Alain Badiou's "Philosophers and Love" (Summary)

Philosophers' Views on Love
• Aude Lancelin and Marie Lemonnier's book "Philosophers and Love from Socrates to Simone de Beauvoir" explores the complex relationship between philosophers and love.
• Arthur Schopenhauer, an anti-love philosopher, opposes women's passion for love, arguing it perpetuates a human species that is worthless.
• Sören Kierkegaard views love as one of the highest levels of subjective experience, identifying three levels: aesthetic, ethical, and religious.

Tensions in Love
• Philosophers grapple with the tension between love as a natural extravagance of sex and an apology for love that borders on religious epiphany.
• Christianity, a religion of love, creates tension.
• Kierkegaard's breakup with Régine reveals his struggle with the idea of marriage, representing the aesthete seducer of the first level, living the ethical promise of the second, and failing to make the transition to the third level.

Plato's View on Love
• Plato views love as a way of approaching the Idea, stating that love is an impulse towards something called the Idea.
• Love is an antidote to self-interest and leads to the idea that we can experience the world from the perspective of difference.

Jacques Lacan's View on Love
• Lacan argues that there is no such thing as a sexual relationship in sexuality, as each individual is to a large extent on their own.
• Love replaces the non-relationship between two individuals, aiming to approach "the being of the other."
• Lacan engages in philosophical ambiguities in relation to love, including the interpretation that love is what the imagination employs to fill the emptiness created by sex.

Philosophical Interpretations of Love
• Romantic interpretation: Focuses on the ecstasy of the encounter.
• Commercial or legalistic interpretation: Argues that love must be a contract between two free individuals.
• Sceptical interpretation: Turns love into an illusion.

Conclusion
• Love is an existential project that allows one to construct a world from a decentred point of view, not about taking oneself above or below.