Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation

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A&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.

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Contents

1 The problem
1
2 Arousal
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

9 Sex and gender
253
10 Perversion
284

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About the author (2006)

Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over fifty books. A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; University Professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to The Spectator, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic for the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.

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