The word "eroticism" is derived from the name of the Greek god of love, Eros. It is conceived as sensual love or the human sex drive (libido). Philosophers and theologians discern three kinds of love: eros, philia, and agape. Of the three, eros it considered the most egocentric, focusing on care for the self.
Ancient Greek philosophy�s overturning of mythology defines in many ways our understanding of the heightened aesthetic sense in eroticism and the question of sexuality. Eros was after all the primordial god of unhinged sexual desire in addition to homoeroticism. In the Platonic ordered system of ideal forms, eros corresponds to the subject's yearning for ideal beauty and finality. It is the harmonious unification not only between bodies, but between knowledge and pleasure. Eros takes an almost transcendent manifestation when the subject seeks to go beyond itself and form a communion with the objectival other. This corresponds to attaining orgasm in erotic love-making.
Yet an objection to eros and erotic representation (pornography) is that it fosters a subject/object relationship in which the object of desire is mere projection of the needs of desiring subject. Love as eros is considered more base than philia (friendship) or agape (self-sacrificing love). But erotic engagement paradoxically individuates and de-individuates the desirer.
While pornography popularly focuses on unadorned and unemotional lusts and the explicit depiction of sexual acts, erotica tends to define material with a higher emotional content, the development of place, character and story line, or of an overall artistic theme. However, such distinctions are necessarily subjective and may say more about the critic's own tastes on erotic material than the artistic and other attributes of the material itself. In the motion picture sense, softcore pornography (soft porn) is a similar kind of commercial art form that resides in the area between erotica and hardcore pornography, although erotica, as a type of fine art, may also be highly sexually explicit. The division between erotica and pornography is an aesthetic division, usually dependent on moral philosophy, religious dogma, or personal outlook. At present, many legal jurisdictions maintain laws regulating the availability of expressions deemed pornographic (although that term almost never appears in legal texts), arguably to maintain a level of comfort or safety for a majority of citizens.
