ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social transformations of the last two centuries in order to understand how society changed so that love could become the predominant second-order form. Following Simmel, it defines the three apriorities to social life and the second-order forms as such special social forms, not only they occur in one form or another throughout society but because they essentially make society possible. Whilst the apriorities concern the very condition of the life of individuals within the social (the first apriority), the creation of individuals' embracing of and in social space (the third apriority), and the very boundaries of the social (the second apriority), second-order forms concern society's relation to time and the social understanding of, and consequently relationship with, time. In a society predominated by gratitude, social relationships are marked by a cyclical understanding of, and approach to, time that fits with the cyclical organisation of society itself.
