Philosophy of desire

In philosophy, desire has been identied as a philosophical problem since Antiquity. In Plato's The Republic,
Socrates argues that individual desires must be postponed
in the name of the higher ideal.

attach to desire in that objects which enhance ones future

are considered more desirable than those that do not, and
it introduces the possibility, or even necessity, of postponing desire in anticipation of some future event, anticipating Freud's text Beyond the Pleasure Principle. See
also, the pleasure principle in psychology.

Within the teachings of Buddhism, craving is thought to

be the cause of all suering. By eliminating craving, a
person can attain ultimate happiness, or Nirvana. While In A Treatise on Human Nature, Hume suggests that reaon the path to liberation, a practitioner is advised to gen- son is subject to passion. Motion is put into eect by
erate desire for skillful ends.[1][2]
desire, passions, and inclinations. It is desire, along with
belief, that motivates action. Kant establishes a relation
between the beautiful and pleasure in Critique of Judgment. He says I can say of every representation that it
1 History
is at least possible (as a cognition) it should be bound up
with a pleasure. Of representation that I call pleasant I say
1.1 Ancient Greece
that it actually excites pleasure in me. But the beautiful
we think as having a necessary reference to satisfaction.
In Aristotle's De Anima the soul is seen to be involved in Desire is found in the representation of the object.
motion, because animals desire things and in their desire, Hegel begins his exposition of desire in Phenomenology
they acquire locomotion. Aristotle argued that desire is of Spirit with the assertion that self-consciousness is deimplicated in animal interactions and the propensity of sire. It is in the restless movement of the negative that
animals to motion. But Aristotle acknowledges that de- desire removes the antithesis between itself and its object,
sire cannot account for all purposive movement towards "...and the object of immediate desire is a living thing...,
a goal. He brackets the problem by positing that per- and object that forever remains an independent existence,
haps reason, in conjunction with desire and by way of the something other. Hegels inection of desire via stoicism
imagination, makes it possible for one to apprehend an becomes important in understanding desire as it appears
object of desire, to see it as desirable. In this way reason in de Sade. Stoicism in this view has a negative attitude
and desire work together to determine what is a good ob- towards "...otherness, to desire, and work.
ject of desire. This resonates with desire in the chariots
of Platos Phaedrus, for in the Phaedrus the soul is guided Reading Blanchot in this regard, in his essay Sades Reaby two horses, a dark horse of passion and a white horse son, the libertine is one, of a type that sometimes interof reason. Here passion and reason, as in Aristotle, are sects with a Sadean man, who nds in stoicism, solitude,
also together. Socrates does not suggest the dark horse be and apathy the proper conditions. Blanchot writes, "...the
done away with, since its passions make possible a move- libertine is thoughtful, self-contained, incapable of being
ment towards the objects of desire, but he qualies desire moved by just anything. Apathy in de Sade is opposiand places it in a relation to reason so that the object of tion not to desire but to its spontaneity. Blanchot writes
desire can be discerned correctly, so that we may have the that in Sade, for passion to become energy, it is necesright desire. Aristotle distinguishes desire into appetition sary that it be constricted, that it be mediated by passing through a necessary moment of insensibility, then it
and volition.[3]
will be the greatest passion possible. Here is stoicism,
as a form of discipline, through which the passions pass.
Blanchot says, Apathy is the spirit of negation, applied to
1.2 Western philosophers
the man who has chosen to be sovereign. Dispersed, unIn Passions of the Soul, Descartes writes of the passion controlled passion does not augment ones creative force
of desire as an agitation of the soul that projects desire, but diminishes it.
for what it represents as agreeable, into the future. Desire
in Kant can represent things that are absent and not only
objects at hand. Desire is also the preservation of objects
already present, as well as the desire that certain eects
not appear, that what aects one adversely be curtailed
and prevented in the future. Moral and temporal values

In his Principia Ethica, British philosopher G. E. Moore

argued that two theories of desire should be clearly distinguished. The hedonistic theory of John Stuart Mill states
that pleasure is the sole object of all desire. Mill suggests
that a desire for an object is caused by an idea of the pos-

sible pleasure that would result from the attainment of

the object. The desire is fullled when this pleasure is
achieved. On this view, the pleasure is the sole motivating factor of the desire. Moore proposes an alternative
theory in which an actual pleasure is already present in
the desire for the object and that the desire is then for
that object and only indirectly for any pleasure that results from attaining it.
In the rst place, plainly, we are not always conscious of expecting pleasure, when we
desire a thing. We may only be conscious of
the thing which we desire, and may be impelled
to make for it at once, without any calculation
as to whether it will bring us pleasure or pain.
In the second place, even when we do expect
pleasure, it can certainly be very rarely pleasure only which we desire.[4]

HISTORY

one is freed from all desires by eliminating the delusions,

reaches Enlightenment.
While greed and lust are always unskillful, desire is ethically variableit can be skillful, unskillful, or neutral.[7]
In the Buddhist perspective, the enemy to be defeated is
craving rather than desire in general.[7]

1.4 Psychoanalysis

Jacques Lacan's dsir follows Freuds concept of Wunsch and it is central to Lacanian theories. For the aim
of the talking curepsychoanalysisis precisely to lead
the patient to uncover the truth about their desire, but this
is only possible if that desire is articulated, or spoken.[8]
Lacan said that it is only once it is formulated, named
in the presence of the other, that desire appears in the
On Moores view, Mills theory is too non-specic as to full sense of the term.[9] That the subject should come
the objects of desire. Moore provides the following ex- to recognize and to name his/her desire, that is the efample:
cacious action of analysis. But it is not a question of
recognizing something which would be entirely given. In
For instance, granted that, when I desire
naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presmy glass of port wine, I have also an idea of
ence in the world.[10] "[W]hat is important is to teach the
the pleasure I expect from it, plainly that pleasubject to name, to articulate, to bring desire into exissure cannot be the only object of my desire;
tence. Now, although the truth about desire is somehow
the port wine must be included in my object,
present in discourse, discourse can never articulate the
else I might be led by my desire to take wormwhole truth about desire: whenever discourse attempts to
wood instead of wine . . . If the desire is to
articulate desire, there is always a leftover, a surplus.[8]
take a denite direction, it is absolutely necIn The Signication of the Phallus Lacan distinguishes deessary that the idea of the object, from which
sire from need and demand. Need is a biological instinct
the pleasure is expected, should also be present
that is articulated in demand, yet demand has a double
[5]
and should control my activity.
function, on one hand it articulates need and on the other
acts as a demand for love. So, even after the need articuFor Charles Fourier, following desires (like passions or lated in demand is satised, the demand for love remains
in Fouriers own words 'attractions) is a means to attain unsatised and this leftover is desire.[11] For Lacan deharmony.
sire is neither the appetite for satisfaction nor the demand
for love, but the dierence that results from the subtraction of the rst from the second (article cited). Desire
1.3 Eastern philosophies
then is the surplus produced by the articulation of need
Within the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama in demand. Lacan adds that desire begins to take shape
(Buddhism), craving is thought to be the cause of in the margin in which demand becomes separated from
all suering that one experiences in human existence. need. Hence desire can never be satised, or as Slavoj
The extinction of this craving leads one to ultimate iek puts it desires raison d'tre is not to realize its goal,
happiness, or Nirvana. Nirvana means cessation, to nd full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire.
extinction (of suering) or extinguished, quieted,
calmed";[6] it is also known as Awakening or Enlightenment in the West. The Four Noble Truths were
the rst teaching of Gautama Buddha after attaining
Nirvana. They state that suering is an inevitable part
of life as we know it. The cause of this suering is
attachment to, or craving for worldly pleasures of all
kinds and clinging to this very existence, our "self" and
the things or people wedue to our delusionsdeem
the cause of our respective happiness or unhappiness.
The suering ends when the craving and desire ends, or

It is also important to distinguish between desire and the

drives. Even though they both belong to the eld of the
Other (as opposed to love), desire is one, whereas the
drives are many. The drives are the partial manifestations
of a single force called desire (see "The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis"). If one can surmise that
objet petit a is the object of desire, it is not the object towards which desire tends, but the cause of desire. For
desire is not a relation to an object but a relation to a lack
(manque). Then desire appears as a social construct since
it is always constituted in a dialectical relationship.

See also
Desire (emotion)
Anti-Oedipus

References

[1] Steven Collins, Seless Persons: Thought and Imagery in

Theravada Buddhism. Cambridge University Press, 1982,
page 251: In the end, the owing streams of sense-desire
must be 'cut' or 'crossed' completely; nevertheless, for the
duration of the Path, a monk must perforce work with motivational and perceptual processes as they ordinarily are,
that is to say, based on desire ... Thus, during mental training, the stream is not to be 'cut' immediately, but guided,
like water along viaducts. The meditative steadying of the
mind by counting in- and out-breaths (in the mindfulness
of breathing) is compared to the steadying of a boat in 'a
erce current' by its rudder. The disturbance of the ow of
a mountain stream by irrigation channels cut into its sides
it used to illustrate the weakening of insight by the ve 'hindrances.
[2] Thanissaro Bhikkhu, The Wings to Awakening, . See
specically this section.
[3] e.g. Rhetoric 1370a18-27, trans. W. Rhys Roberts
[4] Principia Ethica, p. 70
[5] Principia Ethica, p. 70-71
[6] spokensanskrit dictionary with as input
[7] David Burton, Buddhism, Knowledge and Liberation:
A Philosophical Study. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004,
page 22.
[8] Fink, Bruce, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language
and Jouissance (Princeton University Press, 1996), ISBN
978-0-691-01589-7
[9] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I: Freuds
Papers on Technique 1953-1954 "...what is important is
to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring desire
into existence (W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), ISBN
978-0-393-30697-2
[10] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The
Ego in Freuds Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955 (W. W. Norton & Company, 1991),
ISBN 978-0-393-30709-2
[11] Lacan, J., 'The Signication of the Phallus in crits

Further reading
Middendorf Ulrike, Resexualizing the desexualized.
The language of desire and erotic love in the classic
of odes, Fabrizio Serra Editore.

Nicolosi M. Grazia, Mixing memories and desire.

Postmodern erotics of writing in the speculative ction of Angela Carter, CUECM.

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