B. Diane Lipsett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199754519
- eISBN:
- 9780199827213
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754519.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in three ancient tales of conversion—The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth—the ...
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Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in three ancient tales of conversion—The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth—the interplay of desire and self-restraint is complex and dynamic, as careful literary analysis shows. This study treats conversion—the marked change in a protagonist’s piety and identity—as in part an effect of story, a function of narrative textures, coherence, and closure. Readings of the three narratives gain nuance through appeals to varied theorists of desire, self-formation, and narrative, including Foucault, psychoanalytic theorists, and the ancient literary critic Longinus. Well grounded in scholarship on Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth, the closely paced readings sharpen attention to each story, while also advancing discussions of ancient views of the self; of desire, masculinity, and virginity; of the cultural codes around marriage and continence; and of the textual energetics of conversion tales.Less
Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in three ancient tales of conversion—The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth—the interplay of desire and self-restraint is complex and dynamic, as careful literary analysis shows. This study treats conversion—the marked change in a protagonist’s piety and identity—as in part an effect of story, a function of narrative textures, coherence, and closure. Readings of the three narratives gain nuance through appeals to varied theorists of desire, self-formation, and narrative, including Foucault, psychoanalytic theorists, and the ancient literary critic Longinus. Well grounded in scholarship on Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth, the closely paced readings sharpen attention to each story, while also advancing discussions of ancient views of the self; of desire, masculinity, and virginity; of the cultural codes around marriage and continence; and of the textual energetics of conversion tales.
Frida Beckman (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642618
- eISBN:
- 9780748671755
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642618.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
For Deleuze, sexuality is a force that can capture as well as liberate life. Its flows tend to be repressed and contained in specific forms while at the same time they retain revolutionary potential. ...
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For Deleuze, sexuality is a force that can capture as well as liberate life. Its flows tend to be repressed and contained in specific forms while at the same time they retain revolutionary potential. There is immense power in the thousand sexes of desiring-machines, and sexuality is seen as a source of becoming. This book gathers prominent Deleuze scholars to explore the restricting and liberating forces of sexuality in relation to a spread of central themes in Deleuze's philosophy, including politics, psychoanalysis and friendship as well as specific topics such as the body-machine, disability, feminism and erotics.Less
For Deleuze, sexuality is a force that can capture as well as liberate life. Its flows tend to be repressed and contained in specific forms while at the same time they retain revolutionary potential. There is immense power in the thousand sexes of desiring-machines, and sexuality is seen as a source of becoming. This book gathers prominent Deleuze scholars to explore the restricting and liberating forces of sexuality in relation to a spread of central themes in Deleuze's philosophy, including politics, psychoanalysis and friendship as well as specific topics such as the body-machine, disability, feminism and erotics.
Gul Ozyegin
- Published in print:
- 1937
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814762349
- eISBN:
- 9780814762356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814762349.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
In stark contrast with their fathers, the young men whose narratives make up this chapter long for identities based on self-expansion and personal enrichment. Mirroring Turkish society's pivot away ...
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In stark contrast with their fathers, the young men whose narratives make up this chapter long for identities based on self-expansion and personal enrichment. Mirroring Turkish society's pivot away from state-based paternalism, these young men see themselves as embarking on projects of "entrepreneurship of the self" where old ideals of paternal selflessness are replaced by new ideals of individualism, ambition, and pleasure seeking. As these men reject the traditional modes of masculinity modeled by their fathers, they explicitly seek new types of affective relationships with "selfish" women who break from the traditional models of female selflessness. Yet even as these men seek recognition and support for their own self-making from women who are equally ambitious and independent, they cannot completely repudiate the maternal model, longing at the same time for "positive," "selfless" girls who subordinate their desires to the needs of the relationship. The tension of this paradox is felt most acutely by men from conservative and rural family backgrounds whose new identities as upwardly mobile high-achievers necessitate recognition from equally high-achieving women, but who are unable or unwilling to completely relinquish their need for male dominance and control in order to make such relationships successful.Less
In stark contrast with their fathers, the young men whose narratives make up this chapter long for identities based on self-expansion and personal enrichment. Mirroring Turkish society's pivot away from state-based paternalism, these young men see themselves as embarking on projects of "entrepreneurship of the self" where old ideals of paternal selflessness are replaced by new ideals of individualism, ambition, and pleasure seeking. As these men reject the traditional modes of masculinity modeled by their fathers, they explicitly seek new types of affective relationships with "selfish" women who break from the traditional models of female selflessness. Yet even as these men seek recognition and support for their own self-making from women who are equally ambitious and independent, they cannot completely repudiate the maternal model, longing at the same time for "positive," "selfless" girls who subordinate their desires to the needs of the relationship. The tension of this paradox is felt most acutely by men from conservative and rural family backgrounds whose new identities as upwardly mobile high-achievers necessitate recognition from equally high-achieving women, but who are unable or unwilling to completely relinquish their need for male dominance and control in order to make such relationships successful.
Petula Sik Ying Ho and A. Ka Tat Tsang
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9789888139156
- eISBN:
- 9789882209756
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888139156.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
The anthology provides an exemplary methodological model of community-based research through the authors’ studies on sexual and erotic attitudes and practices of gay men and middle-aged women in Hong ...
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The anthology provides an exemplary methodological model of community-based research through the authors’ studies on sexual and erotic attitudes and practices of gay men and middle-aged women in Hong Kong over the last fifteen years. This collection focuses on issues that have major scholastic contribution to the field, namely, the voices of women on issues of sex and desire, and the investigation of multiple sex relationships among Hong Kong men and women. It also addresses clinical psychological issues and sex education topics that serve to enrich the current state of sexuality studies. The book reveals the social changes, trends, movements, and processes in Hong Kong and across China, thereby highlighting the reality of coloniality and how our experience of desire/sexuality is conditioned by broad, global and socio-political forces.Less
The anthology provides an exemplary methodological model of community-based research through the authors’ studies on sexual and erotic attitudes and practices of gay men and middle-aged women in Hong Kong over the last fifteen years. This collection focuses on issues that have major scholastic contribution to the field, namely, the voices of women on issues of sex and desire, and the investigation of multiple sex relationships among Hong Kong men and women. It also addresses clinical psychological issues and sex education topics that serve to enrich the current state of sexuality studies. The book reveals the social changes, trends, movements, and processes in Hong Kong and across China, thereby highlighting the reality of coloniality and how our experience of desire/sexuality is conditioned by broad, global and socio-political forces.
Frida Beckman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748645923
- eISBN:
- 9780748689170
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748645923.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also ...
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Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also searching for the possibility of claiming sexual pleasure as a constructive and politically enabling notion today. In the face of the way in which Deleuze’s theory of desire builds on a rejection of the usefulness of pleasure, this book works to construct a Deleuzian theory of sexuality that is inclusive of pleasure. Intervening into contemporary fields of research including posthumanist-, disability-, animal-, and feminist studies as well as into current critiques of capitalism and consumerism, Between Desire and Pleasure works to contribute to cultural, conceptual, and political debates about sexuality.Less
Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also searching for the possibility of claiming sexual pleasure as a constructive and politically enabling notion today. In the face of the way in which Deleuze’s theory of desire builds on a rejection of the usefulness of pleasure, this book works to construct a Deleuzian theory of sexuality that is inclusive of pleasure. Intervening into contemporary fields of research including posthumanist-, disability-, animal-, and feminist studies as well as into current critiques of capitalism and consumerism, Between Desire and Pleasure works to contribute to cultural, conceptual, and political debates about sexuality.
Aaron Schuster
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262528597
- eISBN:
- 9780262334150
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262528597.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is ...
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Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two formidable figures of post-war French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze’s work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In this book Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure.” Along the way, Schuster offers his own conceptual analyses and examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud’s theory of neurosis to Spinoza’s intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.Less
Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two formidable figures of post-war French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze’s work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In this book Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure.” Along the way, Schuster offers his own conceptual analyses and examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud’s theory of neurosis to Spinoza’s intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.
Deborah Martin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719090349
- eISBN:
- 9781526109606
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090349.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Since the release of her debut feature, La ciénaga, in 2001, Argentine director Lucrecia Martel has gained worldwide recognition for her richly allusive, elliptical and sensorial film-making. The ...
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Since the release of her debut feature, La ciénaga, in 2001, Argentine director Lucrecia Martel has gained worldwide recognition for her richly allusive, elliptical and sensorial film-making. The first monograph on her work, The Cinema of Lucrecia Martel analyses her three feature films, which also include La niña santa (2004) and La mujer sin cabeza (2008), alongside the unstudied short films Nueva Argirópolis (2010), Pescados (2010) and Muta (2011). It examines the place of Martel’s work within the experimental turn taken by Argentine cinema in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a trend of which Martel is often described as a major player, yet also explores correspondences between her work and other national and global filmmaking trends, including the horror genre, and classic Hollywood. It brings together the rich and diverse critical approaches which have been taken in the analysis of Martel’s work – including feminist and queer approaches, political readings and phenomenology – and proposes new ways of understanding her films, in particular through their figuring of desire as revolutionary, their use of the child’s perspective, and their address to the senses and perception, which it argues serve to renew cinematic language and thought.Less
Since the release of her debut feature, La ciénaga, in 2001, Argentine director Lucrecia Martel has gained worldwide recognition for her richly allusive, elliptical and sensorial film-making. The first monograph on her work, The Cinema of Lucrecia Martel analyses her three feature films, which also include La niña santa (2004) and La mujer sin cabeza (2008), alongside the unstudied short films Nueva Argirópolis (2010), Pescados (2010) and Muta (2011). It examines the place of Martel’s work within the experimental turn taken by Argentine cinema in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a trend of which Martel is often described as a major player, yet also explores correspondences between her work and other national and global filmmaking trends, including the horror genre, and classic Hollywood. It brings together the rich and diverse critical approaches which have been taken in the analysis of Martel’s work – including feminist and queer approaches, political readings and phenomenology – and proposes new ways of understanding her films, in particular through their figuring of desire as revolutionary, their use of the child’s perspective, and their address to the senses and perception, which it argues serve to renew cinematic language and thought.
Terence Irwin
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195086454
- eISBN:
- 9780199833306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195086457.003.0020
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
The last chapter analyses how Plato’s ethical views are developed in the later dialogues (the Philebus, the Statesman, and the Laws). In the last dialogue Plato tries to harmonise the different ...
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The last chapter analyses how Plato’s ethical views are developed in the later dialogues (the Philebus, the Statesman, and the Laws). In the last dialogue Plato tries to harmonise the different virtues. The relations between pleasure, happiness, and desire are analysed. Finally, the role played by the cardinal virtues in the later dialogues is examined, in particular, a certain attention toward the condition of wisdom and how it is related to the other virtues.Less
The last chapter analyses how Plato’s ethical views are developed in the later dialogues (the Philebus, the Statesman, and the Laws). In the last dialogue Plato tries to harmonise the different virtues. The relations between pleasure, happiness, and desire are analysed. Finally, the role played by the cardinal virtues in the later dialogues is examined, in particular, a certain attention toward the condition of wisdom and how it is related to the other virtues.
Eugenio Barba
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099944
- eISBN:
- 9789882207394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099944.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter discusses the first experiment combining jingju and a Western work. It notes that in 1986, seven years after Kuo Hsiao-chuang and her Elegant Voice first assailed jingju circles, Wu ...
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This chapter discusses the first experiment combining jingju and a Western work. It notes that in 1986, seven years after Kuo Hsiao-chuang and her Elegant Voice first assailed jingju circles, Wu Hsing-kuo and his newly established Contemporary Legend Theatre (CLT) gave Taiwanese audiences another shock. It further notes that The Kingdom of Desire, an adaptation of Macbeth that was to meet with international acclaim for decades, began the CLT's maiden voyage into contemporary experimental theatre on the island. It observes that it was the first time that Shakespeare, the representative of the Western canon, and the “national drama” (guoju), symbol of the Chinese traditional culture, had met on Taiwan's stage. It notes that the struggle between the two cultural fields resulted in an unusual hybrid style that startled the auditorium.Less
This chapter discusses the first experiment combining jingju and a Western work. It notes that in 1986, seven years after Kuo Hsiao-chuang and her Elegant Voice first assailed jingju circles, Wu Hsing-kuo and his newly established Contemporary Legend Theatre (CLT) gave Taiwanese audiences another shock. It further notes that The Kingdom of Desire, an adaptation of Macbeth that was to meet with international acclaim for decades, began the CLT's maiden voyage into contemporary experimental theatre on the island. It observes that it was the first time that Shakespeare, the representative of the Western canon, and the “national drama” (guoju), symbol of the Chinese traditional culture, had met on Taiwan's stage. It notes that the struggle between the two cultural fields resulted in an unusual hybrid style that startled the auditorium.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation ...
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The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation of contemporary American sleep is laid in the 19th century, when industrial workday demands the coordination and consolidation of sleeping and waking patterns. What was lost in this transition was unconsolidated sleep – instead of two nightly periods of rest, or daily naps supplemented with nightly sleep, one eight hour period of sleep was substituted as a new norm. This norm laid the basis for the emerging field of sleep medicine, which took as its primary concern the eradication of napping and insomnia, and substituting eight regular and consolidated hours of sleep. This invention of consolidated sleep led to the eventual pathologization of many forms of sleep, and provided the basis for contemporary sleep medicine. The present interest in sleep, exemplified by advertising campaigns for “Z drugs” – a new chemical that promotes and consolidates sleep – is not so much new as an intensification of a two hundred year old interest in making “normal” American sleep. In the present, I focus on the lives of physicians, scientists, patients and their families as they deal with the social frictions that sleep disorders are accepted as causing. I argue in the conclusion that by recognizing the human limits of sleep, we can apprehend sleep’s variations as non-pathological, and that with more flexible social institutions and expectations, the medicalization of sleep might be subverted.Less
The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation of contemporary American sleep is laid in the 19th century, when industrial workday demands the coordination and consolidation of sleeping and waking patterns. What was lost in this transition was unconsolidated sleep – instead of two nightly periods of rest, or daily naps supplemented with nightly sleep, one eight hour period of sleep was substituted as a new norm. This norm laid the basis for the emerging field of sleep medicine, which took as its primary concern the eradication of napping and insomnia, and substituting eight regular and consolidated hours of sleep. This invention of consolidated sleep led to the eventual pathologization of many forms of sleep, and provided the basis for contemporary sleep medicine. The present interest in sleep, exemplified by advertising campaigns for “Z drugs” – a new chemical that promotes and consolidates sleep – is not so much new as an intensification of a two hundred year old interest in making “normal” American sleep. In the present, I focus on the lives of physicians, scientists, patients and their families as they deal with the social frictions that sleep disorders are accepted as causing. I argue in the conclusion that by recognizing the human limits of sleep, we can apprehend sleep’s variations as non-pathological, and that with more flexible social institutions and expectations, the medicalization of sleep might be subverted.
Madhavi Menon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695904
- eISBN:
- 9781452953656
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695904.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being ...
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Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being “indifferent to difference.” Following up on the ideas of sameness and difference that have animated queer theory, I think about what it might mean, methodologically, to be indifferent to differences of chronology, culture, and sexuality. Rather than giving us an identifiable “queerness,” or queerness as an identity, a universalism premised on indifference would be queer in its resistance to ontology. This queer universalism would be neither additive nor predicative; instead, it would resist the regime of difference in which embodiment is considered the basis of authentic identity. Indifference to Difference resuscitates the philosophical debates around universalism by joining them to the concerns of queer theory. Asking, along with Alain Badiou, what it would mean to be indifferent to someone else’s difference from us, Indifference, or Queer Universalism suggests that being locked into a world of differences should not translate into reifying difference as the basis of identity. Rather, by being indifferent to the many differences within which we live, we acknowledge the reality in which we are always moving and ever mobile. This continual movement is the movement of desire. Desire resides in us, but with scant regard for who we are. If we take seriously the universal inability of desire to settle, then we lose the ontological specificity of difference. Queer universalism can only ever be indifferent to difference.Less
Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being “indifferent to difference.” Following up on the ideas of sameness and difference that have animated queer theory, I think about what it might mean, methodologically, to be indifferent to differences of chronology, culture, and sexuality. Rather than giving us an identifiable “queerness,” or queerness as an identity, a universalism premised on indifference would be queer in its resistance to ontology. This queer universalism would be neither additive nor predicative; instead, it would resist the regime of difference in which embodiment is considered the basis of authentic identity. Indifference to Difference resuscitates the philosophical debates around universalism by joining them to the concerns of queer theory. Asking, along with Alain Badiou, what it would mean to be indifferent to someone else’s difference from us, Indifference, or Queer Universalism suggests that being locked into a world of differences should not translate into reifying difference as the basis of identity. Rather, by being indifferent to the many differences within which we live, we acknowledge the reality in which we are always moving and ever mobile. This continual movement is the movement of desire. Desire resides in us, but with scant regard for who we are. If we take seriously the universal inability of desire to settle, then we lose the ontological specificity of difference. Queer universalism can only ever be indifferent to difference.
Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199348169
- eISBN:
- 9780199348183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199348169.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
To intrinsically desire that P is to be in a state that is both a natural kind and that causes the effects (motivational, emotional, and cognitive) associated with intrinsically desiring that P, ...
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To intrinsically desire that P is to be in a state that is both a natural kind and that causes the effects (motivational, emotional, and cognitive) associated with intrinsically desiring that P, assuming that such a natural kind exists. It does: states of the reward system cause just what intrinsic desires are thought to cause, and they are the only states of the brain that cause these effects. Hence to desire that P is to constitute P as a reward (in a technical, learning-theoretic sense of ‘reward’). Since this is what it is to desire that P, it is possible to be highly motivated to bring it about that P without strongly desiring it, possible to feel nothing about P but strongly desire it, and so on. This has the potential to answer many familiar objections to desire-based theories in moral psychology.Less
To intrinsically desire that P is to be in a state that is both a natural kind and that causes the effects (motivational, emotional, and cognitive) associated with intrinsically desiring that P, assuming that such a natural kind exists. It does: states of the reward system cause just what intrinsic desires are thought to cause, and they are the only states of the brain that cause these effects. Hence to desire that P is to constitute P as a reward (in a technical, learning-theoretic sense of ‘reward’). Since this is what it is to desire that P, it is possible to be highly motivated to bring it about that P without strongly desiring it, possible to feel nothing about P but strongly desire it, and so on. This has the potential to answer many familiar objections to desire-based theories in moral psychology.
Neil Sinhababu
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198783893
- eISBN:
- 9780191826542
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198783893.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This book defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. In addition to motivating action, desire causes pleasant and unpleasant ...
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This book defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. In addition to motivating action, desire causes pleasant and unpleasant feelings depending on our thoughts concerning its object, directs our attention towards its object, and is amplified by vivid representations of its object. These properties of desire help the Humean Theory provide illuminating accounts of moral judgment, intention, willpower, and agency, and account for a variety of psychological phenomena that its opponents believe it can’t explain. Emotional dispositions that include desires cause moral beliefs and are the sources of moral concepts. Intentions are desires combined with means–end beliefs, and their role in planning is derived from desire’s ability to direct attention. We exercise willpower by intentionally redirecting attention in ways that raise the vividness of our goals or decrease the vividness of temptation. Our selves are constituted by all of our desires, and the activity of these desires constitutes our practical agency. The Humean Theory reveals that a variety of contemporary rationalist and noncognitivist theories leave humans incapable of moral judgment, and supports a cognitivist and externalist theory that is consistent with our Humean nature.Less
This book defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. In addition to motivating action, desire causes pleasant and unpleasant feelings depending on our thoughts concerning its object, directs our attention towards its object, and is amplified by vivid representations of its object. These properties of desire help the Humean Theory provide illuminating accounts of moral judgment, intention, willpower, and agency, and account for a variety of psychological phenomena that its opponents believe it can’t explain. Emotional dispositions that include desires cause moral beliefs and are the sources of moral concepts. Intentions are desires combined with means–end beliefs, and their role in planning is derived from desire’s ability to direct attention. We exercise willpower by intentionally redirecting attention in ways that raise the vividness of our goals or decrease the vividness of temptation. Our selves are constituted by all of our desires, and the activity of these desires constitutes our practical agency. The Humean Theory reveals that a variety of contemporary rationalist and noncognitivist theories leave humans incapable of moral judgment, and supports a cognitivist and externalist theory that is consistent with our Humean nature.
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804784207
- eISBN:
- 9780804784870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804784207.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines two intensely psychological stories of women whose lives appear to be damaged and even destroyed by the forces of sexual repression: Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853) and Eliza ...
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This chapter examines two intensely psychological stories of women whose lives appear to be damaged and even destroyed by the forces of sexual repression: Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853) and Eliza Kazan's film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). It argues that Brontë's and Kazan's interactions with their respective moral censors were marked less by victimization and oppression than by stimulation and inspiration. Both artists were, in the end, paradoxically motivated by the moral complaints lodged against them to communicate their ideas in subtler, richer, and more powerful ways.Less
This chapter examines two intensely psychological stories of women whose lives appear to be damaged and even destroyed by the forces of sexual repression: Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853) and Eliza Kazan's film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). It argues that Brontë's and Kazan's interactions with their respective moral censors were marked less by victimization and oppression than by stimulation and inspiration. Both artists were, in the end, paradoxically motivated by the moral complaints lodged against them to communicate their ideas in subtler, richer, and more powerful ways.
Luis Cortest
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228539
- eISBN:
- 9780823235681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823228539.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter discusses how the Thomistic philosophy survives, looking into the lives of Desiré Joseph Mercier and Jacques Maritain, and the doctrine of ...
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This chapter discusses how the Thomistic philosophy survives, looking into the lives of Desiré Joseph Mercier and Jacques Maritain, and the doctrine of Pope John Paul II. As a scholar, Mercier was strongly committed to the idea that all of the sciences could work together with philosophy to form a unified, rational whole. His heroic stand against the Germans during the First World War made him an international celebrity. Leo's defense, like Mercier's, was based on natural right and justice. In 1882, Jacques Maritain was born in Paris. Maritain was perhaps one of the strongest Catholic defenders of democracy in his day. He was convinced that this form of government was best suited to protect the dignity of the human person. The strongest defender of natural law since Leo XIII was Pope John Paul II. His most comprehensive statements appeared in the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor.Less
This chapter discusses how the Thomistic philosophy survives, looking into the lives of Desiré Joseph Mercier and Jacques Maritain, and the doctrine of Pope John Paul II. As a scholar, Mercier was strongly committed to the idea that all of the sciences could work together with philosophy to form a unified, rational whole. His heroic stand against the Germans during the First World War made him an international celebrity. Leo's defense, like Mercier's, was based on natural right and justice. In 1882, Jacques Maritain was born in Paris. Maritain was perhaps one of the strongest Catholic defenders of democracy in his day. He was convinced that this form of government was best suited to protect the dignity of the human person. The strongest defender of natural law since Leo XIII was Pope John Paul II. His most comprehensive statements appeared in the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor.
Madhavi Menon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695904
- eISBN:
- 9781452953656
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695904.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
The art of Yinka Shonibare MBE critiques colonialism by taking seriously the play of desire. Using “African” cloth to make ruffled clothes for Victorian dandies, Shonibare highlights the seam between ...
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The art of Yinka Shonibare MBE critiques colonialism by taking seriously the play of desire. Using “African” cloth to make ruffled clothes for Victorian dandies, Shonibare highlights the seam between cut and fabric in the making of identity.Less
The art of Yinka Shonibare MBE critiques colonialism by taking seriously the play of desire. Using “African” cloth to make ruffled clothes for Victorian dandies, Shonibare highlights the seam between cut and fabric in the making of identity.
A. Raghuramaraju
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195699364
- eISBN:
- 9780199080533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195699364.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter discusses the convergence of different metaphysical systems on aspects of permanence, namely, pre-, post- and non-existence. Highlighting these convergences will help in recognizing the ...
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This chapter discusses the convergence of different metaphysical systems on aspects of permanence, namely, pre-, post- and non-existence. Highlighting these convergences will help in recognizing the novelty of the twentieth century philosophical text from India, Desire and Liberation. It considers two dominant aspects of pre-existence — Non-Being and Being in various philosophical systems — followed discussions of the transformation from pre-existence to existence and overcoming existence as post-existence. The first and the third are associated with permanence and the second with change and impermanence. These topics have been analysed with examples from Vedas, Upanishads, orthodox Indian philosophical schools, and non-orthodox groups like Jainism, Buddhism, and Rationalism. It also discusses the theories of Bergson and Chandidas on relation between permanence and negation.Less
This chapter discusses the convergence of different metaphysical systems on aspects of permanence, namely, pre-, post- and non-existence. Highlighting these convergences will help in recognizing the novelty of the twentieth century philosophical text from India, Desire and Liberation. It considers two dominant aspects of pre-existence — Non-Being and Being in various philosophical systems — followed discussions of the transformation from pre-existence to existence and overcoming existence as post-existence. The first and the third are associated with permanence and the second with change and impermanence. These topics have been analysed with examples from Vedas, Upanishads, orthodox Indian philosophical schools, and non-orthodox groups like Jainism, Buddhism, and Rationalism. It also discusses the theories of Bergson and Chandidas on relation between permanence and negation.
Amaleena Damlé
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748668212
- eISBN:
- 9781474400923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668212.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter analyses Gilles Deleuze’s work (alone and in collaboration with Félix Guattari), as a philosophy of flows, of possibilities and of vitality. It explores the ways in which his thought has ...
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This chapter analyses Gilles Deleuze’s work (alone and in collaboration with Félix Guattari), as a philosophy of flows, of possibilities and of vitality. It explores the ways in which his thought has been resisted by conventional feminism, and later taken up by a range of recent feminist and queer theorists, while providing its own particular readings as a feminist literary critic. The chapter unpicks Deleuze’s thinking through the conceptualisation of transcendental empiricism, exploring relations between a-subjectivity, the event and the fold. It then analyses Deleuze and Guattari’s anti-psychoanalytical theory through the aleatory flux of desire, the Body without Organs and notions of nomadic becoming. Finally it considers the Deleuzian concept of difference, thinking through its possible relations with politics and with art, and unfolding a philosophy of the becoming of the body that lays the foundations for the rest of the work.Less
This chapter analyses Gilles Deleuze’s work (alone and in collaboration with Félix Guattari), as a philosophy of flows, of possibilities and of vitality. It explores the ways in which his thought has been resisted by conventional feminism, and later taken up by a range of recent feminist and queer theorists, while providing its own particular readings as a feminist literary critic. The chapter unpicks Deleuze’s thinking through the conceptualisation of transcendental empiricism, exploring relations between a-subjectivity, the event and the fold. It then analyses Deleuze and Guattari’s anti-psychoanalytical theory through the aleatory flux of desire, the Body without Organs and notions of nomadic becoming. Finally it considers the Deleuzian concept of difference, thinking through its possible relations with politics and with art, and unfolding a philosophy of the becoming of the body that lays the foundations for the rest of the work.
Amaleena Damlé
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748668212
- eISBN:
- 9781474400923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668212.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter explores hunger and the anorexic body in Amélie Nothomb’s autofictional work. It analyses relations between hunger, desire and pleasure, sensation and immanence, investigates the making ...
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This chapter explores hunger and the anorexic body in Amélie Nothomb’s autofictional work. It analyses relations between hunger, desire and pleasure, sensation and immanence, investigates the making of a Deleuzian Body without Organs through the dematerialisating structures of anorexia, and opens out the possibility of the rematerialisation of the body alongside literary experimentation with corporeality. The chapter shows how Nothomb’s work both resonates with and reorients Deleuze’s thinking, with particular regard to notions of molarity, to the politics of beauty and illness, to experiments with body and art, and to the location of the limit.Less
This chapter explores hunger and the anorexic body in Amélie Nothomb’s autofictional work. It analyses relations between hunger, desire and pleasure, sensation and immanence, investigates the making of a Deleuzian Body without Organs through the dematerialisating structures of anorexia, and opens out the possibility of the rematerialisation of the body alongside literary experimentation with corporeality. The chapter shows how Nothomb’s work both resonates with and reorients Deleuze’s thinking, with particular regard to notions of molarity, to the politics of beauty and illness, to experiments with body and art, and to the location of the limit.
Amaleena Damlé
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748668212
- eISBN:
- 9781474400923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668212.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter explores the postcolonial context of Franco-Algerian writer Nina Bouraoui’s work as a state of perpetually deterritorialised flux and nomadic becoming. Its analysis of subjectivity ...
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This chapter explores the postcolonial context of Franco-Algerian writer Nina Bouraoui’s work as a state of perpetually deterritorialised flux and nomadic becoming. Its analysis of subjectivity through constant shifts and transitions is then brought to bear on the reconfiguration of desire and sexuality in Bouraoui’s writing. The chapter considers the becoming of the body, then, both in terms of the trajectories of corporeality and the vital flows of an aleatory desire and plastic sexuality. Mobilising Deleuzian notions of space – smooth space and the any-space-whatever – the chapter suggests that Bouraoui’s writing interlaces the actual and the virtual in its perpetual invention of a queer future becoming.Less
This chapter explores the postcolonial context of Franco-Algerian writer Nina Bouraoui’s work as a state of perpetually deterritorialised flux and nomadic becoming. Its analysis of subjectivity through constant shifts and transitions is then brought to bear on the reconfiguration of desire and sexuality in Bouraoui’s writing. The chapter considers the becoming of the body, then, both in terms of the trajectories of corporeality and the vital flows of an aleatory desire and plastic sexuality. Mobilising Deleuzian notions of space – smooth space and the any-space-whatever – the chapter suggests that Bouraoui’s writing interlaces the actual and the virtual in its perpetual invention of a queer future becoming.
