Between Two Ecstacies - Two Senses of Love in Post-Modern Philosophy

Abstract

This essay addresses the issue of the experiences of love in post-modern philosophy, and the potential differences and similarities of the topic in the works of prominent Continental philosophers Freidrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. Though they seem to present entirely opposed experiences of love, one of lament and one of victory, these experiences are tied together through a mutual understanding of the post-modern self which exists only in excess and relation. The works of George Bataille and Jean-Luc Nancy were used to support this claim ontologically, and to illuminate aspects of this claim in both Nietzsche and Derrida. Though the issue of love in post-modern philosophy will never be finitely resolved, this essay offers a form without specific content - to understand love as the ecstatic dissolution of the subject in the face of the incalculable other..