Abstract

"Central to Schroeder's case is the conviction that reason and passion are two sides of the same coin. Rationality represents the human potential actualized only through desire, she argues; and passion functions only insofar as it preserves the rationality that makes desire possible. Far from being anti-erotic, market relations are, in this analysis, the most basic form of eroticism. Disclosing a fundamental similarity between erotic and economic behavior, The Triumph of Venus reveals that, while the former cannot be reduced to the latter, the latter can only be explained in terms of the former. Venus triumphs over the market."--BOOK JACKET.