The Erotic Phenomenon - Hardcover

Marion, Jean-Luc

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226505367 ISBN 13: 9780226505367

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2006

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Jean-Luc Marion, member of the Académie française, is emeritus professor of philosophy at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). He is the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies, professor of the philosophy of religions and theology, and professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He also holds the Dominique Dubarle chair at the Institut Catholique of Paris. He is the author of many books, including The Erotic Phenomenon and God without Being, both also published by the University of Chicago Press. 

Review:

“In attempting to place love at the center of things, Jean-Luc Marion wishes to escape the reign of heartless reason.”

(Roger Pol-Droit Le Monde)

“A superb philosophical reflection on love. . . . Here, finally, is a book that explores the intimate landscape of each one of us . . . . [Marion] deserves our complete attention. Let’s give it to him.”--L’Express

(L'Express)

“The Erotic Phenomenon is a philosophical act of love. Not a discourse of love, nor one on love, but an act of love, an act that makes love, that makes it happen, that ‘conceives’ it.”--Liberation

 

(Liberation)

"Marion's avowed topic is the erotic phenomenon, and his method is phenomenology. He is a master of that method, and the result is an analysis of erotic love of unparalleled precision and depth. The depiction he gives of the erotic phenomenon is fundamentally convincing, and readers will find their own loves illuminated and questioned." (Paul J. Griffiths Commonweal 2007-03-09)

“Marion is doing the most interesting work in phenomenology today. . . . This work carries on the true spirit of phenomenology: this is not a book about other books about love. It is patiently and carefully attentive to ‘the things themselves,’ and reads as an analysis that is at once rigorous and lyrical—attuned to both the concept and the caress.”

(Choice 2007-06-01)

"I now add the writings of Jean-Luc Marion to those whose writings enhance the analyst's understandings of the psychoanalytic encounter by bringing to the forefront a theoretical frame that further illuminates the internal world of the self and its relational others. . . . The Erotic Phenomenon is strongly recommended to a diverse humanistic audience that includes the theologian, academician, and practitioner." (Annie Lee Jones PsycCritiques)

"The book is what we have come to expect from Marion: challenging, subtle and nuanced analyses, dassling formulations, . . a provocative and original philosophical genius." (John D. Caputo Ethics)

"For readers who will patiently bring it into perspective before thebackground of Marion's philosophy, the book will open a stunningly original and provocative view of love." (Sandra Wynands Christianity and Literature)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0226505367
• ISBN 13: 9780226505367
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248