Schopenhauer On Love

I gathered from 'Schopenhauer on Love - Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness'(one part of the six part series on philosophy presented by Alain de Botton) that his main conclusion is that there is an unconscious motive inside of us to chose to fall in-love with those who offer a biological equilibrium in order to create perfect children, in other words tall guys are attracted to small girls, people with small noses to people with long noses etc. I find this absurd I think love is much more complicated and these conclusions fail miserably to take into account the complexity of love.

A smug faced Alain De Botton in the documentary suggests to the heartbroken girl in consolation basically 'Do not be so hard on yourself, if you get your heart broken, it is not your fault, the heart-breaker has an unconscious drive to create perfect children it is not to do with your blemishes ' which does not explain for example a couple that constantly break up and get back together, then how does this unconscious drive make sense if they reject someone and accept them several times, these cycles of rejection and acceptance, defeat his logic. Also if the love is of a homosexual nature, the propagation of children is not even an issue, so how does he explain this love between a man and man or a women and a women or even a man and a sheep?

For me his ideas are too simple, to try to capture and reduce the essence of love in an almost scientific way, which really is a pseudo science of information he creates. No wonder love is such a rare topic for the philosopher, they wish not to approach a subject beyond reality, beyond reason.

Having said all this I will not be too rash with Schopenhauer until I actually read his writing rather than take my conclusions from a documentary. And some credit due for Schopenhauer to tackle a subject that no other philosopher has even attempted to approach. Here is the documentary segment for those who wish to view it: