ABSTRACT
–The tremendum and fascinans emanating from the sacred is also present in love's contemplation of the beloved one, whilst the loving union in the orgasm can be compared to religious ecstacy, as a feeling which transcends finite beings. Western love aims at combining unreconcilable aspirations and the western culture of love is indeed nothing else but the never ending story of the confrontation of love's manifold desires. Love's esthetical caprices cannot but irritate the seriousness of love's ethical commitments whilst love's longing for bodily – and thus finite – union stands in the way of love's religious quest for eternal salvation. Kierkegaard tried to integrate some of love's directions, by putting them into succesive stages. Perhaps no culture is so obsessed with love's promise and marriage's failure than western culture. The language of western love is profoundly imbued with the metaphors of domination and war, not of liberation and peace.
