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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... relation . On one view the transcendental world is a separate realm of being from the empirical world , so that objects belonging to the one are not to be found in the other . On the other view , the two worlds are not distinct , but ...
... relation to the world is vastly more complex than that implies : in addition to purpose and knowledge we have experiences , values , emotions and religious belief . These too dictate their own conceptual trajectories , their separate ...
... relation to it . But not all forms of representation are transparent . The descriptions employed by science suppose that the nature of the objects identified through them is to be discovered . The representation identifies an object ...
... relation with it . The concepts through which we represent it form a vital link with reality , and without this link appropriate action and appropriate response could not emerge with the rapidity and competence that alone can ensure our ...
... relations . The individual people I encounter are members of a natural kind -- the kind ' human being ' - and behave according to the laws of that kind . Yet I subsume people and their actions under concepts that will not figure in the ...
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 |