Robert Spaemann in Happiness and Benevolence has argued that love is an awakening to the reality of both the other and the self at once, it promises to offer a way beyond our postmodern predicament

Can we rethink LOVE in relation to beauty, goodness and truth, the “transcendental properties” of being?

ultimately, we are each responsible for our own definition of love, our own private understanding of what it means and what it feels like to love and be loved — a difficult triumph of self-knowledge amid the perpetual confusion of knowing what we really want.

Complement with poet Donald Hall on the secret to lasting love, philosopher Martha Nussbaum on how to know if you really love somebody, and David Whyte’s stunning poem “The Truelove,” then revisit Kahlil Gibran on the courage to weather the uncertainties of love and Hannah Arendt on how to live with the fundamental fear of loss at the heart of love.