Max’s Reviews > The Agony of Eros > Status Update
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Max
is on page 40 of 88
When borders and thresholds vanish, fantasies of the Other disappear too.
Without the negativity of thresholds or threshold-experiences, fantasy withers. The contemporary crisis in literature and the arts stems from a crisis of fantasy: the disappearance of the Other. This is the agony of eros.
— 2 hours, 8 min ago
Without the negativity of thresholds or threshold-experiences, fantasy withers. The contemporary crisis in literature and the arts stems from a crisis of fantasy: the disappearance of the Other. This is the agony of eros.
Max
is on page 38 of 88
Desire is not “rationalized” today by increasing opportunities for, and criteria of, choice. Instead, unchecked freedom of choice is threatening to bring about the end of desire. Desire is always desire for the Other. The negativity of privation and absence nourishes it. As the object of desire, the Other escapes the positivity of choice.
— 2 hours, 15 min ago
Max
is on page 34 of 88
However, nudity that is displayed without secrecy or expression approaches pornographic bareness. What is more, the pornographic face says nothing. It has no expressivity or mystery. […] In contrast, the erotic is never free of secrecy.
— Jun 05, 2026 10:10AM
Max
is on page 25 of 88
Capitalism absolutizes bare life. Its telos is not the good life. Capitalism’s compulsive accumulation and growth is specifically aimed against death, which counts as absolute loss. For Aristotle, merely accumulating capital merits scorn because it has no concern for the good life—only for bare life.
— Jun 05, 2026 08:30AM
Max
is on page 23 of 88
Today, through the increasing positivization and domestication of love, it is disappearing entirely. One stays the same and seeks only the confirmation of oneself in the Other.
— Jun 05, 2026 08:26AM
Max
is on page 20 of 88
Erotic desire is tied to a particular absence of the Other—not the absence of nothingness, but rather “absence in a horizon of the future.”
— Jun 03, 2026 10:51PM
Max
is on page 17 of 88
Every religion operates with both debt (guilt) and relief (pardon). But capitalism only works with debt and default. It offers no possibility for atonement, which would free the debtor from liability. The impossibility of mitigation and atonement also accounts for the achievement-subject’s depression.
— Jun 03, 2026 09:51AM
Max
is on page 11 of 88
Depression is a narcissistic malady. It derives from overwrought, pathologically distorted self-reference. The narcissistic-depressive subject has exhausted itself and worn itself down. Without a world to inhabit, it has been abandoned by the Other. Eros and depression are opposites. Eros pulls the subject out of itself, toward the Other. Depression, in contrast, plunges the subject into itself.
— Jun 01, 2026 09:44PM
Max
is on page 10 of 88
In recent years, the end of love has been announced many times.
— Jun 01, 2026 09:30AM
When the Other is perceived as a sexual object, “primal distance” (Urdistanz) erodes; Martin Buber claims that such distance serves as the very “principle of being-human” and constitutes the transcendental condition for any alterity existing at all. “Primal distantiation” prevents the Other from being reified into an object, an “it.” The Other as sexual object is no longer a “Thou.” It is impossible to have a relationship with it. Primal distance brings forth the transcendental dignity and propriety that frees—that is, distances—the Other into his or her otherness. Precisely this is what
makes it possible to address the Other properly. One can call up, or out to, a sex object, but one cannot address it. A sex object also has no ”countenance,” which is what constitutes alterity: the otherness of the Other commands distance.
Looks to be the central concept here.