Rose's "Frank" Autobiography

Just finished reading (my 1st Father's Day gift) Gillian Rose's autobiography Love's Work, which she wrote knowing that she would die from cancer. One of the benefits of reading this small book was just how frank and open Rose was about the frail ( and often physically sick) people she introduces us to in her narrative (many of the stories are based around tragedies of love).

Her philosophy which is centered in the middle place of the tensions within the world and its social place is where we see her situate herself in her own life. This is one of the reasons that she writes against ideas of transcendence that try to escape or explain the messiness of social relations from the outside (see Lloyd's book on Law and Transcendence where he uses her thought to critique such figures as Marion, Stout, Butler and Milbank among others). Her inspiration for her thought is Hegel who grounds thought in the "we" of thinking with all its failures and promises.

For the art of autobiography, Rose book is a testament to the fighting human spirit. It lays out the will to live and for a will to think (and to love). I love this autobiography because Rose seemed so willing to lay out the tensions in her closest relationships; it is to love through all the failures and betrayals. I think that by reading this more personal work, I will have better insight into the actual philosophy of Rose (which I here is a little tough reading).

So I highly recommend this book!!! By the way, I still hope before the end of summer to read her book on Hegel...