About this item
A provocative and unsettling look at the nature of love and deceptionIs it possible to love well without lying? At least since Socratess discourse on love in Platos Symposium, philosophers have argued that love can lead us to the truth -- about ourselves and the ones we love. But in the practical experience of erotic love -- and perhaps especially in marriage -- we find that love and lies often work hand in hand, and that it may be difficult to sustain long-term romantic love without deception, both of oneself and of others. Drawing on contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis and cognitive neuroscience, his own personal experience, and such famed and diverse writers on love as Shakespeare, Stendhal, Proust, Adrienne Rich, and Raymond Carver, Clancy Martin -- himself divorced twice and married three times -- explores how love, truthfulness, and deception work together in contemporary life and society. He concludes that learning how to love and loving well inevitably requires lying, but also argues that the best love relationships draw us slowly and with difficulty toward honesty and trust. Love and Lies is a relentlessly honest book about the difficulty of love, which is certain to both provoke and entertain.
About the Author
Clancy Martin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, where he has taught since earning his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. (Robert C. Solomon and Louis H. Mackey chaired his committee) . He is married to the writer Amie Barrodale, and has three daughters, Zelly, Margaret and Portia, and an unruly labradoodle, Simha Mukha. A Guggenheim Fellow, his work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a contributing editor for Harper's magazine and Vice magazine, and has published academic and popular articles, essays and Op-Ed pieces in such diverse places as The New York Times, The Atlantic, Ethics, The Wall Street Journal The Journal of the History of Philosophy, Elle, Details, Men's Journal, The London Times, The London Review of Books, De Repubblicca, and many others. He is also a contributor to the Teaching Company's "Great Courses" series. He is a recovering alcoholic, and has written and been interviewed extensively about alcoholism and addiction. He is also an actively practicing Buddhist.
