Love as a second-order form

This chapter introduces Thomas Scheff's concept of linking emotions and Aaron Ben-Ze'ev's reflection on love. It presents the oeuvre of one of the most important classical sociologists writing about forms and emotions — Georg Simmel — and his concept of second-order forms, which has been developed further by Natalia Canto Mila. In accordance with Simmel's formal sociology, the chapter considers love as a 'second-order form'. It discusses whether love can be understood as a second-order form. Gratitude is a second-order form because it can endure and give endurance. Second-order forms undergo historical transformations. Simmel wrote his Sociology in 1908. By that time, he saw faithfulness and gratefulness as the two paradigmatic second-order forms that existed in his society. In the first digression of Sociology in 1950, titled 'How is society possible?', Simmel discussed the necessary conditions that had to exist for society to become and to stay possible.