Vagaries of Desire: A Collection of Philosophical Essays

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-41029-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 340, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Reihe: Value Inquiry Book Series / Philosophy, Literature, and Politics

Now available in Open Access thanks to the support of the University of Helsinki.

Vagaries of Desire is a major collection of new essays by Timo Airaksinen on the philosophy of desire. The first part develops a novel account of the philosophical theory of desire, including Girard. The second part discusses Kafka’s main works, namely The Castle, The Trial, and Amerika, and Thomas Hobbes and the problems of intentionality. The text develops such linguistic tropes as metaphor and metonymy in connection with topics like death and then applies them to Kafka’s texts. The third part makes an effort to understand the mysteries of sadism and masochism in philosophical and rhetorical terms. The last article criticizes Thomas Nagel’s influential account of sexual perversion and develops a viable alternative.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Airaksinen, Timo

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Part 1: Analytical Issues

1 Introduction: Depicting Desire

Definitions

Two Types of Desire

Wishful Thinking and Wish Fulfilment

De Re and De Dicto: a Paradox

2 Beliefs and Desires

From Wollheim’s Challenge to Human Needs

Modality: Beliefs as Constraints

Hermeneutical Considerations

Moral Beliefs

The Demise of Directionality

3 Push and Pull Theories of Desire

Background Checks

Russell on Desire

Desirability Demystified

Push Theory Returns

4 Our Anxious Desires

Preliminaries

Sources of Frustration and Anxiety

Immodest Desires

Zero Desires

Desire as a Metonym

5 René Girard and Mimetic Desire

Girard on Desire

Model, Not Desirability

Scripted Desires

Desires, Not My Own

Part 2: Desire in Context

6 Death, Desire, and the Generation of Metaphor

Prelude: Death and Dress

Meaning of Death

Meaning of Desire

Generating Metaphors

7 Kafka: Tropes of Desire

Introduction: Two Persons, Two Tasks, Two Desires

Tropological Considerations: The Trial

Tropological Considerations: The Trial

8 Lost in Kafka’s America

Preliminaries, or False Starts

Empty Metaphors

Irony: From Here to Eternity

9 Thomas Hobbes on Intentionality, Desire, and Happiness

Theories of Happiness

Happiness and Desire

Pleonexia

Desire and Its Intentionality

Egoism

Part 3: Sexuality

10 Sadomasochistic Desire

Kinky Sex

Tropological Delineations

The Riddles of Motivation

Sade and Sadism

Problems with Consent

Safe and Sane?

11 Tricky Sexual Differences: What Is Perversion?

The Tropes of Perversity

Freud: Perverted and Pathological Desires

Nagel: The Substantiality Thesis

Nagel: Ideally Good Sex, or in the Singles Bar

Nagel: The Genesis of Sexual Perversion

Some Probable Reasons for the Success of SP

Cases of Criticism

Conclusion: Anxious Desires

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Timo Airaksinen, Ph.D. (Turku, 1975) is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, University of Helsinki. He has published extensively on philosophy of literature (Sade, Kafka, Lovecraft), ethics, and the history of philosophy (Kant, Berkeley, Hobbes).