Romantic love is the greatest con the will has ever pulled on human consciousness. Every culture celebrates it. Every person craves it. Poets have devoted their lives to describing it. People have started wars over it, destroyed families for it, and thrown away careers, fortunes, and reputations in its pursuit. And yet, according to Schopenhauer, the entire experience of romantic love, the obsession, the longing, the idealization of the beloved, the conviction that this one person holds the key to your happiness, is nothing more than the will’s most sophisticated trick for ensuring its own perpetuation through sexual reproduction. You...