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 profound and personal 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. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, The Erotic Phenomenon is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

The philosophical discussion about erotic art has often been understood in terms of the possibility of erotic art as a form of visual or auditory art. In this article, I focus on erotic experiences qua proprioceptive experiences and I defend the claim that, under the right circumstances, such experiences can bring about proprioceptive artworks.

The figure of Eros is permeated with a logic of lack and fulfillment. As a figure of desire that seeks to be filled, that craves the ineffable, Eros is appropriately described by Plato as the child of poverty and abundance. It is a form of desire that seeks to take what lies outside, to possess the unpossessed and to devour what is desirable. Is it possible, however, to conceive of Eros—and eroticism—as something that is not working according to the traditional (...) logic of desire? Such seems to be the task of Georges Bataille’s philosophy. Refusing the vision of Eros as a quest for pleasure, he developed a thought of eroticism as sovereignty through evil. This article aims at exploring what this evil entails; what a transgression of moral norms, seriousness, and selfhood means. Bataille is famously considered to be a thinker fascinated by evil, and it seems that such a consideration is too easily a reason to avoid him. I would like to show that his thoughts concern freedom, sovereignty and community. Through erotic transgressions, Bataille saw the possibility for true human freedom and communication. Evil as liberation and not Eros as pleasure. I take on a new approach regarding Eros through an exploration of Bataille’s notions of continuity, morality, transgression, death and holiness. The first part of the article will set down the basis of Bataille’s thought. The second will deal in detail with transgression and death, and finally I will deal with holiness, thus making the final step on the path to sovereignty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Erotic Art and Pornographic PicturesJerrold LevinsonOnly in primitive art, with its urgent need to evoke the sources of fertility, are the phallus and the vulva emphasized, as it were innocently. By ancient Greek and Roman times there already existed the special category of the pornographic—graphic art or writing supposed, like a harlot, or porne, to sexually stimulate.1IAS REGARDS PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS of the opposition between the erotic and the pornographic, (...) there are a number of reasonable goals one might have: to preserve as many considered intuitions about the opposition as possible; to present the opposition in a clearer light than it enjoys when casually invoked; to modestly "sharpen" the standard opposition that either accounts for our experience in this domain more fully, or allows us to organize our thinking about the domain more perspicuously. I hope in this paper to make progress toward some of those goals. Though the scope of the erotic/pornographic opposition goes beyond the visual, my focus here will be the opposition as it exists in the visual sphere, and even more narrowly, in the sphere of images. In addition to preserving and clarifying a distinction between erotic art and pornography, I hope also to make an intelligible place for erotica, as something intermediate between the other two.Here, then, are some intuitions on the erotic and the pornographic: [End Page 228]1. the erotic and the pornographic are both concerned with sexual stimulation or arousal.2. while the term "erotic" is neutral or even approving, the term "pornographic" is pejorative or disapproving.3. while "erotic art" is a familiar, if somewhat problematic, notion, "pornographic art" seems an almost oxymoronic one.4. whereas pornography has a paramount aim, namely, the sexual satisfaction of the viewer, erotic art, even if it also aims at sexual satisfaction on some level, includes other aims of significance.5. whereas we appreciate (or relish) erotic art, we consume (or use) pornography. In other words, our interactions with erotic art and pornography are fundamentally different in character, as reflected in the verbs most appropriate to the respective engagements.In what follows I try to accommodate all of those intuitions. As I will need a distinction invoked in the first of them (between sexual stimulation and sexual arousal) let me spell that out before proceeding. By sexual stimulation I will mean the inducing of sexual thoughts, feelings, imaginings, or desires that would generally be regarded as pleasant in themselves. By sexual arousal I mean the physiological state that is prelude and prerequisite to sexual release, involving in the male, at least, some degree of erection. And by sexual release I mean something that I take it needs no spelling out.How to differentiate erotic art from pornography, and from erotica as well, is of course not the only important philosophical question about erotic art. Here are two others: 1) How is the erotic aspect of erotic art compatible with the disinterested or distanced frame of mind that seems required for aesthetic engagement with or appreciation of a work of visual art? 2) How is the degree of eroticness of a work of erotic art related to its artistic value? I will briefly address those two questions toward the end of the paper, but most of my effort will be devoted to the prior question, that of the differentiation of erotic art, erotica, and pornography.IIHow, then, to effect that differentiation in the domain of visual images to which I have restricted my inquiry? One possibility would [End Page 229] concern the specific kind of response aimed at. Thus, erotic art might be said to involve images intended to sexually stimulate, but also to reward artistic interest; erotica to involve images intended to sexually stimulate but not to reward artistic interest; pornography to involve images intended to sexually arouse in the interests of sexual release. Another possibility would be by the character of the sexual representation involved, so that pornography would involve sexually explicit images, erotic art would involve sexually inexplicit images, and erotica images would be intermediate in their explicitness, irrespective of the ends for which the images were fashioned. A third possibility would be by... (shrink)

Socrates is famous for claiming that ‘I know one thing: That I know nothing’. There is one subject that Socrates repeatedly claims to have expertise in, however: ta erôtika. Socrates also refers to this expertise as his erôtikê technê, which may be translated as ‘erotic expertise’. I argue that the purposes this expertise serve are, to a significant extent, educational in nature: Socrates has certain erotic educational methods that participate in his expertise on erôs. In addition, I suggest that Socrates (...) uses two kinds of psychological techniques while practicing his erotic expertise through these erotic educational methods. (shrink)

What is erotic art? Do all paintings with a sexual theme qualify as erotic? How to distinguish between erotica and erotic art? In what way are aesthetic experiences related to, or different from, erotic experiences and are they at all compatible? Both people and works of art can be sensually appealing, but is the beauty in each case substantially the same? How helpful is the distinction between the nude and the naked? Can we draw a strict line between erotic art (...) and pornography? We tend to think of art as complex and of pornography as one-dimensional, but how compelling is that differentiation? Pornography is often considered harmful, objectifying, and exploitative, but to what extent is erotic art immune to moral criticism of this sort? In addressing such questions this entry will provide an overview of current philosophical debates on erotic art. It will also place those debates in historical perspective and, in the closing section, explore some important avenues for future research. (shrink)

The Viennese obsession with sex at the fin-de-siècle was vividly expressed in the artworks of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Their depictions of women demonstrated their fascination with and fear of female sexual pleasure and desire, reflecting a wider societal anxiety and erotic fixation. This paper will analyse selected paintings and drawings by both Klimt and Schiele to explore this dynamic of 'erotic neurasthenia.'.

This paper emphasizes the place and the role of the aesthetic quality and the role of the erotic in Levinas’s project that deals with ethical an-archaeology. Despite Levinas’s categorical statements that there are irreconcilable differences between ethics and aesthetics, i.e. between ethics and the erotic, above all, it is emphasized here that these differences do not represent a stark or sharp contrast, but quite contrary, they often constitute a subversive ontological element. On the other hand, somewhat unexpectedly, with its ethical (...) anti-aestheticism Levinas’s “noncontemporary” thought appears to be, at the same time, both significant and critical, elementary, emancipatory and contemporary in relation to present-day reactionary reactualization and revitalization of the aesthetic quality which mechanically proceeds to develop on the margins of Levinas’s emancipatory past. (shrink)

Audre Lorde’s account of the erotic is one of her most widely celebrated contributions to political theory and feminist activism, but her explanation of the term in her brief essay “Uses of the Erotic” is famously oblique and ambiguous. This article develops a detailed, textually grounded interpretation of Lorde’s erotic, based on an analysis of how Lorde’s essay brings together commitments expressed across her work. I describe four integral elements of Lorde’s erotic: feeling, knowledge, power, and concerted action. The erotic (...) is a way of feeling in the work a person does, which makes possible new knowledge about the self and the social environment— particularly to counteract epistemic oppression imposed by an unjust society. The erotic is a source of power by providing vision and energy for actions integrating a person’s multiple commitments and political interests. It facilitates concerted action and coalition by enhancing a person’s appreciation of their interests and values, while fostering embodied, personal connections that build trust on the basis of shared vulnerability. Thus, the erotic helps build coalitions where genuine differences of perspective and experience can be examined, in resistance against an oppressive society’s epistemic distortions. (shrink)

How does literature illuminate the way we live? Maurice Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. By exploring the structure of the everyday world, Natanson reveals the "uncanny" that lies at the core of the ordinary. Phenomenology--which involves the questioning of that which we usually take for granted--is for Natanson the essence of philosophy. Drawing upon his philosophical predecessors Edmund Husserl, Alfred (...) Schutz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Natanson paves his own way with stories and examples that themselves bear witness to how phenomenology occurs in literature. In considering such works as Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Natanson shows how literature opens us to the domain of possibility and how metaphor offers philosophical power when we think about freedom and change. This book, written by one of the twentieth century's leading phenomenologists, will interest students in philosophy and in literature. They will value the work particularly for its clarification of concepts and terms that frequently emerge in the contemporary intellectual climate. (shrink)

Resumen: Propongo una lectura de los relatos eróticos de Di Giorgio, según este, el hibridismo genérico textual y sexual ampliamente reconocido por la crítica, así como la recurrencia de transformaciones y metamorfosis a impulsos de un deseo que cancela las fronteras entre lo humano, lo animal, lo vegetal y lo material, realiza una profunda crítica epistemológica a la racionalidad moderna, andro y antropocéntrica, y su forma de concebir identidad y diferencia. El eje de esta ruptura epistemológica es la desarticulación de (...) las estructuras binarias sexo/género y Naturaleza/Cultura, que disloca la alineación de cuerpo-género-deseo y la oposición clásica bios/zoé, bases fundamentales de los órdenes políticos y simbólicos de Occidente.: I propose a reading of Di Giorgio's erotic stories according to which generic textual and sexual hybridism widely recognized by critics, as well as the recurrence of transformations and metamorphosis at the urging of a desire that cancels the boundaries between the human, animal, vegetable and material, he makes a deep epistemological critique of modern rationality, andro and anthropocentric, and his way of conceiving identity and difference. The axis of this epistemological rupture is the disarticulation of the sex/gender and nature/culture binary structures, which dislocate the alignment of body-gender-desire and the classic bios/zoé opposition, fundamental bases of the political and symbolic orders of the West. (shrink)

Erotic Wisdom provides a careful reading of one of Plato's most beloved dialogues, the Symposium, which explores the nature and scope of human desire (erôs). Gary Alan Scott and William A. Welton engage all of the dialogue's major themes, devoting special attention to illuminating Plato's conception of philosophy. In the Symposium, Plato situates philosophy in an intermediate (metaxu) position--between need and resource, ignorance and knowledge--showing how the very lack of what one desires can become a guiding form of contact with (...) the objects of human desire. The authors examine the concept of intermediacy in relation both to Platonic metaphysics and to Plato's moral psychology, arguing that philosophy, for Plato, is properly understood as a kind of "being in-between," as the love of wisdom (philosophia) rather than the possession of it. (shrink)

Les Lais de Marie de France présentent un jeu subtil entre l’impossibilité de décrire l’acte charnel et l’utilisation d’un langage travaillé qui y fait allusion suivant les codes de la courtoisie. S’allonger l’un près de l’autre dans un lit, rire, jouer et parler, le pinceau de Marie de France n’ira pas plus loin. Mais l’intensité du désir sexuel sera dénotée par d’autres éléments symboliques appartenant au monde naturel (arbres, plantes, oiseaux). Les amants, captifs d’amours interdites et abandonnés à leurs plaisirs (...) sensuels, risquent parfois la mort mais, dans une dialectique entre l’amour et la mort, leurs lits funéraires, posés l’un à côté de l’autre, rétablissent mythiquement l’amour par la promesse d’une fusion éternelle. (shrink)

In this essay I follow one argument strand from Linda Singer's Erotic Welfare. How can we have a forward-looking and affirmative ideal of sexual freedom when the AIDS panic has altered the sexual landscape and instigated new justifications for oppressive sexual disciplines? How can we be sexual subjects when processes of commodification and disciplinary practices have constrained sexual expression while proliferating sexual fetishes? These are some of the questions this book formulates, without answering.

Resumen: El presente estudio tiene como finalidad el análisis e interpretación del componente erótico en la novela Daimón. Bajo este presupuesto teórico, se promueve un enfoque contradiscursivo en el que América es transfigurada en espacio erótico, donde el tiempo pagano se superpone a la temporalidad oficial, desatando una crítica continua que desafía lo que se considera como la verdad oficial de los hechos.: The article is an analysis and interpretation of the erotic element in the novel Daimón. Based on this (...) theoretical premise, it proposes a counter-discursive approach in which America is transfigured in an erotic space in which pagan time overlaps accepted temporality, unleashing a continuous critique that challenges the official truth of historical events. (shrink)

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper explores the epistemology and methodology for describing sexual/erotic desire in women. Culture provides a variety of discourses which create possibilities for individual agents to think, experience and act. This paper outlines the dominant discourses of sexuality. The main focus is on the emerging psychodynamic understanding of erotic desire as a cultivated way of experiencing and expressing intersubjective embodied desire. The story of a female research participant has been selected to illustrate the journey from undifferentiated physical and mental experiences (...) of desire to the peculiar integration of both aspects in her lived experience. A combination of interpretive methods is employed. (shrink)

The book then explores the Lysis and the Phaedrus, which both address how the object arises, in two different ways, the Socratic and the Platonic."--BOOK JACKET.

Taking a cue from Slavoj Zizek’s reading of the Qur’anic tale of the two sons of Adam, Abel and Cain, this paper examines an overlooked erotic layer of meaning archived in the key Qur’anic term for sacrifice; it also explores the nexus of eroticism and sacrifice in this tale. At the beginning of this text the Qur’an announces that the “truth” of this story will be told. However, that truth turns out to be the symbolic absence of the truth, allowing (...) for a range of interpretive possibilities. I will argue that in the Qur’anic narrative of Cain and Abel the “shame/penis” of the murdered brother is the site of the archive, and interpretive possibilities are conditioned by the function of the master-signifier, the phallus alluded to in the text by the presence of the penis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Erotic Attunement: Parenthood and the Ethics of Sensuality between Unequals by Cristina L. H. TrainaSandra Sullivan-DunbarErotic Attunement: Parenthood and the Ethics of Sensuality between Unequals CRISTINA L. H. TRAINA Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, 363 pp. $55.00In this ambitious and broadly interdisciplinary work, Cristina Traina begins from an experience that evades contemporary discussion: maternal sensual pleasure in the care of infants and young children. As Traina notes, (...) this experience puts two contemporary dogmas on a “collision course”: the widely accepted norm that sexual pleasure is intrinsically good and the widely accepted norm that sexual pleasure between unequals is intrinsically exploitative. As with other feminist turns toward neglected experience, this one calls for a recalibration of ethical models—in this case, a more complex and nuanced sexual ethic.Traina challenges readers to broaden notions of sexuality beyond androcentric models focused primarily on particular acts and on genital release. Such models are deeply graven in the Christian tradition and reinforced through reductive cultural appropriations of Freudian thought. But all human relations are embodied and involve desire, argues Traina, and are thus in some sense erotic, though most do not involve genital sexuality. Likewise, her readers are challenged to recognize the pervasiveness of relations of inequality in human life, when most Christian sexual ethics limit themselves to relations between equals, or at least understand a sexual ethic to aim at equality and mutuality.The book engages psychological resources demonstrating the human need for appropriate touch as well as the profound damage done by abusive touch. The need is so universal and foundational that Traina casts it as a human right; yet offering such touch appropriately is a subtle and challenging moral task beset with danger and the potential for self-deception.Traina diagnoses the sexual abuser as a fragmented self, one unable to perceive the concrete reality, needs, and experiences of her victim and bent on the doomed project of creating a whole self by appropriating and objectifying the other. Thus, at the heart of her ethic of sensuality between unequals is the notion of “attunement.” The attuned caregiver can acknowledge and fully experience inclinations, joys, and pains with a contemplative and compassionate awareness that allows considered and appropriate responses. The attuned care-giver lives with “unending, acknowledged desire” (177), a desire that glories in the goodness of the child in her care and, in so doing, creatively elicits subjectivity from her rather than manipulating her to meet the needs of the caregiver. [End Page 240]This ethical vision is developed in dialogue with a number of resources from Christian and secular sources. Traina helpfully nuances a Thomistic account of the virtue of temperance as a guideline for appropriate touch. She also develops revisionist accounts of Augustinian desire offered by Wendy Farley and Linda Holler. I found myself wondering whether some more traditional interpretations of Augustine might serve Traina’s project as well as or better than these revisionist understandings, which emphasize desire as a permanent state rather than directed toward final rest in God.Likewise, Traina works her way through the plethora of recent eros theologies, drawing in particular on recent interpretations of Plato’s Symposium that stress the creativity of eros in bringing to birth goodness and beauty as well as its potential for enabling a degree of other-regard. It seems to this reader that a contemporary ethic of sexuality between unequals calls for greater other-regard than the most generous interpretation of Plato’s ladder of love can suggest. However, Plato’s caution about the profound difficulty of directing eros toward the true good resonates with the difficulty of achieving the “erotic attunement” described by Traina.In any case, quibbles about the resources and interpretations that Traina mines to support her ethic do not lessen the originality, power, and importance of this book, which extends beyond sexual ethics to reframe questions about embodiment, (in)equality, and moral agency in profound and necessary ways.Sandra Sullivan-DunbarLoyola University, ChicagoCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This research examines the nature of gender presentation of men who were the stars on Disney Channel shows. Research has already examined how young women who were Disney stars become quickly sexualised and perceived as women under the male gaze. However, there is little corresponding research on boys who are subject to the scrutiny of the public. I engage in a phenomenological content analysis of the social media of three adult male actors who starred on the show Wizards of Waverly (...) Place. The nature of masculine gender capital encourages these men to move towards a masculine ideal while recognising they are under the erotic gaze. These men push to be severed from their youth identities, forming a strategic boundary that nods to the homoeroticism surrounding their identity. (shrink)

Anselm’s 'Proslogion' is, as he says in its Preface, 'unum argumentum', a single line of reasoning, that builds toward the following: “that God is truly,” “that he is the highest good who needs no other,” and that he is the one “whom all things need so that they may be and may be well.” This paper attempts to shed light on how Anselm carries out the threefold task that he sets for himself and way in which his procedure brings unity (...) to the work. Although I do not provide a full account of the unity of the 'Proslogion', I lay the groundwork for such an account by reflecting on the 'Proslogion' in light of the 'Symposium', with a view to bringing a pattern of thinking present in Plato’s work to bear on the 'Proslogion'—an intertextual approach that illuminates aspects of Anselm’s thinking and reveal the rich Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition within which he was working. In the 'Symposium', one discerns a pattern of thinking that consists of three “moments”: a comic moment, a tragic moment, and a philosophic moment. To follow this pattern in one’s inquiry is, as Socrates suggests, to practice 'ta erôtica', “erotics,” the art of erotic thinking. Familiarity with this pattern of erotic thinking helps make sense of Anselm’s thinking in the 'Proslogion', and in this paper I reveal how this is so. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to elucidate whether and how the theory of erotic capital may function as a feminist tool to subvert the hierarchies and relations in current economy in favour of the empowerment and liberation of women. Thus, by analyzing the ways in which white, liberal feminism directly constructs its claims and petitions through the absorption of liberal epistemological dogmas, we intend to search the direct relation between the ideology developed by white, cisgender feminists and liberal economics (...) and politics. This article demonstrates how a theory of erotic capital does not lead to a feminist subversion of economy, but reinforces the liberal economic and political system that relies on a masculine and androcentric epistemology. The subjectivity that women can achieve through the exploitation of erotic capital is only as consumers and not as productive agents.El objetivo de este artículo es arrojar luz sobre si el capital erótico puede ser considerado una herramienta feminista para la subversión de las jerarquías y relaciones económicas y favorecer una liberación de las mujeres. Para ello, observaremos cómo el feminismo blanco y liberal, ha construido sus peticiones sin cuestionar los principios fundamentales de la economía liberal con el objetivo de demostrar la relación que existe entre el feminismo blanco liberal cisgénero y el sistema político-económico liberal. Este artículo demuestra que la implementación del capital erótico no conduce a una subversión feminista de la economía, sino que fortalece el sistema económico y político liberal que se fundamenta en una epistemología masculina y androcéntrica. La subjetividad a la que acceden las mujeres por medio del capital erótico es en clave de consumidoras. (shrink)

The asshole remains the one shameful part of the bourgeois body.... The anus is the private part par excellence of the bourgeois body.... It has no place in socially admissible desire.... The use of the asshole is the touchstone of the conflict between the private and the public. Guy Hocquenghem.

Socrates engages his audience in Phaedrus with speeches that include revised or newly composed myths that express his theory of philosophical eros. The aim of the speeches is to generate a love for truth that spills over into dialogue. Speeches are a starting point for dialogue, just like physical attraction is the beginning of love. In the case of Phaedrus, the beginning of philosophy is portrayed using playful and rhetorically rich speeches that serve as "love potions" awakening the novice's soul, (...) and ultimately leading Phaedrus to higher rungs on the ladder of love through the palinode, a medicinal speech. It is thinking about speeches, not the speeches themselves, which moves Socrates' student Phaedrus from the love of speeches to the love of Beauty itself. This is a stark contrast to the purpose of speechmaking for the sophist. The sophist seeks to enchant the soul, while the philosopher seeks to charm the soul into loving wisdom through stimulating discussions. Socrates also uses role reversals in the lover-beloved relationship to model the soul's ascent, contrasting the traditional roles with the way the lover and beloved are presented in Socrates' speeches. The novice must actively recollect Beauty itself in order to ascend, rather than passively listening to speeches that provide an image of beauty. Socrates' interlocutors must move themselves up the ladder of love from their own philosophical eros; wisdom is not attained by merely being pushed all the way up the ladder of love. (shrink)

What follows is a self-contained excerpt from a work in progress, namely, a reconsideration of the Platonic doctrine of Eros, together with a commentary on the non-erotic paradigm of the philosopher to be found in the Theaetetus and Phaedo. My intention is to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the Platonic view of the philosophical life on the one hand and of the relation binding the so-called Ideas of beauty and the good with truth on the other.

Le réexamen des trois fragments d’embléma provenant de l’étage de la maison IV B du Quartier du théâtre à Délos montre qu’ils ne peuvent appartenir à un seul Éros en vol, comme cela avait été proposé lors de leur publication. La mise en série de plusieurs parallèles connus en Italie permet de reconstituer le sujet de la scène – des Érotes jouant avec un lion entravé – et de proposer une nouvelle interprétation pour le fragment C (patte de lion plutôt (...) que bras d’Éros). On ne connaît pas le lieu de fabrication de cet embléma, mais l’origine alexandrine de son thème iconographique est avérée, et il constitue un nouveau témoignage des relations que l’île entretenait avec la capitale lagide. (shrink)

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love, 436 pages./ Richard Shusterman’s work is remarkable, among other things, for extending the range and power of the discipline of aesthetics, conceived by him as fundamental to many dimensions of human experience. Indeed, he has driven aesthetics into entirely new ranges of phenomena and strategies for research, and also perhaps returned to an ancient sense of the centrality of aesthetic concepts such as beauty to virtually (...) every human endeavor. In many ways, I think, Shusterman is fulfilling John Dewey’s vision as expressed in Art as Experience, as well as spelling out in detail the implications of his own early book Pragmatist Aesthetics, exploring the aesthetic dimensions of all sorts of human activities. Schusterman’s somaesthetics, however, takes what we might call the aesthetics, or ordinary experience, and centers it on the body in a way that Dewey could not have foreseen. The book might have been titled The Aesthetics of Sex, and as soon as he broaches the topic it strikes one that this subject has been remarkably neglected within philosophical aesthetics, or even in Western philosophy as a whole. Considered as dimensions or arenas of human experience, the aesthetic and the erotic, as Shusterman shows in replete multi-cultural detail, are bound up entirely and from the origins in many or even all cultures. (shrink)

A trenchant critique of sexuality in an age of discipline, where bodies and pleasures have become sites of regulatory power.

In this paper I consider the way in which divinity is realized through an imaginary locus in the mystical thought of Jewish kabbalah and Hindu tantra. It demonstrates a reflective consciousness by the adept or master in understanding the place of God’s being, as a supernal and mundane reality. For the comparative assessment of these two distinctive approaches I shall use as a point of departure the interpretative strategies employed by Elliot Wolfson in his detailed work on Jewish mysticism. He (...) argues that there is an androcentric bias embedded in the speculative outlook of medieval kabbalah, as he reads the texts through a psychoanalytic lens. In a similar way, I will argue that there is an androcentric bias to the speculations presented in medieval Shaiva tantra, in particular that division known as the Trika. Overall, my aim is to suggest some functional and perhaps structural similarities to the characterization of divinity in these two traditions, through brief analyses of the erotic understanding of the nature of the Godhead. (shrink)

This paper emphasizes the place and the role of the aesthetic quality and the role of the erotic in Levinas?s project that deals with ethical an-archaeology. Despite Levinas?s categorical statements that there are irreconcilable differences between ethics and aesthetics, i.e. between ethics and the erotic, above all, it is emphasized here that these differences do not represent a stark or sharp contrast, but quite contrary, they often constitute a subversive ontological element. On the other hand, somewhat unexpectedly, with its ethical (...) anti-aestheticism Levinas?s?noncontemporary? thought appears to be, at the same time, both significant and critical, elementary, emancipatory and contemporary in relation to present-day reactionary reactualization and revitalization of the aesthetic quality which mechanically proceeds to develop on the margins of Levinas?s emancipatory past. nema. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of how erotic love works to develop virtue. It is argued that love drives moral development by holding the creation of virtue in the individual as the emotion’s intentional object. After analyzing the distinction between passive and active accounts of the object of love, this paper demonstrates that a Platonic virtue-ethical understanding of erotic love—far from being consumed with ascetic contemplation—offers a positive treatment of emotion’s role in the attainment and social practice of virtue.

The thought of contemporary North American theologian and ethicist Wendy Farley is an unflinching clarion call to justice and compassion. Farley invites us to discover ways of embodying the deep compassion capable of resisting pernicious distortions and traumatizing injustices that harm and dehumanize us all. This volume of essays embodies her invitation to awaken as beloved community. And when we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of struggle and despair, Farley reminds us that the powerful longing of hope, at times against (...) all evidence, refuses to give up on seeking justice and wholeness. Compassionate justice, radical hospitality, creative liberation, and deep listening emerge as more than ethical values for Farley; they are expressions of erotic faith, a praxis of faithfulness born of divine desire. These writings explore transformative perspectives and practices that have the capacity to help us recover and author our identity as the "god-bearers" we are. Erotic faith embodies the love-seeking persistence of divine faithfulness necessary to transform us from within; it meets the truth of human harm, vulnerability, and suffering by offering a complex, struggling, unscripted creativity capable of remaking us, and our world, until the beloved community is whole. (shrink)

This book shows that scientific explanations fall short of providing an exhaustive explanation of the dynamics of erotic perception. It furnishes portraits from Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Irigaray that help us understand the ethical, ontological, and religious dimensions of the pleasure, pain, hostility, shame, immodesty, tenderness, caring, and playfulness that compose erotic perception. The final portrait in the book portrays erotic perception as a challenge to existence. This portrait shows that the discernment of the other as sexually significant gives rise (...) to wonder, excitement, agitation, and trouble. The totality of existence is disturbed as we are faced with a decision about venturing to care for the other's existence. (shrink)

Martial's epigrams on the dead slave-child Erotion, especially the first and third , have generally given rise to sentimental comments about the poet's love for young children or the humane concern which he displays for his slaves. Scholars show less unanimity in their interpretation of the second piece , where the poet's laudatio of his lost puella is made the occasion of a joke against Paetus, who has managed to survive the loss of his noble and wealthy wife. The poem (...) in question runs as follows. (shrink)

En este ensayo se presenta la genealogía de las nociones de melancolía erótica e histeria a través del estudio de textos de la medicina abarcando desde la antigüedad hasta el siglo XIX.

Dans le dialogue V des Dialogues des courtisanes de Lucien (IIe siècle ap. J.-C.), apparaissent trois femmes impliquées dans une relation érotique et qui accomplissent des pratiques sexuelles variées. Il ne s’agit pas d’interpréter ces différents actes érotiques comme les traces de catégories sexuelles pertinentes dans le monde antique pour définir une “identité”. L’analyse des voix énonciatives permet au contraire de voir dans ce dialogue une mise en scène et une mise en abyme du travail de l’auteur face à un (...) public demandeur de clichés et d’idées toutes faites (et souvent contradictoires). Le dialogue ne fait apparaître ni butch, ni fem, ni identité liée à une orientation sexuelle ; il est un discours sur les techniques de création artistique et érotique. (shrink)

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 profound and personal 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. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, _The Erotic Phenomenon _is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

Well over a decade ago now, John Moles drew attention to the fact that the words of Clytemnestra at Aesch. Ag. 1388ff. included some striking sexual imagery that had gone unnoticed. To summarize a rich and detailed discussion, he said: ‘Clytemnestra represents the dying Agamemnon as having an ejaculation of dark blood—and herself as rejoicing in reciprocal climax as her husband bespatters her—with his blood’. My purpose here is to draw attention to two more examples of this kind of language (...) to be found in close proximity to the foregoing. (shrink)

Indecent Theology has provided both Feminist Theology and Liberation Theology with new contours for rethinking bodies, power, dominance, and submission. With regard to the logic of dominance that radically pushes the margins of the margins into a form of inexistent living, I suggest a material turn to rethink the contours that are evoked with Indecent Theology. Materialism has long stood as a philosophy opposing the overwhelming dominance of language and the poststructuralist emphasis that has emerged as the ‘linguistic turn’. Considering (...) ‘new materialism’ as a theoretical platform to reread Indecent Theology provides theologies and ethics an opportunity to re-imagine indecent methodologies through indecency, a sort of ethical perversion. I suggest an indecent turn in mobilizing materialism and kink as theories to reread indecent theology for a productive queer materialist sexual theology. The feminist liberation theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid pushes both feminism and liberation into new contours of power and submission and initiates new contours of queer sexuality into the discourse. When analysing Althaus-Reid’s work, we are brought to attention to the margins of the margins, an awareness of the struggle for power and control by those deemed less than. There are contours of power at and in the margins of the margins, those who occupy ‘bottom space’. From a kink/bdsm orientation, I propose to reread Alrhaus-Read’s feminist liberation theology as decolonial erotics that helps to generate a productive materialist queer sexuality. The overarching methodology of this article is a quasi-auto ethnographic investigation into the ways in which the contours of race, class, gender, sex, sexuality, and ability affect power and submission and in turn reframes both queer theology and queer sexuality that is rooted in the living out of a very particular theology and ethics, which is rooted in queer relating. Theology can neither materialize in a vacuum nor in isolation. An indecent turn to a queer sexual theology that is rooted in a queer relationality demands attention to the interdependence of queer relating that is materialized through the interdependency of the growing queer desires of bodies, power, dominance, and submission. (shrink)