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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... involves a contradiction ; for Sartre , the same contra- diction is present in desire.2 Schopenhauer regarded sexual desire as involving a delusion the delusion , to put it simply , that it is the individual who is subject and object in ...
... involves such pleasures — or , at least , it does so in the normal case . And they form an important part of the experience ; in particular their capacity to ' overcome ' the subject , so that he is ' mastered ' by them , acquires an ...
... involving the recognition of the child's nature as a ' machine desirante'.6 Reflection upon the case of Theodora , and the idea of arousal that would be necessary to describe it , should cause us to recoil from such descriptions , which ...
... involves the following idea : It is he who is alertly touching me , intending my recognition of his act ( or who is alertly kissing me , with a similar intention ) . The subject's pleasurable sensation is entirely taken up in this ...
... involves , in short , an elaborate design upon the consciousness of the other , an attempt to enlist his ... involve , first , an intention to arouse sexual interest ; secondly , the intention that this first intention be recognised ...
Contents
1 | |
16 | |
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 |