Eros and love; Eros and life

This paper is an attempt to think the connection between Eros and life (conceived of as a potential of nature), on the one hand, and that between Eros and love, which is here conceived in more than one sense, including the Empedoclean, the Platonic and the Freudian/Lacanian. It sets out to comprehend the intimate and paradoxical connection between Eros as life-force without which nature in all its plenitude of individuations would be inconceivable, and Eros as love in more than one sense, as suggested by Freud. In the light of Freud's claim, that there is a tension between Eros and the interests of civilization (which requires repression), it is argued that, today, one witnesses a peculiar instantiation of this tension, namely the conflict between Eros as prerequisite for life to exist, and the economic interests of humankind, specifically the growth demanded by neoliberal capitalist economies. With the help of Kovel, Bakan and Diamond, the threat posed by current economic practices to life on earth, and hence to Eros, is outlined, and the way in which this is exacerbated by traditional philosophy - which should be the ally of Eros as sex - is indicated via the work of Dufourmantelle. Finally, Lacan's conception of love leads to the paradoxical insight, that love, as expression of Eros's drive towards unification, unavoidably flounders against the impossibility of being one with the beloved, leaving the latter only the role of relay or sounding-board for what is really the lover's (narcissistic) self-love. The upshot is that Eros-driven life, while being dependent on the other for its reproduction, is perpetuated through self-love rather than love of the other.