Introduction to Eros and Revolution. 

By Teodros Kiros (Ph.D) 

The erotic dimension of Revolution was once the center piece of discourse in the academy and among politically conscious people�s everyday language. The sixties in America and France mediated the profound connection between revolt and desire, an erotic practice, on the streets of American cities and corners of France. Students and their parents flooded Global capital cities demanding change and fighting for it. Propelled by a sense of social justice and disciplined by the rational heart, the disadvanged, the poor, women, men, young and old, side by side with the wretched of the earth marched on history, demanding change and risking death. That is when the Eros effect suffused itself in the nerves of being. 

Herbert Marcuse, the greatest radical philosopher of the twentieth century, popularized the idea of revolution as an erotic experience, in his justly famous book, Eros and Civilization, written in 1955.

George Katsiaficas who was one of Marcuse�s students was profoundly attracted to the idea that revolutions and Eros are deeply interconnected and that unless global radical changes are desired by the self and realized by the will, no change, however fundamental, can have an enduring effect on human beings. In order for foundational changes to have a lasting impact on the global human condition, argues Katsiaficas, desire must be disciplined by erotic reason and not merely remain as a slave of calculative rationality. Autonomous reason, a feature of the model society which Katsiaficas and Marcuse before him desire, ought to have a cathartic effect on social movements and the erotic community of the distant feature. The Eros effect spreads itself across the tapestry of the human condition when reason sediments itself in our bodies and souls as the motivation to live and the yardstick by which we measure the depth of moral progress anchored on a moral economy.

His very name, Katsiaficas, is linked to the great Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle, with whom he shares the same ethnic roots, and his mother�s birthplace, Egypt, indicates that his moral sentiments are nourished by the waters of the Egyptian Maat, the feminine principle of justice, truth, compassion and uprightness. His great refusal to be disciplined by the oppressive weight of the academia is most evident in the life choices that he has made the causes that he champions, the dangerous subject he writes about and the radical global lectures he gives. 

The passionate nature of reason was first uncovered in Egypt and systematized by the pre-Socratic thinkers and Plato and Aristotle. Katsiaficas inherits this rich legacy through appropriation, interpretation and transcendence, and his present book sublates some of the best insights of the tradition by making philosophy sing radicality, and radicality itself becoming musical. Such is the Eros effect, a brilliant concept that guides Katsificas� uses of empirical facts as he patiently examines the unfolding of social movements in Seattle, Vietnam, Korea, Germany and France. In his deft hands, concepts are vigilant, facts are meaningful, and the whole world becomes one in which the central fact is the power of ordinary people to act with an intelligence and wisdom that far surpasses any elite�s. 

The Palestinian cause of social justice, the rights of the poors of the world, the squatters of Germany, the protestors in Seattle, the majestic works of Ibn Kaldhun, the Tunisian philosopher of history who foreshadowed Hegel, his love of Ethiopian philosophy, are propelled by the Eros effect as it insinuates itself in the souls and bodies of human begins, evident in their pains and triumphs; and the victims of oppression herald his name and his sing his praises. The Eros effect expands the freedoms of the oppressed across the world, and Katsiaficas coolly documents their struggles in his latest book, Eros and Revolution. 

The Eros effect connotes those moment in which total strangers meet at the agora to share dreams, to protest injustice as they are deeply connected by the threads of Eros. In social movements, brothers and sisters, parents and children, the young and old, men and women share the world as species beings. Their universality is manifest in their particular action of heroism and defiance, behind the veils of experience. 

Trees, fish and all forms of life are treated as dignities with rights that cannot be articulated in language but can be heard palpitating in the life lines of the human heart, the medium of the Eros effect. In this new world of dreams, individuals become existentially serious. When the Eros effect is at full play, everyday life becomes an aesthetic experience. That is when norms and values are transvaluated and new possibilities of existence loom in the horizon of being. In sociological terms, during these moments, paradigm shifts occur and our gazes change and the prisms of new life chances come to the fore. 

The Eros effect can change the nerve centers of our bodies and souls and new freedoms emerge and affirm their rights. Cooperation replaces competition, love replaces hate, and otherness is transcended, and truth speaking becomes a habit. Maat transforms us all and puts us on the path of moral progress. 

Classical sociology, a la Le Bon (The Crowd) had argued that the crowd is susceptible to a dangerous emotionality that robs the individual of rationality and autonomy and those individuals become dangerously present in the bosom of the crowd. Katsiaficas shows the vacuity of the argument with the brilliant counter argument that in fact within the crowd individuals are emotionally rational, and that their hidden moral sentiments: compassion, care, sociality and cooperation are fully unleashed as the harbingers of a new world organized by the Eros effect. In the crowd, irrationality is replaced by erotic rationality, indifference gives way to engagement with the world, and solidarity displaces alienation. 
During these life-affirming moments of affection lasting solidarities are born and the hitherto suppressed moral sentiments become the new languages of the human heart. 

Eros and Revolution is bound to be the manifesto of all those voices of freedom who are fighting for a new world as the old world is slowly dying, and the new world is struggling to emerge.