EROS IN A NARCISSISTIC CULTURE CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY IN COOPERAn ON WITH THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY Volume 22 Editor: John Drummond, Mount Saint Mary's College Editorial Board: Elizabeth A. Behnke David Carr, Emory University Lester Embree, Horida Atlantic University J. Claude Evans, Washington University Jose Huertas-lourda, Wilfrid Laurier University Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University William R. McKenna, Miami University Algis Mickunas, Ohio University J. N. Mohanty, Temple University Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitiit, Mainz Elisabeth Straker, Philosophisches Seminarium der Universitiit Koln Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University Scope The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy through creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in culture generally, offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that call for creative responses. Although the work of several generations of thinkers has provided phenomenology with many results with which to approach these challenges, a truly successful response to them will require building on this work with new analyses and methodological innovations. EROS IN A NARCISSISTIC CULTURE AN ANALYSIS ANCHORED IN THE LIFE-WORLD by RALPH D. ELLIS Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-13: 978-94-010-7243-4 e-1SBN-13: 978-94-009-1661-6 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-1661-6 Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates the publishing programmes of D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff, Dr W. Junk and MTP Press. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1996 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. CONTENTS Acknowledgements IX INTRODUCTION The Urgency of Changing Our Thinking about Eros 1 1. The Centrality of Eros in the Project of Defining Meaning for Human Beings 2 2. Reassessing Assumptions and Methods in the Study of Eros 14 PART I A Phenomenology of the Experience of Eros 35 CHAPTER ONE Eros as Transformation 35 1. The Awakening Phase 40 2. The Space of Empathy 60 CHAPTER TWO After the Awakening 71 1. The Adventure Phase 72 2. Chagrin d'Amour as Existential Despair 81 3. The Reassertion of Oneself 90 CHAPTER THREE Sexuality and Infatuation 97 1. Infatuation as the Key to Phenomenological Insight into the Sexuality of Eros 98 2. The Dropping of the Selective Inattention to Sexuality 109 EROS IN A NARCISSISTIC CULTURE CHAPTER FOUR Fear of Eros and the Fragmentation of Consciousness 125 1. Eros and the Transcendental Ego 129 2. Fear of Transformation and Equivocal Experiences of Eros: Coquetry, Insensitive Reductivism, Sado-Masochism, and Non-voluptuous Eros 137 3. Authentic and Inauthentic Eros 153 4. Eros as Battlefield in the War of Ego and Culture: Transition to Part II 160 PART II Eros in Its Broader Existential and Cultural Context 165 CHAPTER FIVE The Destruction of Eros 165 1. The Central Importance of the Space of Empathy 168 2. Interpersonal Factors as Destructive of the Space of Empathy 174 (a) Sociocultural Factors 174 (b) The Projection of Blame and Guilt 178 3. Urban-Industrial Hubris as Destructive of the Space of Empathy 182 4. The Allure of Adulterous Empathy 192 CHAPTER SIX The Obsession with Eros as Pointing beyond Itself 201 1. The Experience of Existential Panic 203 2. The Breakdown of Generalized Empathy in Not-Having-a-Life 210 3. Eros and Existential Panic 214 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER SEVEN Eros and the Value of Being 219 1. The Role of Finitude in the Quasi-Aesthetic Experience of Awe 220 2. Ingenuous Innocence and the Knowing Smile of the Sophisticate 233 3. The Inevitability that Consciousness Must Go Outside Itself to Find an Object for Intense Value Experiences 250 CONCLUSION 258 REFERENCES 275 INDEX 281 vii Acknowledgements More than with any of my other works, the author of this book serves primarily as an anthropological datum or phenomenological example through whom ideas and feelings emanate or surface, but with whom they do not originate. There were people who labored on this project without having anything whatever to gain personally from doing so. In particular, I was repeatedly aroused from various states of dogmatic somnambulism by my good friend Shawn Beaty, with whose philosophical ideas my own have always developed in interaction, and who mercifully read and commented on several versions of the manuscript, including the earliest (and, yes, the worst). Another good friend, Robert Powell, also suffered with me through the formative stages, patiently reading and discussing numerous ill-formed fragments. My friend and colleague Randy Auxier helped me not only to think through the issues of this book, but to extend them to a broader socio-political context - the subject I hope for a sequel. Eugene Gendlin, besides as always standing as a crucial influence on my development and a continual source of epistemological methodology, also gave some crucial advice on the specifics of rewriting and rethinking this book. I am especially indebted to Tracie Ravita, my informal instructor of literary criticism, by whom many of the best ideas of the book were co-created and allowed to evolve through unencumbered discussion until they took on a life of their own. An unusually helpful anonymous reader at Kluwer went far beyond the call of duty in offering creative and useful comments and suggestions, most of which I used very much to my advantage, but could not cite. Tom Nenon, Lee Horvitz, Louis Berger, William McKenna, and David Carr helped at various stages in the rewriting/rethinking process. As always, but also in this case especially as never, I am grateful for my wonderful wife Lynda's inspiration, encouragement, and substantive contributions to my thinking on this issue. ix INTRODUCTION The Urgency of Changing Our Thinking about Eros In Atlanta recently, a man broke into the apartment of his former girlfriend and brutally murdered both her and her new lover with an axe. When asked later whether he had considered the consequences of being apprehended and prosecuted, he responded that without his relationship to this particular woman his life had no meaning, and for this reason it made no difference what happened to him. All-too-facile explanations of such events can be devised in terms of neurological imbalances or improper child-rearing practices. But why are suicide, the murder of spouses and lovers, and other crimes of passion so much more prevalent in advanced, urban-industrial cultures, and especially in those where people's value is assessed in terms of socio-economic success and failure? And why do the associated psychic disturbances express themselves so prominently in terms of disruption of attitudes toward love relationships? It cannot be a mere coincidence that the most heinous crimes are crimes of love. I shall suggest here that the most direct way to understand the most prevalent dysfunctions of the modern psyche is to understand the dysfunctions of eros. The reason for this is twofold. First, eros is central tQl the project of defining meaning for conscious beings - for reasons more fundamentally philosophical than anything envisioned by Freud or other drive-reduction theorists. And secondly, the failure to reach a coherent understanding of the nature of eros, which has been especially problematic both within and outside of intellectual circles throughout the twentieth century (but not only at this time), leads to a corresponding misunderstanding of ourselves. In this introductory chapter, I would like to begin by discussing both of these reasons for believing that the study of eros is so important - especially during our present period of cultural development, but not only in this period. 1 2 EROS IN A NARCISSISTIC CULTURE 1. The Centrality of Eros in the Project of Defining Meaning for Human Beings It might sound at first like an overstatement to say that it is impossible to understand the meaning of human existence, especially in the contemporary era, without understanding the nature of love. Yet it is now becoming increasingly clear that not only social, cultural and psychological problems hinge on this issue, but also philosophical ones of the most fundamental kind. If humans are essentially interactional forms of being, and if human consciousness consists in a complex pattern of activity rather than a static, thing-like entity, then the love relationship is the most powerful interactional vehicle through which the self achieves or attempts to achieve the transformations needed to actualize its potential as a dynamic rather than static conscious being. In fact, the notion of a static conscious being is, in the view I shall urge, a contradiction in terms. Consciousness must be 'pulled out of itself' by means of transformative events of which intense love relationships are the prime examples, in order to feel 'fully alive,' to avoid a sleepwalking form of existence or a sense of merely treading water. Why, then, is it so often the case that an erotic dimension must be involved in such powerful and meaning-enhancing feelings of love? I shall argue that, for most of us, erotic feelings provide just the kind of powerful physical symbolization and embodiment that is needed to intensify the emotions of admiration and compassion. This process is important for two interrelated reasons. First, the interaction of admiration and compassion, as intensified by embodied symbolization, makes accessible a direct experience of the value of being as instantiated in the love object. Sexuality serves this symbolizing purpose. In the second place, conscious beings, as Merleau-Ponty stresses in the Phenomenology of Perception, are by their very nature erotic beings, because consciousness itself is an interactional and not merely an individual attribute. In all of nature, we find no conscious beings who reproduce asexually. Derrida and the post-structuralists also have emphasized this interactional dimension in the constitution of human consciousness, and I shall argue extensively for it here.
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