{"id":1850,"date":"2020-12-16T21:09:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T21:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1850"},"modified":"2020-12-23T01:36:09","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T01:36:09","slug":"letters-to-the-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/16\/letters-to-the-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters to the Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Letter<\/strong><\/p>

My first reaction after I finished reading Michael Bradley\u2019s essay, \u201cEros<\/em> Beyond Sex\u201d in the Summer 2013 issue of Fare Forward <\/em>was to grab my copy of The Four Loves<\/em> and give the chapter on eros<\/em> a reread. Bradley attributed a few points about eros<\/em> to C.S. Lewis that seemed to mischaracterize his description of Eros<\/em>, and I wanted to see if he was correct.<\/p>

Well it turns out that, in the first instance, he was. At least partially. Bradley says that Lewis characterizes eros<\/em> as a \u201ccharacteristic \u2018need love.\u2019\u201d When I first read this I thought that it must be wrong, for I distinctly remembered C.S. Lewis saying, \u201ceros<\/em>\u2026 wonderfully transforms what is par excellence<\/em> a Need-pleasure into the most Appreciative of all pleasures.\u201d He does then, however, go on to clarify that eros<\/em> does contain venus<\/em>, the needy, appetitive sexual desire with which everyone is all too familiar. So then, eros<\/em> does have a needy component, so in a sense Bradley is right. But the distinguishing factor between eros<\/em> and venus<\/em> is that eros<\/em> shifts the focus of the lover from his own needs to the good of the beloved, who eros<\/em> shows him as admirable in herself. Therefore it seems clear that ero<\/em>s is, in Lewis\u2019s own terms, quite the opposite of a need-love, even if it does contain a needy component.<\/p>

Toward the end of his essay, Bradley speaks about sex \u201cdivorced\u201d from eros<\/em> and implies that such sex is motivated by mere lust. It may not have been Bradley\u2019s intention to make this implication, but it is certainly not a far-fetched inference to make. I hope that he did not mean to make it, for C.S. Lewis himself deliberately distances himself from this interpretation. He explains, \u201cMost of our ancestors were married off in early youth to partners chosen by their parents on grounds that had nothing to do with Eros<\/em>. They went to one another with no \u2018fuel,\u2019 so to speak, than plain animal desire. And they did right.\u201d Eros<\/em> does indeed, as Bradley explains, transform human sexuality so as to mature it into an authentic love which seeks the good of the partners involved, but that does not mean that it need be present at every act of intercourse, or even at all. I think Bradley is right to assert that eros<\/em> can, and is even very effective, at helping to ensure that people have sex chastely, but to say that it is a necessary component of chastity is going too far.<\/p>

Otherwise, I very much enjoyed Bradley\u2019s essay. The section on how the pursuit of desires is not inherently selfish\u2014for, indeed, humans can act in no other manner\u2014was very much needed in a culture that wishes to divorce moral action from the pursuit of happiness.<\/p>

Matthew Dugandzic\u2014Washington, D.C<\/em><\/p>

Response<\/strong><\/p>

Matthew Dugandzic cites C.S. Lewis by way of objecting to two of the main theses in my recent essay, \u201cEros Beyond Sex\u201d: First, that eros<\/em> is essentially a need-love, and second, that sexual union, to be morally licit, must implicate eros<\/em>.<\/p>

I don\u2019t wish to focus on what Lewis does and does not believe about eros<\/em>; The Four Loves<\/em> speaks for itself. Rather I will endorse again the arguments I encountered not only in the thought of Josef Pieper but of Pope Benedict XVI as well, as the latter expresses in Deus Caritas Est<\/em>.<\/p>

I stand by my claim that eros<\/em> is essentially<\/em> a \u201cneed-love,\u201d though such an assertion invites clarification. By \u201cneed-love\u201d here I mean a love that comes out of man\u2019s fundamental incompleteness qua<\/em> creature and in turn is an expression of his unalterable desire for union in and through a reality beyond himself. In Benedict\u2019s words, \u201cunion with God\u201d is \u201cman\u2019s primordial aspiration.\u201d God is the perfective object\u2014the ultimate good goal\u2014of man\u2019s erotic love.<\/p>

Benedict explains eros<\/em> as the \u201cidea that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become complete<\/em>… eros<\/em> is rooted in man\u2019s very nature.\u201d We can obviate our erotic love\u2014our need for completion in the other\u2014no sooner than we can obviate our very creatureliness. Contra Dugandzic, eros<\/em> always comes out of \u201cour own needs.\u201d<\/p>

As to the second objection: Lewis is simply wrong when he says that man\u2019s \u201cplain animal desire\u201d is sufficient for \u201cright\u201d sexual action.<\/p>

Sexual acts that spring neither from an erotic desire for total union (the uni-duality of two body-soul composites) nor from a sense of sacrifice or service or the duty to have a child (which are expressions of eros<\/em>-perfecting agape<\/em>), but from nothing other than \u201cplain animal desire,\u201d (venus<\/em>) are exactly the sort of acts that the Catechism of the Catholic Church<\/em> describes as lustful (2351). The entire Judeo-Christian sexual ethic becomes instantly unintelligible if Lewis and Dugandzic are correct in this regard.<\/p>

Michael Bradley\u2014South Bend, IN<\/em><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An exchange regarding Issue 5’s essay “Eros Beyond 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