Thanks largely to the work of Robert Adams and Philip Quinn, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of interest in divine command theory as a viable position in normative theory and meta-ethics. More recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with divine command theory even among those philosophers who claim that normative properties are grounded in God, and as a result alternative views have begun to emerge, most notably divine intention theory (Murphy, Quinn) and divine motivation (...) theory (Zagzebski). My goal here is to outline a distinct theory, divine desire theory, and suggest that, even if it is not clearly superior to these extant views, it is at least worthy of serious consideration.1 As far as this paper is concerned, the discussion will be limited just to the deontic status of actions (obligatory, permissible, forbidden), and so no attempt will be made to also account for axiological properties such as goodness or evil. In order to get oriented to the range of deontological views in this area, consider the following three rough characterizations. (shrink)

Desire theories of well-being claim that how well our life goes for us is solely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of our desires. Several writers have argued that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the harms of self-sacrifice and severe depression. In this paper, I argue that desire theories of well-being can account for the harm of both phenomena by rejecting proportionalism about desire and motivation. This is the view that (...) desires always motivate proportionally to their strength. If we reject this view, then we can explain the harm of many cases of self-sacrifice as arising when we act upon our weaker desires and thereby frustrate our stronger desires. Moreover, the harm of many cases of severe depression can be explained by its suppression of the motivational force of desires. This inevitably frustrates desires that we are left unmotivated to fulfil. I argue that this approach captures the experiential quality of self-sacrifice and severe depression better than rival views that seek to problematise these phenomena for desire theories of well-being. Moreover, these theories have sufficient conceptual resources to account for residual cases of self-sacrifice and severe depression that are less well explained by this approach. (shrink)

In this paper I try to undermine complacency with a predominant conception of desire, for the sake of refocusing attention on a philosophical problem. The predominant conception holds that to have a desire is to occupy an evaluative outlook, a perspective from which the agent 'sees' the world in practically salient terms. I argue that it is not clear what this theory is a theory of, because the concept of desire at its center is deeply ambiguous. Understood (...) as a theory of desire in what I call the "placeholder" sense, the evaluative outlook theory is at bottom a theory of action explanation. So construed, its claim is relatively uncontroversial, and falls far short of being a full theory of action explanation. Understood as a theory of desire in what I call the "substantive" sense, it does not even go so far as to acknowledge the central problem such a theory has to answer. That problem is how we can be passive (in a particular sense) with respect to our own motivation. (shrink)

Which entities should the desire theory of well-being deem basically good for you—good for you in the most fundamental way? On the object view, what is basically good for you when one of your desires is satisfied is the object of that desire. On the combo view, what is basically good for you when one of your desires is satisfied is the combination or conjunction of the object of that desire and the fact that you have that (...) desire. I argue that which of these views the desire theory accepts makes no difference to what it implies about anyone’s amount of well-being. Then, I consider the main arguments that have been given for the superiority of one or the other of those two views. Finding none of those arguments persuasive, I conclude that we lack good grounds for rejecting the initial impression that it would be natural to have about those views: that it does not matter which of them the desire theory accepts. (shrink)

Based on the belief that computational modeling (thinking in terms of representation and computations) can help to clarify controversial issues in emotion theory, this article examines emotional experience from the perspective of the Computational Belief–Desire Theory of Emotion (CBDTE), a computational explication of the belief–desire theory of emotion. It is argued that CBDTE provides plausible answers to central explanatory challenges posed by emotional experience, including: the phenomenal quality,intensity and object-directedness of emotional experience, the function of emotional experience and (...) its relation to cognition and motivation, and the relation between emotional experience and emotion. In addition, CBDTE avoids most objections that have been raised against cognitive theories of emotion. A remaining objection, that beliefs are not necessary for the emotions covered by CBDTE, is rejected as empirically unsupported. (shrink)

Desire theories of well-being claim that how well someone’s life goes for them is entirely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of their desires. This thesis considers the viability of theories of this sort. It examines a series of objections that threaten to undermine these views. These objections claim that desire theories of well-being are incorrect because they have implausible implications. I consider four main objections over the course of this thesis. The first claims that (...) these theories are incorrect because they implausibly entail that self-sacrifice does not exist. The second claims that these theories are incorrect because they implausibly entail that severe depression does not diminish the well-being of those afflicted by this condition. The third claims that these theories are incorrect because they have implausible implications about the relative importance of fleeting desires, long-standing desires, and fluctuations in desire strength to well-being. The fourth claims that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the intuition that desire fulfilments which leave us disappointed and bereft of feelings of satisfaction do not improve well-being. In each of these cases, I find that desire theories of well-being have sufficient resources to refute these objections. The primary finding of this thesis is that many of the arguments against desire theories of well-being are unsuccessful. A secondary set of findings concern observations about the structure of human psychology. (shrink)

The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engagingly written book, Martha Nussbaum maintains that these Hellenistic schools have been unjustly neglected in recent philosophic accounts of what (...) the classical "tradition" has to offer. By examining texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm - including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca - she recovers a valuable source for current moral and political thought and encourages us to reconsider philosophical argument as a technique through which to improve lives. In describing the contributions of Hellenistic ethics, Nussbaum focuses on each thinker's treatment of the question of emotion. All argued that many harmful emotions are based on false beliefs that are socially taught, and that good philosophical argument can transform emotions, and, with them, both private and public life. Written for general readers and specialists, this book addresses compelling issues ranging from the psychology of human passion through rhetoric to the role of philosophy in public and private life. (shrink)

This paper argues that Donald Davidson''s account ofassertions of evaluative judgments contains ahere-to-fore unappreciated strategy forreconciling the meta-ethical ``inconsistenttriad.'''' The inconsistency is thought to resultbecause within the framework of thebelief-desire theory assertions of moraljudgments must have conceptual connections withboth desires and beliefs. The connection withdesires is necessary to account for theinternal connection between such judgments andmotivation to act, while the connection withbeliefs is necessary to account for theapparent objectivity of such judgments.Arguments abound that no class of utterancescan coherently be (...) understood as having suchconceptual connections to attitudes of bothsorts, hence that an inconsistency results. Buton Davidson''s account assertions of evaluativejudgments have just such connections to boththe relevant desire and a belief concerning anevaluative matter of fact. I argue that thisaccount has the resources to respond tostandard objections, and at least meritsconsideration as one among other plausiblealternatives. (shrink)

The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca--and (...) recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today.The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today. (shrink)

The higher-order desire theory of pain states that pain’s unpleasantness is constituted by the subject’s desire not to feel pain. The theory faces the Euthyphro problem: it fails to accommodate the intuitive datum that pain’s unpleasantness explains and justifies the desire not to feel pain. To avoid this problem, the first-order desire theory proposes that pain’s unpleasantness is constituted by the subject’s desire not to be in the bodily condition represented by the feeling of pain. (...) This paper aims to show that the Euthyphro problem, originally leveled against the higher-order theory, arises equally for the first-order theory. In particular, it either leaves the first-order desire rationally ungrounded or collapses into one of its rival theories — namely, evaluativism. I conclude that desire theories of pain misconstrue the justificatory relationship between desire and pain’s unpleasantness. (shrink)

This paper extends previous work of mine on a view of human well-being that is a hybrid of objective-list theories and desire theories. Though some of what I say traverses old ground, much of what I say is new – new, that is, not in terms of ultimate conclusions, but rather in terms of (a) routes toward these ultimate conclusions and (b) certain implications of these ultimate conclusions (e.g., implications concerning the measurement of well-being). There are two (...) different visions of what human beings are that I privilege and attempt to synthesize in this paper. One of these visions pushes us toward an objective-list theory. This vision is a broadly Aristotelian one according to which humans have various capacities that are central to their functioning well as the kinds of things they are, that is, as human beings. Though this broadly Aristotelian vision captures something necessary for well-being, it is, as it were, only half of the story. The other half of the story derives from a vision of human beings as unique individuals with different sets of intrinsic desires, and this desire-focused vision of humans is itself informed by Jacques Lacan and his view that each human self is constituted by a particular and dynamic chains-of-signifiers-plus-desire-flow structure. I start by briefly discussing mental state theories (section 1). Then I discuss objective-list theories at some length (sections 2-3), and, while doing this, I occasionally comment on pro-attitude theories (e.g., desire theories). After that, I present the hybrid theory of well-being that I favor and defend it against some objections (section 4). Lastly, I conclude the paper (section 5). (shrink)

The most prominent theories of rights, the Will Theory and the Interest Theory, notoriously fail to accommodate all and only rights-attributions that make sense to ordinary speakers. The Kind-Desire Theory, Leif Wenar’s recent contribution to the field, appears to fare better in this respect than any of its predecessors. The theory states that we attribute a right to an individual if she has a kind-based desire that a certain enforceable duty be fulfilled. A kind-based desire is (...) a reason to want something which one has simply in virtue of being a member of a certain kind. Rowan Cruft objects that this theory creates a puzzle about the relation between rights and respect. In particular, if rights are not grounded in aspects of the particular individuals whose rights they are, how can we sustain the intuitive notion that to violate a right is to disrespect the right-holder? I present a contractualist account of respect which reconciles the Kind-Desire Theory with the intuition that rights-violations are disrespectful. On this account, respect for a person is a matter of acknowledging her legitimate authority to make demands on the will and conduct of others. And I argue that kind-based desires authorize a person to make demands even if they do not correspond to that person’s well-being or other non-relational features. (shrink)

(1) Emotions influence decisions in various ways. In particular, they can induce new intrinsic desires. This mechanism is the topic of this paper. (2) After briefly discussing some rival approaches a new theory of such emotional decisions is presented. (3) The general framework into which this theory is integrated is an expectancy-valence or decision-theoretic model of decision, however with a strict distinction between intrinsic and other desires. (4) The specific part of the theory then explains emotional decisions by non-hedonic emotion-induced (...) intrinsic desires that grow and wane with the respective emotion, e.g. when in rage the desire to destroy or hurt the ‘aggressor’. A general approach to the content of these desires is provided, namely that they take up the values inherent in specific satisfying emotions coupled with the present emotion. (5) Finally, some theoretical consequences and advantages of this theory are shown. (shrink)

Thinkers in the Zhànguó period of Chinese history debated intensely whether men were by nature “good” or “bad”. This debate has for many years been an important focus of sinological interest, but usually these properties were not attributed to men, but rather to so-called “human nature” (xìng 性) – thus, in effect, mirroring well-known (and problematic) “European” positions and discussions. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to redirect attention to the original Zhànguó positions and to explore (...) the reasons for their variance by offering novel and close historical readings of relevant passages, and on the other, to propose a viable historical reconstruction of the common anthropological assumptions underlying these positions by blending it with the traces of a dominant cognitive image present in the texts. This calls for a systematic rethinking of the role of hearts (in the plural), desires, and behavioural patterns in their interplay and as elements of a concept of the psychological build of human beings current in early China. (shrink)

Several theorists have defended that unpleasantness can be explained by appealing to (intrinsic, simultaneous, de re) desires for certain experiences not to be occurring. In a nutshell, experiences are unpleasant because we do not want them, and not vice versa. A common criticism for this approach takes the form of a Euthyphro dilemma. Even if there is a solution for this criticism, I argue that this type of approach is limited in two important ways. It cannot provide an explanation for: (...) i) the motivation, from a psychological conscious point of view, nor ii) a non-instrumental justification, for having the relevant desires. The lack of these explanations is relevant since these are precisely the type clarifications that we would expect from a theory about unpleasantness. (shrink)

I explore the connections between love, resentment and anger, and challenge Nussbaum's assumption that love is self-seeking, leads to resentment when the benefits are withdrawn, and that anger is invariably a vicious response. I sketch an alternative view of genuine love, and of the importance of the anger that springs from seeing a loved one unjustly treated.

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one’s desires provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Similarly, there are desire-based and non-desired-based theories about two other phenomena: pleasure and welfare. It has been argued, and is natural to think, that holding a desire-based theory about (...) either pleasure or welfare commits one to recognizing that desires do provide reasons for action – i.e., commits one to abandoning the value-based theory of reasons. The purpose of this paper is to show that this is not so. All of the following can be true: pleasure and welfare provide reasons; pleasure and welfare are to be understood in terms of desire; desires never provide reasons, in the relevant way. (shrink)

What do Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray have in common? These giants of critical theory are all linked by their analyses of desire. Theories of Desire looks at the role of desire in the works of these writers, as well as examining other major issues and themes of post-structuralism. Fuery considers the place of desire in psychoanalysis, philosophy, literary studies and feminism. In a lucid and accessible manner, he highlights the connections between (...) desire and the critical analysis of subjectivity, language and culture. He examines the institutionalisation of desire, the relationship between language, discourse and desire, and notes the problems of dealing with women's desire in phallocentric contexts. For anyone seeking a comprehensible introduction to the arcane tangles of post-structuralism, this book will be an invaluable guide. (shrink)

This book argues that Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory can be productively developed by incorporating a wider understanding of fantasy and imagination as part of its conception of communicative rationality and communicative pathologies. Given that meaning is generated both linguistically and performatively, MacKendrick argues that desire and fantasy must be taken into consideration as constitutive aspects of intersubjective relations. His aim is to show that Habermasian social theory might plausibly renew its increasingly severed ties with the early critical theory of (...) the Frankfurt School by taking account of these features of practice life, thus simultaneously rekindling the relevance of the nearly forgotten emancipatory intent in his earlier work and rejuvenating an emphasis on the contemporary critique of reason. This innovative new study will be of interest to those focusing on the early writings of Habermas, the writings of the Frankfurt School, and the relation between critical theory, hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that we might do well to adopt a hybrid theory of well-being: a theory that incorporates both an objective-value constraint and a pro-attitude constraint. Hybrid theories are attractive for two main reasons. First, unlike desire theories of well-being, hybrid theories need not worry about the problem of defective desires. This is so because, unlike desire theories, hybrid theories place an objective-value constraint on well-being. Second, unlike objectivist theories of (...) well-being, hybrid theories need not worry about being overly alienating. This is so because, unlike objectivist theories, hybrid theories place a pro-attitude constraint on well-being. However, from the point of view of objectivists, hybrid theories are not objectivist enough, and this can be seen clearly in missing-desires cases. For instance, hybrid theories entail that, if someone lacks the desire for health, then health is not a component of her well-being. This, objectivists say, is implausible. It is obvious, objectivists say, that someone’s life goes better for herself inasmuch as she is healthy, and hence that health is a component of her welfare. This paper focuses on the missing-desires objection (as leveled by objectivists) to hybrid theories of well-being. My argument is that the missing-desires objection can be answered in a way that is generally convincing and, in particular, in a way that pays a good deal of respect to objectivist intuitions about well-being. My hope, then, is that this paper will help to persuade objectivists about well-being to become hybrid theorists. (shrink)

According to the desire-satisfaction theory of well-being, your life goes well to the extent that your desires are satisfied. This theory faces the problem of prudential neutrality: it apparently cannot avoid saying that, from the point of view of prudence or self-interest, you ought to be neutral between satisfying an existing desire of yours and replacing it with an equally strong desire and satisfying the new desire. It also faces the problem of remote desires: it regards (...) as directly relevant to your well-being even desires whose objects are intuitively too irrelevant to (or ‘remote’ from) your life to affect your welfare. In this article, I argue that desire theorists can answer both objections by appealing to hidden desires – ones that it is psychologically realistic to attribute to the agents in the cases on which the two problems are based, even though they are not mentioned in descriptions of those cases. (shrink)

This article has two main aims. First, it will defend an ‘attitudinal’ account of pleasure, that is, an account of what it is that makes an experience pleasurable for a subject that explains it in terms of a certain kind ofde redesire that the subject has towards that experience. Second, in doing so, the article aims to further our understanding of unconscious desires, and of what the subjects of such desires can be. The article begins by introducing two existing accounts (...) of what makes an experience pleasurable. It then offers a diagnosis of a recent objection to attitudinal accounts from Bramble and existing responses from attitudinal theorists, arguing that the two positions are currently at a stalemate. After this, I argue for the possible existence of unknowable and unconsciousde redesires, and show how such desires provide the best defence of such ‘attitudinal’ accounts. (shrink)

I propose an account of desire that reconciles two apparently conflicting intuitions about practical agency. I do so by exploring a certain intuitive datum. The intuitive datum is that often when an agent desires P she will seem to immediately and conclusively know that there is a reason to bring P about. Desire-based theories of reasons seem uniquely placed to explain this intuitive datum. On this view, desires are the source of an agent’s practical reasons. A (...) class='Hi'>desire for P grounds conclusive knowledge of a reason to bring P about because that desire makes it true that there is a reason to do so. However, this implies that a basic desire for P can never be in error about there being at least some reason to bring P about. We have the conflicting intuition that basic desires sometimes rationally count for nothing. The guise of the good explains this intuition about the fallibility of desires. On this view, a desire for P represents P as good in some respect. Desires and reasons are independent, so a desire might misrepresent one’s reasons. But this independence is usually taken to rule out that desires ever provide conclusive knowledge of reasons. Capturing the intuition about conclusive knowledge rules out capturing the intuition about fallibility, and vice versa. I propose an epistemological disjunctivist version of the guise of the good that reconciles fallibility with the possibility of conclusive knowledge. (shrink)

Explains the desire-fulfillment theory of well-being, its history, its development, its varieties, its advantages, and its challenges.

At the outset of The Possibility of Altruism Thomas Nagel charts two paths out of the fundamental dilemma confronting metaethics. The first path rejects the claim that a persuasive account of the motivational backing of ethical judgments must involve an agent’s desires. But it is the second path, a path that Nagel charts but does not himself take, that is the focus of this essay. This path retains the standard account, upon which all motivation involves desire, but denies that (...) desires are given prior to reason. Instead, these attitudes that motivate are themselves open to rational assessment. One reason for this focus is that many philosophers, including Quinn, Raz, and Scanlon, have come to reject the claim Nagel takes to block this path – that desires are somehow given prior to reason, hence are not in the relevant way proper objects of rational assessment. A second reason is that unlike the first path, this second does not require the rejection of the belief-desire theory, only the rejection of one assumption about the nature of conative attitudes. Unlike Nagel’s chosen path, then, the second holds out the prospect of reconciling ethical objectivity, internalism, and the belief-desire theory within a unified account. I argue that the account of desire found in Quinn, Raz, and Scanlon, augmented by aspects of Davidson’s account of propositional attitudes, yields a coherent account of the involvement of reason even in basic desires, an account that is well suited to Nagel’s intriguing path not taken. (shrink)

The property theory of content takes the content of each cognitive attitude (each belief, desire, and so on) to be a property to which the subject of the attitude is related in the appropriate psychological way. This view is motivated by standard cases of de se belief and other attitudes. In this paper, I consider a couple of related objections to the property theory of content. Both objections have to do with the possible non-existence of the subject. More specifically, (...) the objections are based on attitudes, the contents of which entail the non-existence of their subjects, and also on attitudes that commit their subjects to preferences regarding situations in which the subjects do not exist. I show that the property theory can answer these objections adequately, and I argue that my answer to the objections is more plausible than other possible responses. (shrink)

What is suspense and how is it created? An answer to this question constitutes a theory of suspense. I propose that any theory of suspense needs to be able to account for three curious features: (1) Suspense is seldom felt in our daily lives, but frequently felt in response to works of fiction and other narrative artworks. [Narrative Imbalance] (2) It is widely thought that suspense requires uncertainty, but we often feel suspense in response to narratives when we have knowledge (...) of the outcome. [Paradox of Suspense] (3) The amount of suspense felt in response to a narrative typically diminishes on repeated encounters. [Diminishing Returns] I offer a theory of suspense that can explain these three features. I argue for a theory called the Desire-Frustration Theory of Suspense, which holds that suspense results when our desire to effect the outcome of an imminent event is frustrated. (shrink)

The experience of being in love involves a longing for union with the other, where an important part of this longing is sexual desire. But what is the relation between being in love and sexual desire? To answer this it must first be seen that the expression ‘in love’ normally refers to a personal relationship. This is because to be ‘in love’ is to want to be loved back. This much would be predicted by equity and social exchange (...) theories of interpersonal attraction. Findings suggest however that love differs fundamentally from liking and, consequently, distinct approaches to the theory of love have been developed. A phenomenological theory is then put forward which suggests that the experience of being in love involves a complex of desires for reciprocal vulnerability in order to care and be cared for. Sexual desire is then seen to involve the physical expression of these desires in the form of desires for mutual baring in order to caress and be caressed. Unlike love, however, sexual desire need not refer to the other person's desires. This is supported by the existence of sexual desires like fetishism. It is concluded that other desires which often appear in instances of being in love are not basic to the experience of being in love. (shrink)

Henry Allison's “Incorporation Thesis” has played an important role in recent discussions of Kantian ethics. By focussing on Kant's claim that “a drive [Triebfeder] can determine the will to an action only so far as the individual has incorporated it into his maxim,” Allison has successfully argued against Kant's critics that desire-based non-moral action can be free action. His work has thus opened the door for a wide range of discussions which integrate feeling into moral action more deeply than (...) had previously been considered “Kantian”. (shrink)

The desire-satisfaction theory of welfare says that what is basically good for a subject is the satisfaction of his desires. One challenge to this view is the existence of quirky desires, such as a desire to count blades of grass. It is hard to see why anyone would desire such things, and thus hard to believe that the satisfaction of such desires could be basically good for anyone. This suggests that only some desires are basically good when (...) satisfied, and that desire satisfactionists owe us an account of which desires these are, and why. In "Quirky Desires and Well-Being," Donald Bruckner proposes such an account: a desire is welfare-relevant (i.e., such that its satisfaction would be basically good for its subject) if and only if and because its subject could describe its object in a way that makes it comprehensible what about the object attracts him or appeals to him. We are inclined to view quirky desires as welfare-irrelevant because we assume that their objects cannot be described in such a way. But if there were a quirky desire whose object could be so described by the subject whose desire it is, then this desire would be relevant to that subject's welfare. I will argue that while Bruckner's view delivers plausible verdicts about the cases to which it is meant to apply, its account of what makes a desire welfare-relevant is unmotivated and implausible. Desire satisfactionists can retain what is plausible about his view while endorsing a better explanation of why welfare-relevant desires have that status if they accept the following account instead: a desire is welfare-relevant if and only if and because something about its object attracts, or appeals to, the subject who has the desire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deceit, Desire, and The Dunciad:Mimetic Theory and Alexander PopeAllan Doolittle (bio)Anxiety expressed over what is often termed "information overload"1 is by no means solely a phenomenon of our electronic age. Recent scholarship has traced this concern as far back as the early modern period. The increased production and dissemination of books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a source of "wonder and anxiety"2 for authors and prompted (...) the need for a "substantial reorganization of the intellectual world."3 Seventeenth-century French scholar and critic Adrien Baillet gave warning of an impending barbarism unless there was a "separating [of] those books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from those which one should save."4 The most recognizable expression of this imperative to sort the printed wheat from the chaff comes from the voices of some of eighteenth-century England's most studied, most admired, yet also detested authors, the Scriblerians. From this celebrated literary group came "the three great Tory satires, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, John Gay's Fables and Alexander Pope's The Dunciad."5Christian Thorne, in his discussion of these works in relation to the rise of the public sphere in early modern England, defines the Scriblerian rallying cry as a protest against "the rise of print culture... in which signification will [End Page 1] run amok, flooding the polity with an undifferentiated mass of contradictory opinions and arguments and thus corroding traditional forms of citizenship or civic virtue."6 Pope saw the deluge of aspiring authors and their printed output as a destructive force, a force that had a leveling effect on what he perceived as the traditional structure of the cultural hierarchy. In this article, I will look specifically at the career of Alexander Pope and his lifelong struggle against all but a small number of those who populated what Samuel Johnson called the "Age of Authors."Pope's career is indelibly marked with conflict. This conflict stemmed from Pope's untiring efforts to regulate the field in which he worked, to promote himself and his friends, and to do everything at his disposal to thwart the efforts of those whom he saw as threatening his literary endeavors. His adversaries, most often the professional ranks of Grub Street writers and publishers, served as fodder for Pope's satire and were deeply entwined in Pope's literary output. However, the adversaries he most wanted to be rid of—the primary target of his purposeful and brilliant satire—were not the "hackney scribblers" typical of Grub Street but those most threatening to Pope's professional writing career: "verbal critics" or literary scholars.7 The threat came in the form of the newly emerging critical techniques of philological scholarship. It is my contention that the literary scholars possessed knowledge that Pope showed himself to be desirous of, but that he was incapable of attaining.In this paper I will apply René Girard's mimetic theory both to Pope's relationships with these scholars and to his depiction of them in The Dunciad. The application of Girard's theory helps to explain Pope's motivation in writing, expanding, and obsessing over a poem that was seemingly more trouble than it was worth. The publication history of the poem, which is "exceedingly complicated,"8 "cost [Pope] as much pains as anything [he] ever wrote"9 and brought down an avalanche of ridicule and abuse on him, prompting many to wonder "what can possibly have impelled him to do what he did?"10 This article will go some distance toward answering this question and will also provide insight into the way The Dunciad operated in the service of Pope's attempt to shape the literary culture of early-eighteenth-century England. I will do what no critic to date has yet attempted: I will use Girard's theory to clarify the relationship between Pope's work with the classics and that of his rival classical scholars, and to show how these two threads are woven into his magnum opus, The Dunciad.René Girard's insightful and controversial theory of the nature and origin of human culture may be grouped into three... (shrink)

Theories of welfare answer the ancient question, What makes a person's life go well? Prominent among these are desire-satisfaction or preferentist theories, according to which welfare has to do ultimately with desire. This dissertation aims to criticize some recent popular arguments against standard desire-satisfaction theories of welfare, to develop and defend a novel version of the desire-satisfaction theory capable of answering the better objections, to defend the thesis that pleasure is reducible to (...) class='Hi'>desire, and to demonstrate an interesting link between preferentism and hedonism. The second chapter defends a simple "actualist" desire-satisfaction theory against the contention that such a theory cannot accommodate the fact that we can desire things that are bad for us. All the allegedly defective desires, I attempt to show, are either not genuinely defective or else can be accounted for by the theory. The third chapter criticizes the popular line that standard desire-based theories of welfare are incompatible with the conceptual possibility of self-sacrifice. I show that even the simplest imaginable, completely unrestricted desire theory is compatible with self-sacrifice, so long as it is formulated properly. The fourth chapter presents and defends a theory according to which welfare consists in the perceived satisfaction, or "subjective satisfaction," of desire. I argue that this theory is best suited to deflect the many lines of argument threatening the preferentist program. The fifth chapter defends the view that desire is what unifies the heterogeneous lot of experiences that all count as sensory pleasures. I develop and defend a desire theory of sensory pleasure. The sixth chapter argues that the most plausible form of preferentism is equivalent to the most plausible form of its main rival, hedonism. This is because what the best preferentism says---that welfare consists in subjective desire satisfaction---is the same as what the best hedonism says---that welfare consists in propositional pleasure---given a reduction of pleasure to desire along the lines of that defended above. (shrink)

Explores the political, cultural and conceptual significance of sexual pleasure through Deleuze's philosophy. How is sexual pleasure inscribed into conceptions of the body, gender, health and the human? What is its role in the construction of these notions? And, most importantly, how can it contribute to an expansion of what they mean?Intervening into fields including posthumanist, disability, animal and feminist studies, and current critiques of capitalism and consumerism, Frida Beckman addresses these questions to recover a theory of sexuality from Deleuze's (...) work. (shrink)

Recent writers on economics have conceded that capitalism suffers from serious shortcomings. But they argue that, in spite of that, preference should be given to capitalism over alternative systems, because it alone gives free rein to the universal, human desire for private gain and is therefore best adapted to human nature. I argue against this psychological defense of capitalism that the desire for private gain is not a universal trait of human beings. On the contrary, it is a (...) defining trait of capitalist society that in it persons are first and foremost motivated by that desire. My argument rests on reflections about the way in which we identify motives. We identify motives not by introspection but by reference to lists of actions that persons, who act from a given motive, may be expected to perform in suitable circumstances. To function in a capitalist society I must perform the sorts of actions by reference to which we identify the desire for private gain as a active. (shrink)

Wants and desires are central to ordinary experience and to aesthetic, philosophical, and theological thought. Yet despite a burgeoning interest in the history of emotions research, their history as objects of scientific study has received little attention. This historiographical neglect mirrors a real one, with the retreat of introspection in the positivist human sciences of the early 20th century culminating in the relative marginalization of questions of psychic interiority. This article therefore seeks to explain an apparent paradox: the attempt to (...) develop a comprehensive theory of ‘why … we want what we want’ in the 1940s by esteemed American ‘neo-behaviorist’ psychologist Edward Tolman – a proponent of a methodology famous for its prohibition on appeals to unobservable mental phenomena. Though chiefly known today for his theory of ‘cognitive maps’, Tolman also sought to map the contours of desire as such, integrating Freudian and behaviorist models of the ‘drives’ to develop a complex iconography of the universal structures of motivation. Close attention to Tolman's striking maps offers a compelling limit case for what could and could not be captured within an anti-mentalist framework, and illuminates an important precursor to theories of motivational ‘affect’ in the postwar cognitive and neurosciences. His work upsets a standard chronology that centers on the ‘cognitive revolution’ of the 1960s, and points to the significance of psychoanalysis to an earlier turn to cognitivism. Tolman concluded his theory pointed ‘in the direction of more socialism’ – a reminder of the politically labile anti-essentialism of behaviorism's commitment to mental plasticity. (shrink)

This dissertation argues that the desire satisfaction theory, arguably the dominant theory of well-being at present, fails to explain why depression is bad for a person. People with clinical depression desire almost nothing, but the few desires they do have are almost all satisfied. So it appears the theory must say these people are relatively well-off. A number of possible responses on behalf of the theory are considered, and I argue that each response either fails outright, or requires (...) modifications to the desire satisfaction theory which make the theory unattractive for other reasons. Advisors: Joseph Mendola and John Brunero. (shrink)

How we evaluate things and what we desire are closely connected. In typical cases, the things we desire are things that we evaluate as good or desirable. According to evaluation theories of desire, this connection is a very tight one: desires are evaluations of their objects as good or as desirable. There are two main varieties of this view. According to Doxastic Evaluativism, to desire that p is to believe or judge that p is good. (...) According to Perceptual Evaluativism, to desire that p is to perceive p as being good (or for p to seem good). The present paper poses a puzzle for such views. The puzzle should be familiar to theorists interested in the normativity and metaphysics of the emotions, but I am unaware of its application to desire. The aim of the present paper is to present the puzzle as it applies to desire, which should be of independent interest, but I also hope that by shining a light on the puzzle in this domain, we might put ourselves in a better position to offer a solution in all cases. At the end of the paper, I gesture towards a promising way ahead that departs from relying on contradictory contents. (shrink)

What is the relationship between pleasure and desire? While some philosophers reduce pleasure to desire, this paper explores the prospects for a hedonic theory of desire, which reduces desire to pleasure instead. I argue that desiring that p is best analyzed not as a disposition to feel pleased that p when you believe that p, but rather as a disposition to feel pleasure in what you imagine when you imagine that p. I give three arguments for (...) this hedonic theory of desire, defend it against objections, and consider its broader theoretical implications for current debates in ethics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Marx claims that economic crisis is endemic to capitalism and will worsen as capitalism develops. The article situates Marx’s crisis theory within the discipline of political economy, explains its relationship to mainstream economics, charts economic crises that have happened since the 1840s, and explains Marx’s crisis theorem of the fall in the rate of profit. In conclusion, the 2008 economic crisis, and the notion of crisis in general, are speculatively considered. Special attention is given to the affective desire to (...) own a home, particularly as this is desire is developed by capitalism, in relation to the sub-prime mortgage credit crisis. (shrink)

Vogt puts forward a novel version of the Guise of the Good: the desire to have one's life go well shapes and sustains mid- and small-scale motivations. Her book lays out a non-relativist version of Protagoras's Measure Doctrine and defends a new realism about good human lives.