Ed D’Angelo
What is a loving person? This book attempts to answer this question in two major sections. The first part deals with the nature of loving, different conceptions of love, types of love, stroking, and a review of the ideas of Erich Fromm, Leo Buscaglia, and John Gray. The second part deals with the relationship of love to sex, marriage, friendship and death. The special quality of this volume is the combination of informative content, current research, dialogue, autobiographical material, open-ended questions and humorous incidents that are presented in a clear style of writing.
As a professional philosopher with a specialty in the philosophy of sex and love, Ed D’Angelo has been researching and teaching about the nature of love for many years. In addition to a Ph.D. in philosophy from the State University of New York at Buffalo, Dr. D’Angelo also received an M.A. in philosophy from New York University and a B.S. in education from the State University of New York at Oswego. He is the author of three books, numerous journal articles, as well as editor of several anthologies. Dr. D’Angelo has taught philosophy at the State University College at Buffalo, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and the University of Bridgeport. Currently he is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut where he is teaching a course on the philosophy of sex and love. Ed D’Angelo is considered to be a dynamic teacher who expresses a loving attitude in the classroom.
In 1978 I developed a university-level course called Philosophy of Sex and Love. It was an immediate success with an average enrollment of forty students. The common reaction was that the course presented topics and issues that were important to life and a classroom atmosphere developed in which all views were openly discussed. The presentation of personal experiences created a positive emotional intimacy in the classroom. Initially, Erich Fromm’s book on love was used as one of the textbooks, and then several of the books on love written by Leo Buscaglia.1 I am indebted to Fromm and Buscaglia for many ideas discussed in this work.
My aim is to go beyond these thinkers and present the thoughts of other scholars on love and studies on this important topic. Furthermore, the dialogue highlighting diverse areas of sex and love that occurred in the classroom will be shared so that the reader can experience the interactions among the participants. Although most students taking this course were in their twenties, occasionally students in their forties and sixties attended this class. This created a greater balance of experiences among different age groups. Two students who audited this class ten times were an older couple who experienced each class differently. Although similar textbooks were often used, the students’ concerns and experiences made each course unique.
