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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... response to the world , and the world to our response , in a chain of spontaneous human competence . " 13 www Nevertheless , many of our everyday concepts waver precariously under the impact of scientific thinking , and one of them ...
... 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 metaphysical core , the ' transcendental self ' , lying beyond ...
... response to the ' surface ' . Yet it is on the surface that we live and act : it is there that we are created , as complex appearances sustained by the social interaction which we , as appearances , also create . The very same ' mystery ...
... responses , save analysis of the concepts which are involved in it . This attempt to deepen our intentional understanding is an attempt to explore the realm of the ' given ' , but not that of the subjectively given . We are concerned ...
... response which is mediated by the concept of the person , and which is available only to beings who possess and are motivated by that concept . The implications of this will be seen to be enormous . In addition to the basic phenomena ...
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 |