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
... perception , imagination , emotion and desire . Each of these mental states marks out a space , as it were , before me — a gap into which an object may be fitted . My fear is fear of something , my perception perception of something ...
... perceptions will be different , for they will be deprived of a concept in terms of which such stones would otherwise be seen . It is arguable that scientific penetration into the depth of things may render the surface unintelligible ...
... perceive and act upon one another , so mediating all our mutual responses with the obscure but indispensable concept of the free moral agent . I do not believe that we can accept Kant's majestic theory , which ascribes to persons a ...
... perception : to understand what it is to see human beings as persons . And this perception in turn may not be easily disentangled from the culture that is built upon it , or from the ultimate ends of conduct which it serves to focus ...
... perception of how things are . The same is true generally of the concepts which define the Lebenswelt . In ... perceive the human reality than the ordered consciousness of the ' demystifying ' critic . There are genuine , objective ...
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 |