Another look at erotic love
Published Feb 13, 2022 12:05 am
THROUGH UNTRUE
Fr. Rolando V. dela Rosa, O.P.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Let's talk about erotic love. The word "erotic" comes from Eros, which, in Greek mythology is the god of love, the creative force that breaks old forms to make new ones. Eros reaches his full potential only when he is together with his brother Anteros. In Roman mythology, Anteros is rendered as Passio (passion) a powerful urge or drive, the satisfaction of which entail sacrifice and suffering.
Without Anteros, the god Eros regresses into a chubby, mischievous, winged child with bow and arrow (Cupid). This is the version of Eros which is popularized by Valentine's Day.
By retrieving the classical understanding of erotic love, we come to understand that when love is separated from sacrifice or suffering for the beloved, it becomes a mere feeling, attraction, infatuation, or worse, lust.
This was what happened when Alfred Kinsey and self-styled sex gurus equated erotic love with impersonal, unromantic, piston-like sexual activity which T.S. Eliot describes as the “love that we feel between the desire and the spasm."
Thus, erotic love and everything associated with it, have become synonymous with sexual pleasure that is purely for convenience, without commitment, and without regard to its outcome. No wonder, pornography has become a lucrative business.
Also, erotic love that is equated with sensual pleasure resulted in consequence-less sex (through contraceptives and abortion) and sex-less procreation (test tube pregnancy, etc.). People have been brainwashed to think that love and sex are trivial playthings.
Sigmund Freud attempted to rehabilitate erotic love in his 1920 book, titled Beyond the Pleasure Principle by not equating erotic love with sexual activity and the pleasure it brings. He called eros the “life force” that conquers the death instinct. For him, the pleasure principle is self-defeating. Seeking sexual pleasure for its own sake leads to death.
In his encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” (God Is Love), the former Pope Benedict XVI relates this “life force” to God. Benedict describes God not as the cold and rigid prime mover that pushes everything into motion. Rather, He is the passionate lover who pulls or attracts everything towards Himself.
He writes: “God, the universal principle of creation is, at the same time, a lover with all the passion of a true love.” His words remind me of Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ,” a most literal depiction of the passionate love of an erotic God who willingly endures unspeakable suffering for us, His beloved.
True erotic love is the force that moves a person to go beyond himself. It draws a man and woman away from their selfish interests in order to commit themselves to each other’s welfare. Erotic love, understood in the classical way, drives a person to give up his convenient lifestyle to serve others, or impels him to live and die for a person, a cause, belief, or ideology.
Plato puts it accurately thus: “Eros is the yearning for self-transcendence.” Ultimately, such a yearning drives us towards God because no earthly pleasure can ever satisfy our deepest longing. St. Augustine captured this sad yet hopeful human condition in his lament: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”
Or, in the words of the poet Francis Thompson, we experience true erotic love when we realize that the gloom brought about by our unfulfilled longing and desire is nothing but "the shadow of God’s hand, outstretched caressingly.”
Fr. Rolando V. dela Rosa, O.P.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Let's talk about erotic love. The word "erotic" comes from Eros, which, in Greek mythology is the god of love, the creative force that breaks old forms to make new ones. Eros reaches his full potential only when he is together with his brother Anteros. In Roman mythology, Anteros is rendered as Passio (passion) a powerful urge or drive, the satisfaction of which entail sacrifice and suffering.
Without Anteros, the god Eros regresses into a chubby, mischievous, winged child with bow and arrow (Cupid). This is the version of Eros which is popularized by Valentine's Day.
By retrieving the classical understanding of erotic love, we come to understand that when love is separated from sacrifice or suffering for the beloved, it becomes a mere feeling, attraction, infatuation, or worse, lust.
This was what happened when Alfred Kinsey and self-styled sex gurus equated erotic love with impersonal, unromantic, piston-like sexual activity which T.S. Eliot describes as the “love that we feel between the desire and the spasm."
Thus, erotic love and everything associated with it, have become synonymous with sexual pleasure that is purely for convenience, without commitment, and without regard to its outcome. No wonder, pornography has become a lucrative business.
Also, erotic love that is equated with sensual pleasure resulted in consequence-less sex (through contraceptives and abortion) and sex-less procreation (test tube pregnancy, etc.). People have been brainwashed to think that love and sex are trivial playthings.
Sigmund Freud attempted to rehabilitate erotic love in his 1920 book, titled Beyond the Pleasure Principle by not equating erotic love with sexual activity and the pleasure it brings. He called eros the “life force” that conquers the death instinct. For him, the pleasure principle is self-defeating. Seeking sexual pleasure for its own sake leads to death.
In his encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” (God Is Love), the former Pope Benedict XVI relates this “life force” to God. Benedict describes God not as the cold and rigid prime mover that pushes everything into motion. Rather, He is the passionate lover who pulls or attracts everything towards Himself.
He writes: “God, the universal principle of creation is, at the same time, a lover with all the passion of a true love.” His words remind me of Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ,” a most literal depiction of the passionate love of an erotic God who willingly endures unspeakable suffering for us, His beloved.
True erotic love is the force that moves a person to go beyond himself. It draws a man and woman away from their selfish interests in order to commit themselves to each other’s welfare. Erotic love, understood in the classical way, drives a person to give up his convenient lifestyle to serve others, or impels him to live and die for a person, a cause, belief, or ideology.
Plato puts it accurately thus: “Eros is the yearning for self-transcendence.” Ultimately, such a yearning drives us towards God because no earthly pleasure can ever satisfy our deepest longing. St. Augustine captured this sad yet hopeful human condition in his lament: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”
Or, in the words of the poet Francis Thompson, we experience true erotic love when we realize that the gloom brought about by our unfulfilled longing and desire is nothing but "the shadow of God’s hand, outstretched caressingly.”