Way of Love

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by Luce Irigaray

Continuum Publishing

Due/Published February 2003, 208 pages, cloth

ISBN 082645982X

The Way of Love offers an analysis of language and human relations. Irigaray approaches both these issues from the perspective of sexual difference, which she has argued is perhaps the most fundamental question for our time.

The Way of Love asks the question: How can we love each other and it presents an exploration of desire and the human heart. If Western philosophy has claimed to be a love of wisdom, it has forgotten to become a wisdom of love. We still lack words, gestures, ways of doing or thinking to approach one another as humans, to enter into dialogue, to build a world where we can live together. Globalization represents an opportunity but also a danger for humanity. Sameness has been the key to the construction of Western cultures and societies. Difference--beginning with sexual difference--can open up for us an era of intercommunication, from our most everyday exchanges to the universal interweaving of a democratic global community.

Proposing an understanding of philosophy as the wisdom of love and not just as the love of wisdom, Irigaray explores the relation to one's self, to others and to the world. An engagement with the history of Western philosophy, The Way of Love offers us a new way to conceive of communication between subjects. At stake, says Irigaray, is nothing less than learning to respect and encourage human becoming, opening a horizon for a new stage in human history.