Abstract
We are told by the Ancients that a philosopher is a “friend” (philos) of wisdom. But Plato was convinced that the pursuit of wisdom began in eros. This paper brings Anne Carson’s extraordinary 1986 Eros the Bittersweet into “resonance” with Jan Zwicky’s 2015 collection of essays, Alcibiades Love in order to explore the role of eros in the creation of meaning, the movement of thought and in the ongoing life of the love of wisdom.
Highlights
We are told by the Ancients that a philosopher is a “friend” of wisdom
My aim is rather explore a reinterpretation of philosophia that doesn’t so much critique the tradition as reimagine it from within, calling into question its claims to a proprietary relationship to knowledge grounded in imagery of identity, ideality and subsumption
These thinkers rediscover a love of wisdom that dwells in difference and desire as the mode of its true calling: a love of wisdom that I will call “Erosophia.”
Summary
Eros the Bittersweet reads as a book somewhere between scholarship, meditation and poetry. Philosophy takes lyric form when thought “whose eros is clarity” is “driven by profound intuitions of coherence” (No 11) In her writings Zwicky certainly privileges the connectedness of things—a strategy that might have its motivation in the “immense problem” of asserting the value of lyric philosophy and the political force of its challenge to logico-linguistic philosophy and the strict division of academic disciplines. Both thinkers look to the “roots” of Western culture (see Aitken) in Ancient Greek understanding of eros and Plato’s enactment of the erotics of thinking
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
