On Love

On Love, philosophical discourse by Stendhal, published in 1822 as De l’amour. The work was prompted by Stendhal’s hopeless love for Métilde Dembowski.

The first part of On Love is an analysis of love, in which Stendhal lists four kinds of love: physical love, purely sexual in scope; love as a social game, removed from passion; vanity love, a type necessary for high social standing; and passion, the finest form of love, which the author idealized and to which he devotes most of his attention. Stendhal also outlines seven progressive stages of love, from admiration to “crystallization,” or the process by which the lover attributes all types of perfection to the beloved. In the second part of the work Stendhal presents his views, considered radical at the time, against marriage and favouring the full education and moral liberty of women.