Sexual Desire: A Philosophical InvestigationA&C Black, 5. märts 2006 - 448 pages A dazzling treatise, as erudite and eloquent as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and considerably more sound in its conclusion - TLS "He is an eloquent and practised writer" - The Independent (UK) When John desires Mary or Mary desires John, what does either of them want? What is meant by innocence, passion, love and arousal, desire, perversion and shame? These are just a few of the questions Roger Scruton addresses in this thought-provoking intellectual adventure. Beginning from purely philosophical premises, and ranging over human life, art and institutions, he surveys the entire field of sexuality; equally dissatisfied with puritanism and permissiveness, he argues for a radical break with recent theories. Upholding traditional morality - though in terms that may shock many of its practitioners - his argument gravitates to that which is candid, serene and consoling in the experience of sexual love. |
From inside the book
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... consider all that must be considered in order to present a comprehensive sexual ethic — I hope that at least some of the ideas of ' traditional ' morality will no longer seem as strange after reading this book as they have seemed to ...
... Consider then the class of ' ornamental marbles ' . The purpose of this classification — of great importance to sculptors , masons and serious - minded architects -- is to assimilate stones that are the objects of a single aesthetic ...
... Consider the most elementary human relations . The individual people I encounter are members of a natural kind -- the kind ' human being ' - and behave according to the laws of that kind . Yet I subsume people and their actions under ...
... consider the three basic phenomena of human sexual feeling : arousal , desire and love . I shall contend that all are purely human phenomena , or rather , that they belong to that realm of reciprocal response which is mediated by the ...
... Consider , for example , sexual jealousy . It is impossible to deny the catastrophic power of this emotion , which leads us into the most desperate behaviour , and yet which starts up from the smallest circumstance . How do we explain ...
Contents
1 | |
16 | |
3 Persons | 36 |
4 Desire | 59 |
5 The individual object | 94 |
6 Sexual phenomena | 138 |
7 The science of sex | 180 |
8 Love | 213 |
11 Sexual morality | 322 |
12 The politics of sex | 348 |
Epilogue | 362 |
Appendix 1 The first person | 364 |
Appendix 2 Intentionality | 377 |
Notes | 392 |
Index of Names | 419 |
Index of Subjects | 424 |