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Vagaries of Desire <UN> Value Inquiry Book Series Founding Editor Robert Ginsberg Executive Editor Leonidas Donskis† Managing Editor J.D. Mininger volume 340 Philosophy, Literature, and Politics Executive Editor J.D. Mininger (lcc International University) The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vibs and brill.com/plp <UN> Vagaries of Desire A Collection of Philosophical Essays By Timo Airaksinen leiden | boston <UN> This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki Library. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. .The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder Cover illustration: photograph by Susan Airaksinen Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Airaksinen, Timo, 1947- author. Title: Vagaries of desire : a collection of philosophical essays / Timo Airaksinen. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill-Rodopi, 2019. | Series: Value inquiry book series, 0929-8436 ; volume 340. Philosophy, literature, and politics | Includes index. | Summary: “Vagaries of Desire is a major collection of new essays by Timo Airaksinen on the philosophy of desire. The first part develops a novel account of the philosophical theory of desire, including Girard. The second part discusses Kafka’s main works, namely The Castle, The Trial, and Amerika, and Thomas Hobbes and the problems of intentionality. The text develops such linguistic tropes as metaphor and metonymy in connection with topics like death and then applies them to Kafka’s texts. The third part makes an effort to understand the mysteries of sadism and masochism in philosophical and rhetorical terms. The last article criticizes Thomas Nagel’s influential account of sexual perversion and develops a viable alternative”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019025587 (print) | LCCN 2019025588 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004410299 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004410305 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Desire (Philosophy) Classification: LCC B105.D44 A37 2019 (print) | LCC B105.D44 (ebook) | DDC 128/.4--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025587 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025588 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0929-8436 ISBN 978-90-04-41029-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-41030-5 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by the Authors. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. <UN> Contents Preface IX Part 1 Analytical Issues 1 Introduction: Depicting Desire 3 Definitions 3 Two Types of Desire 13 Wishful Thinking and Wish-Fulfilment 21 De Re and De Dicto: a Paradox 24 2 Beliefs and Desires 29 From Wollheim’s Challenge to Human Needs 29 Modality: Beliefs as Constraints 31 Hermeneutical Considerations 37 Moral Beliefs 42 The Demise of Directionality 45 3 Push and Pull Theories of Desire 47 Background Checks 47 Russell on Desire 53 Desirability Demystified 61 Push Theory Returns 64 4 Our Anxious Desires 70 Preliminaries 70 Sources of Frustration and Anxiety 72 Immodest Desires 76 Zero Desires 81 Desire as a Metonym 84 5 René Girard and Mimetic Desire 89 Girard on Desire 89 Model, Not Desirability 93 Scripted Desires 98 Desires, Not My Own 103 <UN> vi Contents Part 2 Desire in Context: Philosophy and Literature 6 Death, Desire, and the Generation of Metaphor 111 Prelude: Death and Dress 111 Meaning of Death 114 Meaning of Desire 118 Generating Metaphors 125 7 Kafka: Tropes of Desire 128 Introduction: Two Persons, Two Tasks, Two Desires 128 Tropological Considerations: The Castle 130 Tropological Considerations: The Trial 135 8 Lost in Kafka’s America 144 Preliminaries, or False Starts 144 Empty Metaphors 150 Irony: from Here to Eternity 158 9 Thomas Hobbes on Intentionality, Desire, and Happiness 163 Theories of Happiness 163 Happiness and Desire 168 Pleonexia 173 Desire and Its Intentionality 176 Egoism 180 Part 3 Sexuality 10 Sadomasochistic Desire 183 Kinky Sex 183 Tropological Delineations 184 The Riddles of Motivation 190 Sade and Sadism 194 Problems with Consent 196 Safe and Sane? 199 11 Tricky Sexual Differences: What Is Perversion? 202 The Tropes of Perversity 202 Freud: Perverted and Pathological Desires 205 <UN> Contents vii Nagel: the Substantiality Thesis 207 Nagel: Ideally Good Sex, or in the Singles Bar 209 Nagel: the Genesis of Sexual Perversion 211 Some Probable Reasons for the Success of SP 214 Cases of Criticism 216 Conclusion: Anxious Desires 219 Index 223 <UN> Preface This volume contains eleven essays on philosophical theories of desire, their applications and rhetorical aspects. They move via analysis towards rhetori- cal literary and metaphysical case studies on Kafka and Hobbes. The final two chapters deal with kinky sexual desire and its moral and motivational myster- ies, first by focusing on BDSM and consensual S/M, and then reading Thomas Nagel’s influential article on perversions and their psychological genesis. In this way, the chapters display the use of several philosophical strategies, such as analysis, criticism, literary interpretation, and rhetorical speculation side by side and one after the other, proceeding from modern logical clarity towards postmodern suggestiveness. This makes the volume multifaceted and, as I hope, polyphonous in a way that is not immediately obvious or trivial. All the papers can be read individually, they are self-contained and hence somewhat repetitious, which I apologise, but they also display a methodological prog- ress from relative triviality towards what looks like an interpretative deep end where the philosophical ladders do not quite reach the bottom or where phi- losophy ends. Plato thought that philosophy should lead us up and away from the cave, but another way of seeing it is that it leads us to the bottom of the cave where all the fundamental secrets lie in eternal gloom and darkness. Plato dreams of truths in bright sunlight, which is nice but far too optimistic. In the end confusion and mystery prevail and the world, as I see it, covers itself in semantic noise, ambiguity, and metaphors as if to avoid the intolerable truth. In the end, linguistic tropes rule. When I looked at the essays in this volume in toto, I noticed, to my initial surprise, that the key metaphor here is travel. I was not planning it that way but when I think of it now I am inclined to say that it is a perfectly good one. The papers here are new and previously unpublished. Exceptions are as fol- lows: Chapter 10 “Sadomasochistic Desire” originally appeared under the title “The Language of Pain: A Philosophical Study of BDSM,” SAGE Open 8 (2018), 1–9, but I have made some significant modifications. I also moved some mate- rial from that essay to the last one, “Sexual Differences,” which is previously unpublished. My third relevant paper on sexuality is “A Philosophical and Rhe- torical Theory of BDSM,” The Journal of Mind and Behaviour 38 (2017), 53–74. The two Kafka essays in this volume belong to a series of four papers, of which two are published as “Nowhere to Go, Kafka,” Munich Social Science Review NS 1 (2018), 91–110, and “Conspiracy Theories as Fiction: Kafka and Sade,” Munich Social Science Review NS 2 (2019) (in press). The essay on Hobbes is the origi- nal version of the paper first published as a Spanish translation: “Dentro del <UN> x Preface torbellino: Intencionalidad, deseo y felicidad en Thomas Hobbes.” In Natu- raleza y teoria politica, F. Bertelloni and M.L. Lukac (Eds.). Buenos Aires: Edi- toria de la Facultad de Filosofia e Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2018, pp. 114–143. For this volume I have modified the original version slightly but significantly. What I have written in this volume is loosely based on some of my published essays, namely, “Desire and Happiness,” Homo Oeconomicus 29 (2012), 393–412; “An Introduction to Desire,” Homo Oeconomicus 31 (2014), 447–461; and “Narra- tives of Desire.” In Desire: The Concept and Its Practical Context. T. Airaksinen and W.W. Gasparski (Eds.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2016, pp. 3–58. See also “Narratives of (Mad) Desire,” Ethics in Progress 4 (2014), 7–17; “Sade, or the Scandal of Desire,” Homo Oeconomicus 30 (2013), 369–384; and “Psychology of Desire and the Pragmatics of Betterment.” In Pragmatism and Objectivity, S. Pihlström (Ed.). London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 223–238. My long standing interest in desire is an offshoot of my struggles with the notions of happiness. I originally toyed with the argument to the effect that satisfied desires make, or should make, a person happy. This contrasts with the idea that one cannot satisfy a desire de se, like some Buddhists may ar- gue, which is to say that happiness is an ever delusive notion.
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