This volume completes Singer's trilogy on the nature of love. The first volume appeared in 1966 and was subtitled Plato to Luther; the second was Courtly and Romantic. Singer wanted this book to stand on its own. Therefore, about a third of the volume recapitulates the contents of the two previous volumes.

In this book we are treated to an impressive list of thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Freud, Proust, D. H. Lawrence, G. B. Shaw, Santayana, and Sartre. Fewer than half of these authors are philosophers; the rest are novelists, except for Freud, who belongs to neither category. Freud is important to Singer. Sixty-one of the four hundred and forty pages are devoted to him.

What is it that philosophers do with love when it is entrusted to their hands? I am not speaking now of great philosphers like Plato