Thank goodness I liked this book. Andrew Shaffer (pictured at left) is a twitter friend of mine, and there was a little bit of "Oh, crap! What if this book isn't very good?" panic before I read it.
Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love by the aforementioned Andrew Shaffer, is chock full of interesting gossip about some of the world's deepest thinkers. Henry David Thoreau, Aristotle and Bertrand Russell are but a few of the philosophers who get their embarrassingly dirty laundry aired in this diligently researched gem of a book.
If you like your humor tinged with intelligent, yet cheeky asides, then grab this book and read it somewhere laughing out loud won't get you hateful stares.
We learn such controversial facts like: Jean-Paul Sartre adopted his mistress as his daughter and Diogenes the Cynic liked to perform unspeakable acts in public. It is revealed that Henry Ward Beecher was way ahead of his time with his adulterous behavior as a minister of God. And, as I tweeted soon after starting the book, the opening chapter on Peter Abelard is worthy of a Hollywood screenplay.
Still, these men and women are revered for their brain power, if not their prowess at love. Love is a slippery thing for most of us. In a way, it is comforting to discover that the intricacies of love frustrated even these deep thinkers. To sum up the subject best, I turn to Friedrich Nietzsche, who protested, "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."
(Andrew wrote a guest post on this blog about why there aren't more women philosophers included in his book. His post appears here.)
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@andrewtshaffer
I've heard really great things about this one, can't wait to read it!
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