ROMANCE, LOVE AND ETHICS:
A PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATION
Instructor Dr. Carol S. Gould

Course Description:  Most philosophers agree that love is complicated.  Everyone wants love, and many people want romance as part of  it. Although the Greeks did not have the internet, they would not have been surprised that people go online to find lovers and even spouses.  But does love require us to give up too much of ourselves?   This course will examine the nature of love from the perspectives of primarily three seminal thinkers, Plato, Freud, and Sartre, and then it will explore the ethical problems involved with love and romance in life today.

Six Lectures:

Set One:
          1.       Love in the Time of Plato:  Plato was the first philosopher to argue that romantic love for an individual is an
                    impediment to personal growth and, on occasion, an evil to society. 
          2.       Platonic Revisions:  Romance and Philosophy.   Plato revises his philosophy and defends romance.
          3.       Freud:  Love as Desire and Illusion.    Like many great literary writers, Freud tells us that love involves
                    projection of our own desires on to those we love.    
Set Two:
          4.        Jean-Paul Sartre:  Love as Détente.  Jean-Paul Sartre, a 20th century existentialist philosopher, novelist,
                     and icon, describes the human condition as fundamental aloneness and freedom.
          5.        The Ethics of Dating in Our Age of Individualism.  The individualism of contemporary society, along with
                     globalization and technology have overturned traditional mores of courtship and romance.
          6.        Big Love.  The sexual revolution of nearly forty years ago has changed the way people interact with potential
                     and actual lovers and partners.

Biographical Information.  Dr. Carol S. Gould is a professor of philos-ophy at FAU who taught previously at Union College and Colgate University.  In 1994 and in 2003, she won an FAU Award for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence and in 2002 was given The FAU President’s Leadership Award.  She publishes widely and has recently co-authored a book, Plato’s Gold.