part of the subject. Such a reduction to a “need” would be the cynical destruction of love through selfishness; only in the acknowledgment of the pure grace of being loved can the lover also claim to be fulfilled by that love. To dispel the charm of beauty by reducing its “appearance” into some “truth” lying behind or above it is to eliminate beauty altogether and to show that it was never really perceived in its distinctiveness. The two approaches converge. Already in the realm of nature, eros is