Erotic Phenomenon

The Erotic Phenomenon by Jean-Luc Marion, translated by Stephen E Lewis, 222 pages

The product of a lifetime of thinking and, yes, desiring, The Erotic Phenomenon consists of a series of meditations on the nature and meaning of love.  The author finds that philosophy is nothing without love.  The essential question of metaphysics, he argues, is not "Do I exist?" but "What does it matter?", and only in love can the answer be found.  This leads Marion to replace the epistemic reduction of phenomenology with an "erotic reduction", which leads to a very different relationship to time and space and the other.

Love, for Marion, is univocal - there is no essential division between eros and agape.  Love is, for human beings, necessarily enfleshed, for it is only in the flesh that we are disclosed to each other.  Love takes different forms based on the relationship between the will and the flesh.  There is a love in which the will is subordinate to the flesh, which can only last as long as the flesh endures.  There is also a love found in discourse which is oriented to the person and eternity.  Opposed to these forms of love is a false reciprocity which subordinates the law of love to the law of exchange.

A remarkable work, so necessary for a world in which love is so often invoked and so rarely contemplated.