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 38
... sensations , can occur in the act of masturbation and the act of love : perhaps they occur when riding a horse , or in all those chance circumstances of contact to which the Freudians draw attention in their theory of the ' erotogenic ...
... sensation ' located in the mouth or on the cheek , hand or brow . Such localised pleasures have little significance beside the act of attention with which the kiss is performed . While we may think of the pleasure of the kiss as focused ...
... sensation : they are located in the body , at a particular place ( even if that place may on occasion be the whole of the body ) . They have intensity and duration ; they increase and decrease ; and like sensations they lie outside the ...
... sensation - a host of pleasurable sensations -- which happen to be caused by geese . This is not necessarily abnormal , nor is it perverted , unless we suppose her to be aroused by the experience . But it is precisely the supposition of ...
... sensations . To some extent all pleasures - even non - intentional pleasures - can be undermined or compromised by a change of belief . The meat tastes differently when I discover it to be the flesh of my favourite dog . But it is ...
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 |