Eros in a Narcissistic Culture: An Analysis Anchored in the Life-World

293 Pages·1996·8.76 MB·English

by  Ralph D. Ellis (auth.)

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,
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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
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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.