Title: The Erotic Phenomenon Author: Jean-Luc Marion, Steven E. Lewis (trans.) Publisher: University of Chicago Press Publish Date: 2007 Pages: 222 Genres:: Non-Fiction,Reviewer: Chris R. Morgan

Rating:

There might be some out there who go onto this site and say to themselves, "Perhaps my love life and/or idea of love itself is nowhere near as intellectualized as it I think it should be." To that, I would probably have said ‘tough shit.’ No one, not even the learned would ever put love through such rigors. Those, of course, were innocent times before I knew of Jean-Luc Marion, professor of philosophy at the University of Paris—Sorbonne, University of Chicago, among others. With his book, not available for consumption in the English-speaking world—props go to Franciscan University of Stubenville’s professor Steven E. Lewis for that—the key to unlocking that sweltering sauna of academia can now be in your palms.

For anyone who's had to sit through a Philosophy 101 class, philosophical writing can be polarizing. Some people read Nietzsche (in context) and find fluid, incisive poetry for the free-spirited mind, while others, i.e. marketing majors, find a jumble of archaic $25 words that add nothing to their life philosophy of booze and Xbox. While Marion's prose does not immediately recall the dense purple haze of Descartes, Locke or Kierkagaard, the book is no stroll through the student union. Marion dedicates six chapters, each with seven subsections, to the subject of love and all that latches onto it. Marion's central motivation in writing the book was the lack of attention philosophers gave to the subject of love. Furthermore, he goes on to say that philosophers don't love love, and if they gave any attention to it they'd mangle and mistreat it rather heinously. Clearly, Marion sees himself as the exception to his own argument. His basic approach is to declare Descartes' well-known maxim, generally stated as "I think, therefore I am" as, well, rather cold and precedes love over thought as the core of ego.

Marion's tackling of the subject is extensive, even for a book that is just over 200 pages. He puts his analytic merit to the likes of vanity, the individual, the truth, space, time, reason and so forth in relation to love. Of all the sections he goes on about, it was his consecutive writings on self-hate and vengeance that really stood out. I've openly professed self-hatred on more than one occasion (with the prescription slips to prove it), yet Marion's views on it lead me to believe that I am not alone in this. Marion believes that self-hate is more common as opposed to self-love, which can be admitted but not felt. Marion goes through a series of stages that lap into his section on vengeance where hate spreads outward, beyond the self and to others.

If such ideas seem harrowing, you can hardly be blamed. But if one is up to the task, Marion's prose can at once be, provocative, beautiful and complex, simply put, unabashedly intellectual. Some paragraphs fill up most of a page if not a little more. Casual readers might be overwhelmed by Marion's asides within arguments. Much credit should be given to Lewis for the thorough translation of the book. As impenetrable as some passages may be, they're certainly not awkward and still embody all of Marion's central ideas. The Erotic Phenomenon isn't so much a pleasurable read, but a stimulating read about how pleasure works, where it comes from and basically why it is the way it is. There may be no real conclusions, but anyone who wants to delve into the depths of how love affects the human condition and improve their vocabulary should find a comforting, paper-based bedfellow.