Desire

One of the most persistent and poignant human experiences is the sensation of longing—a restlessness perhaps best described as the unspoken conviction that something is missing from our lives. In this study, Drew M. Dalton attempts to illuminate this experience by examining the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas on longing, or what Levinas terms “metaphysical desire.”

Metaphysical desire, according to Levinas, does not stem from any determinate lack within us, nor does it aim at a particular object beyond us, much less promise any eventual satisfaction. Rather, it functions in the realm of the infinite where such distinctions as inside and outside or one and the other are indistinguishable, perhaps even eliminated. As Levinas conceives such longing, it becomes a mediator in our relation to the other—both the human other and the divine Other.

Dalton follows the meandering trail of Levinas’s thought along a series of dialogues with some of the philosophers within the history of the Western tradition who have most influenced his corpus. By tracing the genealogy of Levinas’s notion of metaphysical desire—namely in the works of Plato, Heidegger, Fichte, Schelling, and Otto—the nature of this Levinasian theme is elucidated to reveal that it is not simply an idealism, a “hagiography of desire” detached from actual experience and resulting in a disconnect between his phenomenological account and our own lives. Rather, Levinas’s account of metaphysical desire points to a phenomenology of human longing that is both an ethical and religious phenomenon. In the end, human longing is revealed to be one of the most profound ways in which a subject becomes a subject, arising to its “true self,” and hearing the call to responsibility placed upon it by the Other.

Throughout, Dalton explicates the nuance of a number of key Levinasian terms, many of which have been taken from the Western philosophical tradition and reinscribed with a new meaning. Eros, the “Good beyond being,” shame, responsibility, creation, the trace, the il y a, and the holy are discovered to be deeply tied to Levinas’s account of metaphysical desire, resulting in a conclusion regarding longing’s role in the relationship between the finite and the Infinite.

A overview of the "Self-Consciousness" chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.  I analyze the basic significance of each of the three themes of the chapter, (which Hegel calls "desire," "recognition," and "thought"), and I consider how the relationship between self and other is constituted in each of these fundamental relationships.

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays
which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic
dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and
literature, and explores the distinction, if there is
any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there
any overlap between art and pornography, or are
the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is
that? If they are not, how might we characterize
pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how
might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all,
from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of
pornography? What are some of the psychological,
social, and political consequences of the creation and
appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography?
Leading scholars from around the world address these
questions, and more, and bring together different
aesthetic perspectives and approaches to this widely
consumed, increasingly visible, yet aesthetically
underexplored cultural domain. The book, the first
of its kind in philosophical aesthetics, will contribute
to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the
many representations that incorporate explicit sexual
imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic
culture, in Western and non-Western contexts. It is
sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy.

This paper is a speculative experimentation that aims to explore the relationship between desire and thinking. Deviating from the letter, it attempts to understand philosophy as the knowledge of desire, as much as the desire for knowledge. To do so, it starts with the figure of Erôs, as assimilated by Plato with the dialectical method and the nature of philosophical inquiry. It then turns toward French phenomenology, for which the caress is the embodiment of desire-so much so that the horizontal exploration of matter replaces the vertical ascension toward the intelligible. Finally, it focuses on the concept of the erogenous zone, which Deleuze borrows from psychoanalysis but transforms into an ontological category intimately associated with the image of thought. In these terms, philosophy can therefore be regarded as a caress.

This thesis explores Maurice Blanchot’s notion of the “limit-experience” through a close reading of Thomas the Obscure. I examine Blanchot’s notion of the limit-experience through Thomas’ symptoms of psychosis and melancholia. These symptoms are important for understanding the “limit-experience” because they show the corrosive force of language on identity. Blanchot emphasizes the limits to thought and knowledge that is outside of the lived experience. I argue that Thomas’ “limit-experience” depicts a missed experience that includes both self and the other relations. Further, I suggest that Blanchot provides a unique account of what it is to put being into question but that he does so in literature. His récit will be examined here accordingly in terms of the way it enacts a questioning of the “limit-experience”.

The notion of the “limit-experience” hinges upon the idea that language is a counter-world to the real. Language is portrayed as an absence and presence that conceals and reveals being. I trace this thought through the narration of Thomas’ presence that is pushed to the extreme limits of experience and knowledge. I approach Thomas’ series of “limit-experiences” through a twofold perspective as I investigate his relationship with “the image” and “the symbol”. I argue that these two relationships with the anterior link Thomas’ being-in and for-itself (consciousness) to culture/ presence/ “I”.

A thesis on what advertising would be like if it shaped desire in ways that helped us flourish: the original goal of ethics. Combines a creative analysis of advertisements through history with an investigation of the concept of 'the education of desire' developed by Plato and St. Augustine.

Esse texto não é um texto e é um texto: um jogo-diálogo. Foi escrito por meio de conversas via aplicativo de comunicação vitual que seguem integralmente reveladas. Ora os textos são copiados do aplicativo e colados nesse arquivo, ora são trazidos como QR Code, devido a limitação de espaço. Abordamos o tema da alegria, testando seu vínculo
com o riso, a gargalhada, o desejo e a potência de agir a partir de perguntas emergentes e desdobramentos em conversa, sem estabelecer de antemão os rumos dessa escrita. Acolhendo a proposição de uma escrita performativa, apresentamos o jogo como possibilidade de partilha e uma relação entre arte e desvio em possíveis
conexões com a produção de vitalidade.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the problem of the human body as to whether it is wholly and directly influenced by the rational forces of the soul, or it contains something instinctive or unconscious that can exert a determinative influence on human actions and behavior. Drawing on Thomistic anthropology, the author gives his interpretation of organic factors in the human body and their place in the free and rational actions of the human being through the case study of sensual appetitive powers. The latter, he concludes, are what simplify the execution of desires of the soul.

“Wanderings Beyond Codification and Desire,” in Anthrohistory. Unsettling Knowledge, Questioning Discipline. Edward Murphy, Chandra D. Bhimull, Fernando Coronil, Monica Eileen Patterson and Julie Skurski eds. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2011.

This article addresses multiple paths of desire in Egypt. To date, research has
mainly focused on the family as the realm of intimacy. To understand desire, it is important to
take into account other contexts that contribute to shaping experience. Conversations about sex among men in coffee shops are contrasted with family discourses as a symbolic locus for alternative modes shaping intimacy in homosocial circles. The  hierarchy of truth whereby confessions are supposed to give insight into subjects core feelings are reassessed, allowing the sketching of a geography of competing intimacies that outline the coordinates of masculine desire.

Decision theory and folk psychology both purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they do so with different sets of concepts. There's much at stake in whether one of these two sets of concepts can be accounted for with the other. Without such an account, we'd have two competing representations and systems of prediction and explanation, a dubious dualism. Folk psychology structures our daily lives and has proven fruitful in the study of mind and ethics, while decision theory is pervasive in various disciplines, including the quantitative social sciences, especially economics, and philosophy. My interest is in accounting for folk psychology with decision theory -- in particular, for believe and wanting, which decision theory omits. Many have attempted this task for belief. (The Lockean Thesis says that there is such an account.) I take up the parallel task for wanting, which has received far less attention. I propose necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in terms of decision theory, for when you're truly said to want; I give an analogue of the Lockean Thesis for wanting. My account is an alternative to orthodox accounts that link wanting to preference (e.g. Stalnaker (1984), Lewis (1986)), which I argue are false. I argue further that want ascriptions are context-sensitive. My account explains this context-sensitivity, makes sense of conflicting desires, and accommodates phenomena that motivate traditional theses on which 'want' has multiple senses (e.g. all-things-considered vs. pro tanto).

Co-edited and translated with Jacob van Sluis.

Vol 1 of the Edinburgh Edition of the Philosophical Works of François Hemsterhuis

The first ever English translation of François Hemsterhuis’ early series of philosophical letters published during the 1760s and 1770s

This complete edition publishes Hemsterhuis’ 'Letter on an Antique Gemstone', 'Letter on Sculpture', 'Letter on Desires', 'Letter on Man and his Relations' and 'Philosophical Description of the Character of the Late Mr. F. Fagel' chronologically to gradually reveal Hemsterhuis’ complete systematic vision.

These letters are supplemented by three introductions. The first by Peter Sonderen pinpoints the significance of Hemsterhuis’ remarkably influential aesthetics. The second by Jacob van Sluis provides the context to 'Letter on Man and his Relations'. And the third by Gabriel Trop focuses on the importance of these writings in the history of ideas, especially Herder’s translation and ‘Postscript’ to the 'Letter on Desires', Diderot’s commentary on the 'Letter on Man and his Relations' and Goethe’s incorporation of Hemsterhuis’ definition of beauty into his aesthetic reflections.

The book is available here for purchase: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-early-writings-of-francois-hemsterhuis-1762-1773.html

In 1988, Michelle Fine explored the ways in which damaging patriarchal discourses about sexuality affect adolescent girls, and hinder their development of sexual desire, subjectivities, and responsibility. In this article, I emphasize the durability and pliability of those discourses three decades later. While they have endured, they shift depending on context and the intersections of girls' race, class, and gender identities. Calling on ethnographic research, I analyze the intersectional nuances in these sexual lessons for Latina girls in one (New) Latinx Diaspora town.

ENGLISH:
The recent triumph of Conchita Wurst –a transgender artist who, acting as Austria’s representative, won the 2014 edition of the singing contest Eurovision –allows us to test Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desire as a positive potential of production and of becoming (woman) as the process of realizing this potential. Conchita’s online and media appearances triggered numerous reactions full of hatred, and her figure was often equated with that of the monstrous –the bearded lady, the deformity, the ‘freak’. From a Deleuzian and Spinozist standpoint, I will consider whether the force producing these reactions could be the force of a sad passion: the envy towards a becoming that challenges the binary social machine and reveals another face of the monstrous. Not the soothing organic counterpart of the ‘well constituted’ subjectivity, but a new subjective figuration whose ‘sustainability’ involves a different rapport with change.

ESPAÑOL:
El reciente triunfo de Conchita Wurst –artista transgénero que, representando a Austria, resultó ganadora en la versión 2014 del concurso de canto Eurovisión –permite poner a prueba los conceptos deleuziano-guattarianos del deseo como potencia positiva de producción y del devenir (mujer) como proceso de realización del deseo. Las apariciones mediáticas y virtuales de Conchita provocaron numerosas reacciones de odio en las que su figura es frecuentemente asimilada a la de lo monstruoso: la mujer barbuda, la deformación, el “freak”. En clave deleuziana y spinozista, me preguntaré si la fuerza que produce estas reacciones no es acaso la de una pasión triste: la envidia ante un devenir que desafía la máquina social binaria y que revela otra cara de lo monstruoso. Ya no la contratara orgánica y tranquilizadora de la subjetividad “bien constituida”, sino una nueva figuración subjetiva cuya “sustentabilidad” pasa por otra relación con el cambio.

Is secularisatie hetzelfde als kerkverlating? In dit boek betoogt Herman Paul dat secularisatie vooral een zaak van het hart van de mens is en alles te maken heeft met verlangen.

Verlangens verwereldlijken als ze in de ban komen van status, welvaart of geluk. Verlangen naar God kan dan zomaar op de tweede plaats komen. Secularisatie is dan ook een slag om het hart. Verlangen is in zichzelf niet negatief. Daarom vraagt de auteur zich in dit boek af of de christelijke gemeente verlangen naar God kan stimuleren en vormen. En zo ja, hoe?

De slag om het hart presenteert een nieuwe kijk op secularisatie en een prikkelende visie op verlangen.

This paper looks at the issue of sexual violence through the framework of toxic masculinity. It analyses the ways in which patriarchal formations draw on and reinforce such masculinities, using gender and sexual violence, to reinforce the dominance of men.

Literator 36(2), 2015, Art. #1193

Henri Pierre Roché (1879–1959), the author of Jules et Jim, has been called a general introducer, an exemplary amateur, a collector of women and art and one of the most prolific diarists and active lovers in recorded history. Author of a collection of vignettes about Don Juan, Roché was fascinated with the figure of the seducer and in his twenties planned to devote his life
to the creation of a body of work which would examine moral, intellectual, social and sexual relations between women and men. To this end, he would transform his life into a laboratory
where real-life experiences would become the main source of reference. Roché’s diary spans sixty years and abounds in tales of seduction. However, the most intense and captivating
intrigue of seduction and betrayal in his diary, is his relationship with Helen Hessel. At the start of their affair, Roché suggested that she too should keep a diary of the maelstrom of passion into which they were plunged. Written in French, German and English, Helen Hessel’s diary captures the drama of seduction and functions on several levels: realistic, visionary, absorbed in her thoughts and emotions and yet critical of herself and others. A juxtaposed reading of the two diaries generates a fascinatingly dense texture, revealing the mechanisms
of seduction at play. The counterpoint created by these two interdependent voices becomes ever more complex as one becomes aware of the intertextual references that contribute to the emerging polyphony of recorded life and love.

The present study poses an interpretation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Eolian Harp" and William Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" so as to evince the subject of desire as the ulterior motif of these texts, even though the poetic voices of these works attempt to conceal such a theme. This reading interprets both poems as compositions that share the same thematic line as William Blake's "The Book of Thel" and John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn". Consequently, the close reading of the poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge will be presented.

""Largely based on pre-theory that ties high testosterone (T) to masculinity, and low T to femininity, high T is mainly studied in relation to aggression, mating, sexuality, and challenge, and low T with parenting. Evidence, however, fails to support this, and the social variability in T is better accounted for by a competition–
nurturance trade-off as per the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds (van Anders et al., 2011). Four key domains are discussed: adult–infant interactions, sexual desire, sexual behavior, and partnering. Empirical engagements with gender/sex are shown to lead to important insights over assumptions about masculinity–femininity. Humans are discussed within a comparative framework that attends to cross species principles informed by human insights alongside human-specific particularities like social constructions, which are critical to evolutionary understandings of the social role of T. This paper thus integrates seemingly orthogonal perspectives to allow for transformative approaches to an empirically supported social phenomenology of T.""

El rosario de Eros (1924) es ya un libro póstumo publicado diez años después de la muerte de Agustini para rendirle homenaje a la poeta. Se ha señalado en las imágenes de libre asociación psicológica de estos poemas inéditos que ven la luz con el consentimiento familiar una sutil filiación con el surrealismo, lo que debatiremos posteriormente. De otra parte, el propio título revela una continuidad e intencionalidad similar a Los cálices vacíos como canto o tributo a Eros en tanto divinidad o inspiración poética. Asimismo, el «rosario» evoca una escritura discontinua y fragmentaria del deseo surgida de la melancolía y el sufrimiento. Una de las reflexiones más arraigadas sobre el porqué de la escritura, como ya quedó apuntado, es la que contempla la carencia como el móvil principal que la impulsa y anima. Desde el siglo XVI esta falta adopta la forma de la Melancolía que se resuelve, en gran parte de los casos, a través de la figura del deseo, de Eros. En la lírica de Agustini se advierte de forma clara que es esa falta lo que la mueve a escribir y su salvación es el deseo, Eros. En efecto, gran parte de sus composiciones, especialmente las del final-Los cálices vacíos y El rosario de Eros-, se vertebran en torno a esa ausencia o vacío absoluto que se cierra, en muchos casos, con el encuentro, con la llegada del otro. Desde esta perspectiva, la vinculación del lenguaje místico 1-que trata de verbalizar una ausencia, de relatar una pérdida, de expresar lo inefable-y el lenguaje del deseo es evidente 2 , tal y como apunta Michel de Certeau 3 , dado que tanto la mística como la erótica nacen de la nostalgia y el impulso de borrar a Dios como objeto de amor exclusivo. Pero ya después del siglo XIII una lenta y progresiva desmitificación religiosa da paso a una también paulatina mitificación amorosa en la civilización occidental. El único cambio de escena es que el centro de la misma ya no es la divinidad, sino «el otro» y, en la literatura masculina, esto es, en la prácticamente única literatura existente-«Amor Cortés»-, la otredad está representada por la mujer. La palabra divina se sustituye así por el cuerpo amado que no es, de hecho, menos espiritual o simbólico en la práctica erótica que en la mística. Pero los procedimientos

Desire matters for the way we can know and make sense of the world. In this chapter we explore the complex nature of desire by juxtaposing multiple understandings. Esther Perel helps us to reflect on what nurtures or kills desire and on the role of the gap. Helen Fisher teaches us to see desire as drive and as obsession while Martha Nussbaum questions the interplay between belief and desire and how this impacts our possibilities to flourish. Finally, with Gilles Deleuze, we meditate on what desire can do and what it means to plug into desire. There is not only one simple way (or one right way) to approach desire. The four meditations included in this chapter celebrate the multiplicity of meaning and invite the reader to reflect on the many ways desire manifests in our lives.

Love takes many forms and can serve different functions in a person’s life. Some forms, such as romantic love, familial love, and love within friendship, while sometimes distinct, at other times cannot be separated. This paper discusses love and friendship for same-sex loving women in Trinidad, exploring this mutability of love, the functions of love and intimacy in these women’s lives, the role of social media and social circles for finding love, all while considering the notion that love amongst same-sex loving women is an act of resistance. Forty same-sex loving women were individually interviewed, and this paper is written using excerpts from their narratives, their poetry and short stories, along with personal reflections and discussions of previous literature. This delivery style is meant to mimic the multivalent nature of love that is being discussed.

Abstract: This article provides a relation between the problem of shame in both Levinas and Agamben, focusing, for the most part, in the development of Levinas' metaphysics and its relation to the emotional tonality of shame in three works: "On Escape", "Time and the Other" and "Otherwise than Being". In stressing the unique take that Levinas has on metaphysics, I try to point at the tension between Jewish and Greek thought in Levinas, and his option for a radical notion of a situated understanding of the "ethical".Hencemy interest in contrasting Levinas and Agamben, as Agamben's appropriation of Levinas' lexicon in his "Remnants of Aushwitz" places the subject in a political, and material, position which is ultimately uncompatible with Levinas' situational and metaphysical take on the self. Keywords: Shame; Desire; Ethics; Affective Tonalities

Contemporary Asian Australian poets have recently begun to attract more attention, particularly with the publication of the anthology, edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill, Contemporary Asian Australian Poets. This essay engages with three of these poets: Debbie Lim, Shen and James Stuart, and reads their poems through a diasporic lens. Contrary to scholarship that investigates belonging using the more orthodox ideas of home and land, this reading engages with fluidity and mobility through the depictions of water to better represent the diasporic experience. Further, these poems employ desire and the desiring subject to engage with the way diasporic belonging is figured as contested and contingent. Each of these elements will be explored in the poems in order to investigate the link between diasporic belonging and depictions of water.

"Introduction. Traditionally, sexual desire is understood to occur spontaneously, but more recent models propose that desire responds to sexual stimuli.
Aims. To experimentally assess whether sexual stimuli increased sexual desire; to compare how sexual arousal and desire responded to three modalities of sexual stimuli: erotic story, unstructured fantasy, and the Imagined Social Situation Exercise (ISSE).
Methods. In an online study, participants (128 women, 98 men) were randomly assigned to one of four arousal conditions (ISSE, story, fantasy, or neutral), and then completed desire measures. In the ISSE, participants imagined and wrote about a positive sexual encounter with a self-defined attractive person.
Main Outcome Measures. Sexual arousal (perceived genital, psychological, and perceived autonomic), anxiety, positive and negative affect, and state sexual desire via self-report measures pre- and post-condition; “trait” desire via the Sexual Desire Inventory post-condition.
Results. All three sexual conditions significantly increased sexual arousal and positive affect compared with the neutral condition, with trends for higher arousal to unstructured fantasy than the ISSE or story conditions. Sexual conditions significantly increased scores on state measures of sexual desire. In addition, sexual context influenced measurement of “trait” solitary sexual desire in women, such that women reported significantly higher trait desire after the neutral and ISSE conditions vs. fantasy.
Conclusion. Results highlight the responsiveness of sexual desire, problems with measurement of desire as a long-term trait, trade-offs of using the ISSE and other stimuli in sexuality research, and the need to address context in discussions of women’s and men’s desire."

While scientists across the academy have abandoned the nature/nurture dichotomy, evidence for the influences of society on our biology is greater than ever. This article reviews new developments in the biological sciences—in the sub-fields of genetics, hormones, and neuroscience—with special attention to the implications for sociologists interested in gender.  The article closes with an argument that embracing these developments has both theoretical and methodological promise and can enhance rather than harm research and activism regarding gender equality and other social hierarchies.

The premise of this article is that the political import of Deleuze and Guattari’s “micropolitics of desire” has been obscured and as such remains underdeveloped. The micropolitics of desire is here reproduced to provide a Nietzscheo-Marxian critique of capitalism and resistive politics of the future. This entails an entirely different understanding of the nature of power and resistance, as compared to prevalent views. Power is not negative or anti-energy, but a socially productive force operating on, with and through the productivity of desire, delineating an immanent, quantitative and “fusional multiplicity” of a producing-production. Resistance is a matter of recomposing this producer-produced relationship in a manner problematic to and in excess of the very productive core of capitalism. In terms of praxis, this amounts to experimental practices that resonate into a viral though non-teleological “revolutionary-becoming”, delineating a form of a-systematic and post-identity resistance. The underlying thesis is that we must change our “desire”, before we can hope to change our politics.