The functionalist use of the Erotic that Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari explicate interests Paz in that it signifies for him a loss of the self or the soul. He traces the perversion of a revered Erotic into the concretion of mere sexuality as a result of the changing of sexual standards after the sexual revolution. He notes that this has largely come about from "the change in status of the body, which has ceased to be inferior, perishable, and purely animal half of a human being."(167) The soul is thrust to the background as scientific discoveries reveal more about the functioning of the body and the material world.

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche elaborates how the disgust for the status of the body functions within the contrast of the ascetic ideal and sensuality. His goal is not as much to disdain the body as inferior, but to unravel the reasonings of asceticism. Nietzsche develops how the conception of the separation of the spirit from the body's results in the ascetic conclusion that sexual activities are energy drainers. Basing the universal philosopher’s aversion to sexuality as the focal point, Nietzsche explains how it is a result of the view that sex is an obstruction to the "path to power, to action, to the most powerful activity, and in most cases actually its path to unhappiness" (107) Therefore, in this way, the need to stifle extravagant passions is prominent in letting fruitful contemplation reign, just as it is for the labor and spiritual in the Christian and capitalist work ethic.

Starting with Kant's impersonal description of beauty as a source of "pleasure without interest," Nietzsche moves on to Schopenhauer’s similar translation of this beauty's relation to disinterest, yet with the latter being sexual disinterest. As they are methods "to gain release from a torture,"(106) so they can be described as calming escapes from the "vile urgency of the will." His disgust for the lustful will is well-summarized in Nietzsche’s statement that "Every great artist knows what a harmful effect intercourse has in states of great spiritual tension and preparation"(111). Yet it is not solely that the use of energy is a waste for the ascetic, but that it is physical energy, which brings in the thought of the ephemeral body as mortal.

Bataille's theories of the Erotic hold a respect for the ascetic ideal, but not focusing as much on disgust for the body and physical as he does on the absolute sacredness that the Erotic experience in its connection with death. For him, the woven components of death and life within the Erotic make it a deceitful mask. Bataille thus brings up this important concept of the ascetic ideal to raise the unseen higher than the ephemeral beauty:

The sphere of eroticism is inescapably plighted to duplicity and ruse. The object which causes Eros to stir comes guised as other than truly it is. And so it does appear that, in the question of eroticism, it is the ascetics who are right. Beauty they call a trap set by the Devil: and only beauty excuses and renders bearable the need fro disorder, for violence and for unseemliness which is the hidden root of love. (Reader 227)

It is necessary to further penetrate this valorization of asceticism’s validity in Bataille's greater scheme of the Erotic. He begins to clarify his conception of eroticism as a loss:

"If eroticism’s result is seen in the perspective of desire, independently from possible child-birth, that’s a loss, to which answers the paradoxically valuable expression of the ‘petite mort.’" (Larmes 34-5)--GET TRANS.

Loss and death for Bataille are of primary importance for his theories of the Erotic. The incredible idea that originally people were once unaware of sex’s direct result in procreation is not solely what gives importance to orgasm being coined as the "little death." Sex would appear to be opposed to death, and siding with birth, since it can lead to conception, yet this construction only comes from a utilitarian view that makes practical, reproduction sense of the erotic. Non-functional sex is often equated with a loss of energy, and thus puts the act of play onto the side of death.

Yet for Bataille, such a pairing is only the tip of the penis in the complexity of eroticism’s integral link with death. Death’s visage is a certain presence in the erotic act, as Bataille notes, "¿ la veritÈ, le sentiment de gÍne ý l’Ègard de l’activitÈ sexuelle rappelle, en un sens du moins, le sentiment de gÍne ý l’Ègard de la mort et des morts." (Larmes 21) For Bataille, the strange perturbation similar in matters of both sex and death complements the development of his conception that the two are fundamentally interlocked. He holds that it is the combination of the knowledge of sexuality and that of death is what makes it the Erotic seem filthy as he notes that eroticism “is the consequence of such sentiments.” (Reader 244)

Such knowledge specifically develops in the conscious human when the understanding of causality, and moreover, of time, the possibility of disappointment, and of unfinished work surfaces death’s face. In his essay, "Death," Bataille notes that work is the "basis of the knowledge of death," for in it, "expectation takes shape." He goes on to add how death’s interruption of desire thus continually threatens to "steal away the object of my anticipation." (Reader 244) As a source of fear and an enemy, the possibility of death thus makes what one desires more compelling.

The human knowledge of death also is a potent side to its distinction in consciousness. Bataille makes the knowledge of death a necessary counterpart for consciousness of the self:

...the repulsion of death, having immediately a negative object, is first of all a consciousness of the positive counterpart of the at object, that is, a consciousness of life, or more exactly, of self: it is easy to understand that consciousness of death is essentially self-consciousness--but that, reciprocally, consciousness of self required that of death." (244)

Such a reciprocal relationship sets up a strong dual tension between the awareness of being involved in life with its desires, and the fact that this involvement is ephemeral. The position of being poised between two extreme opposing poles, and in full face of both makes the erotic encounter a violently intense one. While Bataille describes this intense situation as "anguish," for him it is also one of victory, for in facing the vertiginous ecstasy of the final collapse, and the naked mortality of the physical being, one is at the same time conquering death by passionately savoring life. In this way, the erotic situation highlights the very question of tottering being:

What the hearty laugh screens from us...is the identity that exists between the utmost in pleasure and the utmost in pain: the identity between being and non-being, between the living and the death-stricken being, between the knowledge which brings one before this dazzling realization and definitive, concluding darkness. (Reader 225)

The erotic is thus the very summit of the poignant revelation of finding oneself conscious and being. The abyss of knowing a definitive death sets ablaze the ecstasy, and the height of its harmoniously opposing face: surging, fucking, screaming, gushing life. It is no surprise how seriously Bataille takes the subject of the Erotic. For him, the intrigue, the passion, and the intensity of this experience must be treated in such a manner that holds it in respect. He understands how its important intensity cannot be referred to using cold and dead classifications which would medicalize and render a solely physical nature to something which involves so much more than material reactions.

Bataille accepts prohibitions and repression as a necessary basis of civilization, which denies the extremes of pleasure(sex) and pain(death). He thus realizes the function of religious and social taboos which set our "dignity, our spiritual nature, our detachment, against animal avidity."(250) The acceptance of prohibitions originates in Bataille’s respect for eroticism’s gravity. Yet he also states that judgments about the Erotic "contribute to the ultimate failure of an operation whose meaning escapes them."(237) The inability of a person to say anything about such an intense experience of the erotic reveals much about its complexity and seriousness.

Bataille remarks on the obsessive goal to translate burning passions and desires, so do many other authors speak of the necessity of sublimating or translating sexual passions into more socially acceptable versions.