Fascination is transcendence and cannot by itself produce love

Evidence

There have been and there still are many women who do seek to attain individual salvation on their own. They try to justify their existence within their own immanence, that is, to achieve transcendence through immanence. It is this ultimate effort—sometimes ridiculous, often pathetic—of the imprisoned woman to convert her prison into a heaven of glory, her servitude into sovereign freedom, that we find in the narcissist, the woman in love, and the mystic. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1770 (#expands, via linked claim)

In fascination, which represents the immediate fact of knowing, the knower is absolutely nothing but a pure negation; he does not find or recover himself anywhere—he is not. The only qualification which he can support is that he is not precisely this particular fascinating object. In fascination there is nothing more than a gigantic object in a desert world. Yet the fascinated intuition is in no way a fusion with the object. In fact the condition necessary for the existence of fascination is that the object be raised in absolute relief on a background of emptiness; that is, I am precisely the immediate negation of the object and nothing but that. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 578 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Narcissism, romantic love, and mysticism are doomed attempts to transcend through immanence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1770; Fascination exemplifies knowing as pure negation, not fusion with the object — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 578; Erotic attraction alone is an insufficient foundation for a lifelong union

Broader Connections

• Narcissism, romantic love, and mysticism are doomed attempts to transcend through immanence #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1770
• Fascination exemplifies knowing as pure negation, not fusion with the object #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 578