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
Results 1-5 of 79
... meaning , which link such terms as ' desire ' , ' arousal ' , ' love ' and ' pleasure ' ? Or should we be engaged in an exercise of ' phenomenology ' , trying to give a specification of ' what it is like ' that will fit the sexual ...
... meaning - even when they have no meaning . For example , we group the stars into constellations according to fictions of our own , and in 5 THE PROBLEM.
... meaning of the broad karoo ' : to die in surroundings that are opaque to our quest for meaning is to die unconsoled . And hence the bleakness of the ' strange - eyed constellations ' that ' west / Each night above his mound ' . The ...
... meaning of the word ' really ' on the lips of the person who says that no table is really coloured . ( I take up the point in Appendix 2. ) What is important is the contrast between the ' thinness ' of our ordinary descriptions and the ...
... meanings of our personal experiences , and the world of science is a world without meaning . 15 Consider the most elementary human relations . The individual people I encounter are members of a natural kind -- the kind ' human being ...
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 |