The erotic phenomenon

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word philosophy means "love of wisdom," but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his book with a critique of Descartes' equation of the ego's ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists--"I think, therefore I am"--Arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one's sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love.

Includes index.

The silence of love -- Concerning a radical reduction. Doubting certainty ; "What's the use?" ; The erotic reduction ; The world according to vanity ; Space ; Time ; Ipseity -- Concerning every man for himself, and his self-hatred. Separation and contradiction ; The impossibility of a love of self ; The illusion of persevering in one's being ; Whether I will it or not ; Self-hatred ; The passage to vengeance ; The aporia of assurance -- Concerning the lover, and his advance. Reducing reciprocity ; Pure assurance ; The principle of insufficient reason ; The advance ; Freedom as intuition ; Signification as face ; Signification as oath -- Concerning the flesh, and its arousal. Individuality ; My flesh, and the other's ; Eroticization as far as the face ; To enjoy ; Suspension ; The automaton and finitude ; Words for saying nothing -- Concerning lying and truthfulness. The naturalized person ; The gap and deception ; Abduction and perversion ; The street of darkened faces ; Jealousy's honor ; Hatred's way ; Free eroticization -- Concerning the third party, and its arrival. Faithfulness as erotic temporality ; The ultimate anticipatory resolution ; The advent of the third party ; The …