While the first half of Eros and Civilization does not sound any more optimistic than the conclusion of Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, it does move from diagnosis to prognosis or from critique to hope.
But even though Webb's emphasis on emotions is understandable from an etymological point of view the term "erotic" derives from the Greek word "eros" meaning love or passion he does not succeed in spelling out the necessary or sufficient conditions for erotic art.
After all, Socrates does not say that eros makes the creation or maintenance of Kallipolis impossible.
The mix of Ancient Greek or Roman pieces and Renaissance items may have been dictated by the simple need for a sufficient number of artifacts to fill a small room — even the Met does not own hundreds of Eros and Aphrodite figures from the ancient world.
Marcuse does not intend to subjugate Logos (reason) to Eros (desire).
Socrates, the guest of honour, suggests that Eros is characterised by the absence of the desired object: one desires what one does not possess.
In this Sasha Schneider show I kept seeing repeated Lawrence motifs -- the fight between eros and death; death ripping open pathos, leading to homoerotic revelations; the nurturing innocence of youth -- even though Schneider does not actually "illustrate" any of Lawrence's stories.
The early Christian perception of eros as the most sublime form of egocentricity and self-assertion, the drive to acquire the divine itself, is reflected in the fact that the Greek New Testament does not use the word erōs but rather the relatively rare word agapē.
Interestingly, he does not, in Beware of Pity, allude to, or make any real use of, the atmosphere of stifling sexual repression that animates "Eros Matutinus", one of the best chapters of The World of Yesterday, in which Zweig acknowledges there were some very significant aspects of genteel society the world was right to discard.
Soble's intent in understanding eros to be a reason-dependent sort of love is to articulate a sharp contrast with agape, a sort of love that does not respond to the value of its object.
