinsko raziskavo ljubezni bomo začeli pri starih Grkih, kjer nam že Sokrat v Platonovem dialogu Simpozij razkrije paradoksno naravo delovanja erosa kot ljubezenske strasti. Ta se sprva kaže kot hrepenenje po telesu, vendar ga telo nikoli ne zmore povsem potešiti. Ljubezen, ki jo v Simpoziju zagovarja Sokrat, zato pomeni postopen dvig posameznika. Prav ta dvig pa je tisto, kar pri kasnejših poskusih osmislitve ljubezni kot nečesa temeljno človeškega na različne načine ostaja intrigantno skozi celotno evropsko filozofsko in literarno zgodovino vse do danes.
“Srečna ljubezen nima zgodovine. So zgolj romani o usodni ljubezni.
Poezija bolj povzdiguje ljubezensko strast, kakor izpolnjeno ljubezen.
Strast pa pomeni trpljenje. To je najpomembnejše.«
(Denis de Rougemon, Ljubezen in Zahod)