December 2, 2003
"For the man who cannot escape his own nature, the man whose life is open to exuberance, eroticism is the greatest personal problem of all. At the same time it is a universal problem in a way that no other problem is."
Georges Bataille, Eroticism: Death And Sensuality
For both Nietzsche and Bataille we humans are passionate beings. What Bataille makes explicit is that we are also erotic beings. He writes that:
"The whole business of eroticism is to strike to the inmost core of the living being so that the heart stands still....The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives."
Philosophy must come to terms with the passionate and erotic basis of human life. To exclude eroticism from philosophy is to exclude the well-spring of life. Most philosophy is divorced from life.
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