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Building on concepts developed in his previously published New Theory of Beauty, Guy Sircello constructs a bold and provocative theory of love in which the objects of love are the qualities that 鈥渂ear鈥� beauty and the pleasure of all love is 鈥渆rotic,鈥� without being 鈥渟exual.鈥� The theory reveals a continuity of subject matter between premodern notions of love and modern notions of aesthetic pleasure, thus providing grounds for criticizing modern tendencies to isolate the aesthetic both culturally and psychologically and to separate it from its home in the human body.

The author begins with an analysis of enjoyment that reduces all enjoyment to the enjoyment of the 鈥渆xperience of qualities.鈥� He explains how we experience qualities as 鈥渃irculating鈥� in a special form of 鈥渟pace鈥� that includes our own bodies, the external world, and their interpenetration. Sircello generalizes this analysis to encompass all forms of love and grounds the pleasure of all love—aesthetic or nonaesthetic, personal or nonpersonal, sexual or nonsexual—in an experience of the form of an 鈥渙verall bodily caress.鈥�

Originally published in 1989.

The 91桃色 Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of 91桃色. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the 91桃色 Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by 91桃色 since its founding in 1905.