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Love in Time
An Ethical Inquiry
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Fannie Bialek
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
A meditative reconsideration of what it means to love as ever-changing beings in an ever-changing world.
We live in time, and so we love in time. Our beloveds change, and we change beside them. Sometimes we change apart, but it is this very changeableness, the braving of an unknown future together, that endears us to our lovers. Far from an ideal of constancy and commitment, then, love is an endeavor fraught with uncertainty.
In this book, Fannie Bialek sketches a view of love that does not ignore the vagaries of life but embraces them. In contrast to philosophical and religious attempts to secure love against finitude, Bialek’s love embraces its susceptibility to change and accepts the ethical challenges such change introduces. Attentive to our deepest vulnerabilities, Bialek develops a fresh ethics of love grounded by our humility before time.
We live in time, and so we love in time. Our beloveds change, and we change beside them. Sometimes we change apart, but it is this very changeableness, the braving of an unknown future together, that endears us to our lovers. Far from an ideal of constancy and commitment, then, love is an endeavor fraught with uncertainty.
In this book, Fannie Bialek sketches a view of love that does not ignore the vagaries of life but embraces them. In contrast to philosophical and religious attempts to secure love against finitude, Bialek’s love embraces its susceptibility to change and accepts the ethical challenges such change introduces. Attentive to our deepest vulnerabilities, Bialek develops a fresh ethics of love grounded by our humility before time.
Author / Editor information
Fannie Bialek is assistant professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis.
Reviews
“In a meditation at once philosophical and enmeshed in the world, Bialek shows us how we love in time, both desirous of and fearful for the future. Her patient and lucid prose urges us to discard neither the desire nor the fear but to bear with them both as an essential part of being human. In Bialek’s hands, love comes to seem the only question.”
— Emily Ogden, University of Virginia“Time places us inescapably within beginnings and endings. Love, once it begins, wants not to end. Yet somewhere between loving and losing, there is lingering. In a series of artful essays, Bialek invites us to linger with our loves, offering life lessons through the close contemplation of desire. Love in Time restores lyricism to moral inquiry and eloquence to ethics. It demonstrates that we may speak wisely and poetically, even about uncertainty. The results are luminous.”
— Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University“In this profound reflection, Bialek argues that to love means to desire more time with the beloved. Yet, time brings uncertainty, decline, and death. Lovers are thus suspended between the desire for more time and the fear of vulnerability that entails. Bialek offers guidance to sustain future possibilities of desire in the context of those fears. Carefully and imaginatively argued, Bialek’s work is at once illuminating and practical, remaining always close to the lived realities of lovers in time.”
— Kathleen Skerrett, University of RichmondTopics
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 19, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780226843902
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780226843902
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
