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Eros is a unique experience but it is not love itself. It bridges the gap between sexuality and love; it spans the chasm between two people.
If a seperate personal Paradise exists for each of us mine must irreparably be planted with trees of words which the wind silvers like poplars, by people who see their confiscated justice given back, and by birds that even in the midst of the truth of death insist on singing in Greek and saying, eros, eros, eros.
KW: Fred's first criticism had to do with the four drives of any holon. In SES, I listed these as agency (horizontal individuation) and communion (horizontal linking), and self-transcendence (vertically moving up) and self-dissolution (vertically moving down). Fred pointed out that the first three drives were, correctly, the healthy version of those drives; but for the fourth drive, I had incorrectly given the pathological version of the descending drive. The healthy downward drive -- the drive of the higher to embrace and enfold the lower, which I call agape or compassion, or what might be called self-immanence (the dialectical opposite of self-transcendence) -- I actually gave as thanatos, which is not the embrace of the lower by the higher but the dissolution or regression of the higher to the lower. When it came to vertically moving upward, I had correctly given that as Eros or self-transcendence, seeking out higher and wider wholeness. The pathological version of Eros is phobos, which is not the transcendence of the lower but the repression of the lower. But when it came to vertically moving downward, instead of giving the healthy agape -- where the higher embraces, enfolds, and "loves" the lower, as a molecule embraces its atoms -- I inadvertantly gave the pathological thanatos, where the higher merely dissolves into the lower, dies or decomposes (e.g., the molecules dissipate into their constitutive atoms). So the four drives should be agency and communion, and self-transcendence and self-immanence (not self-dissolution).
This is a brilliant criticism, and of the hundreds of thousands of people who went over those ideas, only Fred spotted it. (Incidentally, I still sometimes list the fourth drive as self-dissolution, simply because that is so much easier to understand in an introductory statement. But my actual position should now be clear, thanks to Fred...
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