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 80
... sense of who is doing what to whom . Tomi Ungerer has produced engravings of ' fucking machines ' -- machines designed to apply appropriate stimulation to the ' erotogenic zones ' of those who ' consort ' with them . I do not know ...
... sense of his caress is of an invitation : she experiences it as fundamentally addressed to her through her body ... sense of myself as identical with my body , and my sense of you as identical with yours are crucial elements , both in ...
... sense of this in the dog's 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 ...
... sense that desire ' overcomes ' the agent , and deprives him of his freedom . ( And therefore , according to some philosophers , notably Schopenhauer , it leads to the illusion that desire is an exercise of the will , and a peculiarly ...
... sense outside the cultural context which generates and completes it . Conceptual analysis , which abstracts from this context , merely peels away the verbal skin , and preserves it in the formaldehyde of logic . If the result 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 |