by Jason Stotts
I don’t do a lot of book reviews here on Erosophia, it’s not because I don’t read much, in fact I read several books a month, but rather that most books that I read while good, are either not worth putting the effort into reviewing or are so horribly mixed that it’s hard to recommend them. Happily, this is not the case with the new book The Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion and Reason by Drs. Ellen Kenner and Ed Locke.
I have read a lot of books about love and relationships and it is no exaggeration for me to say that The Selfish Path to Romance is by far the best book I have ever read on these topics. In most books that I read on relationships and love, I always end up feeling like I’m reading with a hodge-podge of disconnected platitudes and random case study vignettes that seem, at best, tangentially relevant to the author’s points. But that’s very much not the case with The Selfish Path to Romance, which I found to be very consistent and well integrated. It was quite a breath of fresh air to read.
In it, the authors argue that if one doesn’t adopt the rational egoist position in regards to love, sex, and relationships, then one will end up doing very poorly in these indeed. Moreover, that by adopting this position, many of the common intractable relationship problems will either not arise or will be easily dealt with. Ultimately they argue, and I completely agree, that if one wants to live the best kind of life possible, that one must adopt the rational egoist position and think about one’s love life.
If you want to learn more about The Selfish Path to Romance, please check out my interview with authors Dr. Ed Locke and Dr. Ellen Kenner that appears in this edition of The Objective Standard (subscription required). Also, if you want to help support Erosophia, please use the Amazon links to buy the book so that Erosophia gets the referral credit. And I do heartily recommend that you buy the book!