Love can be different in quality and power of saving life from Sisyphean absurdity. There is the perfection of a flirt and of a lifelong passion, as there are the different perfections of different sports. Nonetheless, they aim at the same value of devotion to a person. In the “organic cycle of rural existence,” as Weber says, sexuality is something “naturally given.” Yet the naturally given is neither a life order nor a value sphere. For sexuality to become a value sphere, it needs to be understood as something worth living for. Weber seems to assume that sooner or later the specific value of sexuality will be detected. But most of the time, most people enjoy sexuality without recognizing in it a specific value with specific perfection standards. Prostitution belongs to the oldest professions, but this warrants recognition as a value, neither to sex nor to prostitution. For sexuality to become a value sphere with a recognized value a culture of eroticism needs to arise. Such a culture requires conditions that can vary and produce different cultures depending on historical conditions.

Some conditions are required for any culture of eroticism to arise. There can be no culture of eroticism if a society shows no attention to the quality of passions or teaches its members to respond to them as to a purely physical affection, as if the body was occupied by a virus or demon to be eliminated by pills or rituals.