They conclude that desireless action is action performed without certain desires; other desires are permissible.In this book, the author surveys the ...

Desire, Love, and Identity: Philosophy of Sex and Love combines classical readings with contemporary articles exploring love and sex as defining features of our identity. This volume includes readings from a wide variety of perspectives, addressing topics such as sexual objectification, sexual identity, the ethics of sex work, love and sex online, friendship, polyamory, and BDSM. Alongside ancient, modern, and contemporary selections are sixteen original contributions written by emerging voices in the field. A wide-ranging, engaging, accessible introduction to (...) the subject, the text includes further readings and discussion questions to promote thought, discussion, and composition on subjects deeply intertwined with students' identities. (shrink)

Philosophy and Desire , the seventh book in the well-known Continental Philosophy series, examines questions of desire--desire for another person, desire for happiness, desire for knowledge, desire for a better world, desire for the impossible, desire in text, desire in language and desire for desire itself. The theme of desire is explored through readings of contemporary figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Bataille, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Levinas, Irigaray, Barthes, (...) Derrida, and Derrida. A hot, timely topic in philosophy today Expands the contemporary debates. (shrink)

Desire, Love, and Identity: Philosophy of Sex and Love combines classical readings with contemporary articles exploring love and sex as defining features of our identity. This volume includes readings from a wide variety of perspectives, addressing topics such as sexual objectification, sexual identity, the ethics of sex work, love and sex online, friendship, polyamory, and BDSM. Alongside ancient, modern, and contemporary selections are sixteen original contributions written by emerging voices in the field. A wide-ranging, engaging, accessible introduction to (...) the subject, the text includes further readings and discussion questions to promote thought, discussion, and composition on subjects deeply intertwined with students' identities. (shrink)

Wish-fulfilment as a singular means of satisfying ineluctable desire is a pivotal concept in classical psychoanalysis. Freud argued that it was the thread that united dreams, daydreams, phantasy, omnipotent thinking, neurotic and some psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, art, myth, and religious illusions. The concept's theoretical exploration has been largely neglected within psychoanalysis since, but contemporary philosophers have recognised it as providing an explanatory model for much of the kind of irrational behaviour so problematic for psychiatry, social (...) psychology and the philosophy of mind. Although critically neglected in contemporary psychological and psychoanalytic thought, the concept remains clinically fundamental, under different labels: it encompasses the processes of omnipotent phantasy, symbolic or substitutive satisfaction, actualisation in transference and acting out, symptom formation and defenses such as projective identification. Wish-fulfilment can be shown to be a specifically psychoanalytic compartment of a common-sense psychological theory of action that illuminates not just clinical material but also the paradoxes of irrationality – such as weakness of will and self-deception – that preoccupy philosophers. The first half of this book develops a comprehensive and novel theory of wish-fulfilment, explores its radical implications for the structure of mind, and locates it against the backdrop of both contemporary psychoanalytic and philosophical thought. In the second half, the book applies the theory to illuminate important features of self-deception and delusion, religion, insanity defences, creative writing and the exclusion of mind and intention in the biological drift of modern psychiatry. The book will be essential to philosophers of mind, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, social theorists, and students in these disciplines; as well as readers interested in understanding how the mind works in mental illness, self-deception, religion, and creative writing. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

David Webster explores the notion of desire as found in the Buddhist Pali Canon. Beginning by addressing the idea of a 'paradox of desire', whereby we must desire to end desire, the varieties of desire that are articulated in the Pali texts are examined. A range of views of desire, as found in Western thought are presented as well as Hindu and Jain approaches. An exploration of the concept of ditthi (view or opinion) is (...) also provided, exploring the way in which 'holding views' can be seen as analogous to the process of desiring. Other subjects investigated include the mind-body relationship, the range of Pali terms for desire, and desire's positive spiritual value. A comparative exploration of the various approaches completes the work. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qui, chez l'homme, retient ou empeche la fuite en avant d'une pulsion specifique? Une autre pulsion complementaire ou antagoniste? L'instance subjective d'un moi se pliant aux commandements du surmoi? L'ordre du corps vivant, de la raison ou du signifiant? Ou est-il pensable qu'une pulsion humaine se gouverne elle-meme en canalisant son energie excessive et en veillant a sa transformation ou a sa sublimation plutot que de se livrer a l'ivresse d'une repetition sterile?Ce livre aborde ces questions en envisageant les (...) pulsions humaines, en amont, depuis leur ancrage dans les forces de la nature ou les instincts animaux et, en aval, en vue de leur prolongement en desirs symboliquement structures. Dans une telle perspective, le questionnement psychanalytique de Freud et de Lacan rencontre tout naturellement les interrogations d'une philosophie de la nature, de la vie et de la culture. Inversement, une rehabilitation de l'energetique psychanalytique favorise la redecouverte d'une pensee philosophique, pour laquelle la dynamique des forces virtuelles prime sur la presence de substances statiques, et pour laquelle aucun acte effectif n'efface sa dette vis-a-vis d'un pouvoir-etre retenu ou d'un manque d'etre. De cette metaphysique dont le livre suit le cheminement d'Aristote a Husserl en passant par Leibniz et Schopenhauer, Nietzsche et la psychanalyse marquent aussi les limites, en projetant sur elle l'ombre du nihilisme des pulsions de mort. Au croisement des deux approches de la pulsion se dresse, a nouveau mais autrement, la question de la subjectivite. (shrink)

In this study, Bethany Somma argues for a dichotomous interpretation of human desire developed by late ancient Greek and medieval Islamic philosophers in response to an ambiguity in Aristotle’s account of desire.

If critical momentum in European philosophy and theory has seemed to shift away from deconstruction over the past decade or so, nevertheless the indebtedness of contemporary key thinkers to Derrida's writing and the entire project of deconstruction is unquestionable, regardless of whether it is always fully acknowledged, and whether or not Derrida's influence manifests itself as a source of inspiration or the grounds of critical antagonism or opposition. Many of those who now reject deconstruction continue to write texts that (...) engage with Derrida's work, whether dismissively or not. In this context, how best to recall deconstruction as a continuing 'voice' across the various fields of the critical humanities, theory and philosophy? The starting point for this collection of essays is the idea that, rather than reduce deconstruction to an object of historical importance or memory, one might more fruitfully analyze its significance in terms of complex matrices of desire in which it continues to figure; ceaselessly provoked in this way, deconstruction may neither be dismissed as simply 'dead', nor unproblematically defended as still alive and well. Instead, it asks to be repositioned on the threshold of life-death (about which deconstruction has always had much to say), an intricate threshold which profoundly complicates its relationship to the 'present' field of critical thought. This is a field which-according to a highly complex set of desires-still struggles to memorialize, to inter, or indeed to cremate, reduce to ashes, the deconstructive corpus. This collection therefore brings together leading voices at the forefront of their critical fields, in order to address the question of the desires of deconstruction, in precisely these multiple senses. With contributions from Etienne Balibar, Catherine Malibou and Martin Hagglund, the volume includes key thinkers across various generations of scholarship: those whose careers took off in the 1960s, at the same time Derrida's importance was gaining acknowledgement; those who played their part in the Anglo-American reception and translation of Derrida in the subsequent two or three decades; those taught by him; and those who, without undue discipleship or hagiography, now seek to critically re-evaluate his work. (shrink)

Rachana Kamtekar offers a new understanding of Plato's account of the soul and its impact on our living well or badly, virtuously or viciously. She argues that throughout the dialogues Plato maintains that human beings have a natural desire for our own good, and that actions and conditions contrary to this desire are involuntary.

What is the good for human persons? If I am trying to lead the best possible life I could lead, not the morally best life, but the life that is best for me, what exactly am I seeking?This phrasing of the question I will be pursuing may sound tendentious, so some explanation is needed. What is good for one person, we ordinarily suppose, can conflict with what is good for other persons and with what is required by morality. A prudent (...) person seeks her own good efficiently; she selects the best available means to her good. If we call the value that a person seeks when she is being prudent “prudential value,” then an alternative rendering of the question to be addressed in this essay is “What is prudential value?” We can also say that an individual flourishes or has a life high in well-being when her life is high in prudential value. Of course, these common-sense appearances that the good for an individual, the good for other persons, and the requirements of morality often are in conflict might be deceiving. For all that I have said here, the correct theory of individual good might yield the result that sacrificing oneself for the sake of other people or for the sake of a morally worthy cause can never occur, because helping others and being moral always maximize one's own good. But this would be the surprising result of a theory, not something we should presuppose at the start of inquiry. When a friend has a baby and I express a conventional wish that the child have a good life, I mean a life that is good for the child, not a life that merely helps others or merely respects the constraints of morality. After all, a life that is altruistic and perfectly moral, we suppose, could be a life that is pure hell for the person who lives it—a succession of horrible headaches marked by no achievements or attainments of anything worthwhile and ending in agonizing death at a young age. So the question remains, what constitutes a life that is good for the person who is living it? (shrink)

The desire of knowledge constitutes, as it is well known, the opening ‘theme’ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. This article focuses on the figure of Dominic of Flanders, one of the commentators of Aristotle’s Metaphysics who much developed this topic. Dominicus deals with it in the second question of the first book of his commentary. What makes the interest of Dominic’s account is its originality, in so far as, according to him, the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics aims to stress the very (...) primacy of Metaphsyics, and not only, the primacy of science in general. In this sense, the desire of knowledge constitutes for Dominic the most efficacious argument for the primacy of Metaphsyics. However, this is possible only if the desiderium sciendi is related to two other principles: the first is that desirability entails perfection, and the second is that the desirability of an object depends on its intelligibility. (shrink)

A common view among autonomy theorists is that a desire is autonomous only if it has the right sort of history. Usually, an autonomy-compatible history is taken to consist in the desire’s having had proper origins. In a recent article in this journal, Mikhail Valdman has proposed an alternative historical theory on which a desire’s origins are irrelevant. On Valdman’s “agent-engagement” theory, a desire is autonomous if and only if the agent has made it her own (...) by deliberatively deciding it is worth maintaining and acting on. I argue that both of these approaches are overly demanding: the history of many autonomous desires lack proper origins, agent-engagement, or both. Taking as my starting point Alfred Mele’s account, which I go on to revise and supplement in several important ways, I outline a more flexible historical theory of autonomy which recognizes multiple ways in which a desire can become one’s own. (shrink)

In his moral writings, Kant states that moral duty cannot be derived from “the special characteristics of human nature.” This statement is untenable if one takes seriously Kant 's moral views on sexual desire. Instead close study reveals that considerations based on both morality and nature play a role here. The combination of these two elements leads to inconsistencies and difficulties in Kant 's understanding of sexual desire, but they enable us to better understand the importance Kant attributes (...) to marriage within his philosophy of law. (shrink)

Subject of my paper is the connection between Hegel’s philosophy of nature and the new conception of subjectivity developed in his works. At the centre of my reflection is the origin of desire from biological needs of the animal world, as affirmed by Hegel in the Encyclopaedia of philosophical sciences and inPhenomenology of Spirit. The animal nutrition is periodical: hunger and thirst are forms of lack, from which, in Hegel’s eyes, arises the first form of self‐consciousness: they produce (...) a first, obscure and indefinite sense of self. The correspondent concept in Phenomenology of Spirit is desire, as awareness of limits, and also as necessity to overcome them: as impulse to action. The fight and recognition which follow imply this natural source. The formation (Bildung) of subjectivity itself presupposes in Hegel this fundamental role of desire: What I want to analyse is the measure in which philosophy of nature influenced Hegel’s theory of subjectivity. Researches of the last decades give a new evaluation of the importance of this part of his philosophy and show the evident links to romantic philosophy of nature. My paper intends to demonstrate that desire in Hegel’s philosophy shows an evident cognitive value and can be considered a key-instrument for a new conception of reason, not opposed to passions. This approach can be interesting within the present international debate about the strategic role of passions in our post-modern world. (shrink)

Philosophy, when understood to embody the values that are fundamental to modernity, is biblical in origin, both historically and ontologically. Central to this idea is the question famously posed by Tertullian: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? The answer – as based on a comprehensive and systematic discussion of the key texts and ideas of Spinoza, Vico, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche – is that we can overcome the conventional opposition between reason and faith, between (...) class='Hi'>philosophy and theology, and between the secular and the religious only if we learn to see that, as Spinoza shows us, both philosophy (reason) and theology (faith) are based on caritas: love – on the divine command to do unto others what you want others to do unto you. Provided throughout is a commentary on how fundamentally different philosophy is in the Greek and in the biblical traditions (in Athens and in Jerusalem). Whereas Socrates argues that (human) desire and the (divine) good are contradictory opposites, Spinoza shows that it is human desire that truly constitutes the divine good of all. This book would be indispensable to courses (both undergraduate and graduate) in philosophy, religious studies, and the history of ideas – in interdisciplinary courses in the humanities, generally – that focus on the values that are central, both historically and ontologically, to modernity. (shrink)

Quels désirs sont dignes de la raison ? Comment satisfaire nos désirs sans perdre le contrôle de soi ? Ce recueil offre un éclairage sur les différents aspects de ces problèmes. Nous proposons au lecteur un parcours historique, allant de Platon à Hume, sur la question du désir et sa place dans les textes fondateurs de la philosophie.

The present paper is a reading of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s recent film, A Very Long Engagement, mainly through the lenses of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory of the human subject—particularly his notion of the subject’s desire, which constitutes every human subject as a singular being. Moreover, for Lacan the subject faces the task of taking up his or her desire as a prerequisite for truly ethical action. The character of Mathilde in Jeunet’s film, it is argued, may be seen as (...) being paradigmatic in this respect, insofar as she acts in accordance with her desire. This is demonstrated with reference to the narrative structure of Jeunet’s film. (shrink)

Is the creative act like a volcano: an outburst that lights up the universe? This volume connects reason with desire and the arts in ways that enable us to imagine how creativity can bring us closer to the truth. The artistic quest for freedom stands in stark contrast to philosophy's call to subordinate art to reason and tradition. The struggle between them has culminated in artistic attempts to subsume philosophical matters within the domain of art. One central question (...) in this study is what the consequences will be of a final dissolution of the boundary between the two domains: will all that remains of the artwork be an abstract howl of the rock – our rock, the planet – itself? (shrink)

Délire is the disorderly side of language, a no man’s land between reason and gibberish. In this study, originally published in 1985, the author provides a history of _délire_, tracing its influence on philosophy, linguistics, literature and psychoanalysis. The author argues that _délire _provides a new approach to the classic philosophical problem of sense and nonsense.

Pt. I. The apparent good. Evaluative cognition -- Perceiving the good -- Phantasia and the apparent good -- pt. II. The apparent good and non-rational motivation. Passions and the apparent good -- Akrasia and the apparent good -- pt. III. The apparent good and rational motivation. Phantasia and deliberation -- Happiness, virtue, and the apparent good -- Practical induction -- Conclusion : Aristotle's practical empiricism.

According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceiversintentionallydeceive others into believing something,p, and there is a time at which the deceivers believe thatpis false while their victims falsely believe thatpis true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something,p, and there is a time at which they believe thatpis false while also believing thatpis true.

The paradox of desire is an objection to desire-satisfaction, or preferentist, theories of welfare. In a nutshell, the objection goes like this. I can certainly desire that I be badly off. But if a desire-satisfaction theory of welfare is true, then—under certain assumptions—the hypothesis that I desire that I be badly off entails a contradiction. So much the worse for desire-satisfaction theories of welfare.

A major point of debate about morally good motives concerns an ambiguity in the truism that good and strong-willed people desire to do what is right. This debate is shaped by the assumption that “what’s right” combines in only two ways with “desire,” leading to distinct de dicto and de re readings of the truism. However, a third reading of such expressions is possible, first identified by Janet Fodor, which has gone wholly unappreciated by philosophers in this debate. (...) I identify Fodor’s nonspecific reading of “desire to do what’s right” and briefly discuss its merits. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that language is primarily a means of communication. But do we always mean what we say – must we mean something when we talk? This book explores the other side of language, where words are incoherent and meaning fails us. it argues that this shadey side of language is more important in our everyday speech than linguists and philosophers recognize. Historically this other side of language known as has attracted more attention in France than elsewhere. It (...) is particularly interesting because it brings together texts from a wide range of fields, including fiction, poetry and linguistics. The author also discusses the kind of linguistics that must be developed to deal with such texts, a linguistics which makes use of psychoanalytic knowledge. This tradition of writing has produced a major philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. This book provides an introduction to his work, an account of his original theory of meaning and an analysis of the celebrated _Anti-Oedipus_, which takes _délire _as one of its main themes. (shrink)

The guiding thesis of this chapter is that self-understanding is centrally an existential challenge. In particular, the chapter aims to lay bare the massive potential of our desire for social affirmation to influence and distort our self-understanding, mostly in a covert and unacknowledged fashion. To the extent that we are driven by this desire, we are primarily concerned with assessing, in an emotionally charged and self-deceptive manner, the social worth of our self, whereas we lack the will and (...) ability to understand ourselves in an open and unqualified manner. Ultimately, it is argued that whatever the cognitive demands of self-understanding and our ability to meet these demands may be, we can never know more about ourselves than we are existentially willing to face and acknowledge. (shrink)

This book defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all action and practical reasoning. -/- Desire motivates us to pursue its object. It makes thoughts of its object pleasant. It focuses attention on its object. Its effects are amplified by vivid representations of its object. These aspects of desire explain why motivation usually accompanies moral belief, how intentions shape our plans, how we exercise willpower, what human selves are, how action can express emotion, (...) why we procrastinate, and how we daydream. The Humean Theory also suggests a new account of moral judgment that upholds objectivity while understanding moral concepts in terms of our feelings. (shrink)

In the so-called “erotic dialogues”, especially the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Plato explained why erotic desire can play an epistemic function, establishing a strong connection between erotic desire and beauty, “the most clearly visible and the most loved” among the Ideas. Taking the erotic dialogues as a background, in this paper I elucidate Plato’s explanation in another context, the one of the Phaedo, for discussing the epistemic function of erotic desire in relation to the deficiency argument and (...) the affinity argument. My claim is that the erotic desire of the philosopher is activated by the recognition of traces of the Ideas as something that the material world lacks and that, nevertheless, his soul is familiar with. This desire for the Ideas triggers the process of recollection, and thus erotic desire acquires a decisive role in the acquisition of knowledge in the Phaedo. In the final section of the paper, I highlight the contemporary relevance of Plato’s epistemology of erotic desire. (shrink)

For centuries, the ancient Chinese philosophical text the _Daodejing (Tao Te Ching)_ has fascinated and frustrated its readers. While it offers a wealth of rich philosophical insights concerning the cultivation of one's body and attaining one's proper place within nature and the cosmos, its teachings and structure can be enigmatic and obscure. Hans-Georg Moeller presents a clear and coherent description and analysis of this vaguely understood Chinese classic. He explores the recurring images and ideas that shape the work and offers (...) a variety of useful approaches to understanding and appreciating this canonical text. Moeller expounds on the core philosophical issues addressed in the _Daodejing_, clarifying such crucial concepts as Yin and Yang and Dao and De. He explains its teachings on a variety of subjects, including sexuality, ethics, desire, cosmology, human nature, the emotions, time, death, and the death penalty. The _Daodejing_ also offers a distinctive ideal of social order and political leadership and presents a philosophy of war and peace. An illuminating exploration, The _Daodejing_ is an interesting foil to the philosophical outlook of Western humanism and contains surprising parallels between its teachings and nontraditional contemporary philosophies. (shrink)

Our amorous and erotic experiences do not simply bring us pleasure; they shape our very identities, our ways of relating to ourselves, each other and our shared world. This volume reflects on some of our most prevalent assumptions relating to identity, the body, monogamy, libido, sexual identity, seduction, fidelity, orgasm, and more.The book covers common conflicts and confusions and includes work by established scholars and innovative new thinkers. Philosophically challenging but highly readable, the volume is ideal for a wide range (...) of courses on love and sex, including those taught in philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I address the question of what we are really after when we seek Smithian mutual sympathy; I also show how the answer I propose can be used to illuminate a crucial feature of Smith's moral philosophy. The first section develops a Smithian response to egoistic interpretations of the desire for mutual sympathy. The second section identifies a number of different self- and other-relevant ways in which one could desire mutual sympathy. Some of these different (...) ways of desiring mutual sympathy comprise a spectrum of degrees of self-centredness; others comprise a spectrum of degrees of other-centredness. The third section shows that the spectra of ways of desiring mutual sympathy can be used to explain the kind of sincere, motivating attachment to morality characteristic of fully developed Smithian moral agents. (shrink)

In this sweeping volume, Christopher Norris challenges the view that there is no room for productive engagement between mainstream analytic philosophers and thinkers in the post-Kantian continental line of descent. On the contrary, he argues, this view is simply the product of a limiting perspective that accompanied the rise of logical positivism. Norris reveals the various shared concerns that have often been obscured by parochial interests or the desire to stake out separate philosophical territory. He examines the problems that (...) emerged within the analytic tradition as a result of its turn against Husserlian phenomenology and its outright rejection of what came to be seen as a merely "psychologistic" approach to issues of meaning, knowledge, and truth. Norris shows how these problems have resurfaced in various forms from the heyday of logical empiricism to the present. He provides critical readings of such philosophers as Willard Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michael Dummett, Thomas Nagel, and John McDowell. He also offers a running discussion of Wittgenstein's influence and its harmful effect in promoting a placidly consensus-based theory of knowledge. On the continental side, Norris argues for a reassessment of Husserl's phenomenological project and its potential contribution to present-day Anglo-American debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. He discusses Bachelard, Canguilhem, and the French tradition of rationalisme applique as an alternative to Kuhnian conceptions of scientific paradigm change. This leads him to suggest a non-Wittgensteinian way around the problems that have dogged more traditional theories of knowledge andtruth. In two chapters on the work of Jacques Derrida, Norris explores the "supplementary" logic of deconstruction and compares it with other recent proposals for a nonstandard logic. Here again he stresses the community of interests between the two philosophical cultures and the extent to which continental thinking has engaged certain issues with a rigor largely ignored by Anglophone writers. By bringing a fresh perspective to questions that have often been considered the exclusive preserve of analytic philosophy, Norris offers an overview of current debates that is at once refreshingly open-minded and sure of its own argumentative bearings. (shrink)

Prologue: retrospective and prospective -- The ethics of enough -- Real and apparent goods -- Wrong desires: pleasure, money, fame, and power -- Right desires: the totum bonum and its constituents -- Fundamental errors in moral philosophy -- Necessary but not sufficient -- Epilogue: transcultural ethics.

The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history…. You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society.I think [#MeToo] will have staying power because people, and not only women, men as well as women, realize how wrong the behavior was and how it subordinated women. So we shall see, but my prediction is that it is here to stay.As the story is told, #MeToo arrived in a kairotic moment. Jodi Kantor and (...) Megan Twohey's 5 October 2017 New York Times exposé of the methods Harvey Weinstein used to systematically harass and subsequently silence women in the entertainment industry opened the proverbial floodgates. Ten days later, actor Alyssa... (shrink)

Hegel's 1821 classic offers a comprehensive view of his influential system, in which he applies his most important concept--the dialectics--to law, rights, morality, the family, economics, and the state. The philosopher defines universal right as the synthesis between the thesis of an individual acting in accordance with the law and the occasional conflict of an antithetical desire to follow private convictions. The state, he declares, must permit individuals to satisfy both demands, thereby realizing social harmony and prosperity--the perfect synthesis. (...) Further, Hegel renounces the French Revolution and republican government in favor of an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, in which ultimate power rests with the sovereign. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the nature of desire, informed by psychology and neuroscience, which entails that hunger is not a desire. The account is contrasted with Schroeder’s well-known empirically-informed theory of desire. It is argued that one significant virtue of the present account, in comparison with Schroeder’s theory, is that it draws a sharp distinction between desires and basic drives, such as the drive for food. One reason to draw this distinction is that experiments on (...) incentive learning show that desires and basic drives influence action in different ways. (shrink)

I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgment day: I shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive its fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remembering that struggle with tender tears; I shall forgive its so-called “pride of race,” the passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton (...) and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust. The assumption that one can privilege gender, in advance, as a category, setting the terms of inclusion without fully considering those for whom gender alone fails to capture the multiplicity of experience, is itself an Orientalist move. (shrink)