Generalized Love: A Problem of Limited Resources

Charles W. Harvey, University of Central Arkansas

Ralph Ellis has done a rare thing: technically unencumbered phenomenological philosophy deeply revelatory of the phenomena it describes. In the vast literature on romantic or passionate love, Eros in a Narcissistic Culture (hereinafter Eros) is unique. It is not only full of vivid, well-connected descriptions of profoundly important psychological phenomena, but it uses these descriptions to mount a sustained and convincing critique of the limits and inadequacies of "drive reductionist" and egoistic analyses of love. Ellis demonstrates in Eros how sensitive and thorough first-person description can elucidate some of the most basic and profound experiences that human beings have, and how such descriptions can serve to correct false beliefs many of us have about our most intimate affairs. In Eros, Ellis uses his analyses of love to critique the culture of narcissism and to suggest ways in which we might improve our lives in an arena that so often promises heaven and gives us hell. Ellis demonstrates that dealing with eros aright might provide us with the only answer currently available to the existential problems of meaninglessness, anonymity, and our relative insignificance in the ultimate scheme of things. His work deals not only with isolated and individual psychological experiences, but with issues of social and cosmological significance as well. Ralph Ellis has written one of the very best books to be found on the nature, the significance, the vicissitudes, and the conditions of erotic love in the contemporary world; the book abounds in poetically poignant insights that are woven into a cognitive context that helps us understand their significance much more fully than as isolated darts and arrows from Cupid's quixotic quiver.