This paper argues that the loss of meaning of collective life in contemporary societies is a result of the increasing importance of love as source of meaning for personal existence. The argument is developed in three steps. Firstly, it discusses the importance that love as producer of meaning has acquired in the lives of contemporary individuals. Secondly, we explore four main figures of meaning (the Believer, the Citizen, the Bourgeois and the Lover), highlighting the specific traits of the figure of the Lover by contrasting it with the other three. Thirdly and finally, we discuss the most salient tensions that the figure of Love poses to today's social life, destabilizing the collective arrangements.
Love; Meaning; Individualism; Modernity