kelley wrote:
> i'd agree with gordon insofar as i'm a Freudian--people battle eros and
> thanatos all their lives, that's the human condition. what counts is how and
> if we manage those impulses.
For my education, rather than argument (now at least), I have some queries. Where does "eros" exist? What is the evidence for its existence? To what extent is that evidence different from the evidence for Providence? (Marx called Providence one of various ways of summarizing or paraphrasing the facts (hence masquerading as an explanation). That is I can see countless facts of human life, past and present, that can be more or less easily *labelled* manifestations of eros, but I really don't see any evidence whatsoever for the actual existence of that entity or for any causative proposition linking it to the effects which it is used to label.
Similar questions could be asked (a) about thanatos and (b) about the alleged "battle" in the soul of these two forces. But let's stick to eros for the present.
You call it an "impulse"? What is the ontology of that impulse? What creates it or energizes it?
Carrol