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. |
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... perspective of the human agent or from the ' empirical ' perspective of the scientific observer . In this book I shall defend a version of that second idea , in terms which owe something to Kant's disciple Dilthey , something to Husserl ...
... perspective — a sense which , however erroneous , is natural to our anthropomorphic way of seeing things which permits the gestures of arousal . The dog , too , is perceived as an embodied person . This is not to say that there is not ...
... perspective , changing for each other and through each other , with a constant and reciprocal anticipation of our mutual intentions . What , however , are we excited about ? Although sexual excitement is a special case ( a very special ...
... perspective of the onlooker , of that ' third person ' who is neither you nor I. Milan Kundera describes an orgy in which two of the participants catch sight of each other across the room . The passage shows what an enormous effort is ...
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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 |