Desire and Satisfaction

Shaw, Ashley

doi:10.1093/pq/pqz068

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Desire is not a contentless sensa.on, like a headache, but an inten.onal antude: desire is 'for' something, such as an outcome or state of affairs (e.g., that Mme de Stermaria come to dinner), an object or person (e.g., Alber.ne), or an ac.on of one's own (e.g., to write a novel). Since desire is a rela.on between a desiring subject and an inten.onal object, the term 'desire' can be ambiguous between referring to the subject's antude and referring to the object (Shaw 2020). In the sentence 'Marcel's desire is all-consuming', 'desire' refers to a psychological antude or state of mind, while in the sentence 'Marcel's desire is unaTainable', 'desire' refers to the object at which the desire aims.…”

Section: "Desire Makes All Things Blossom"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Proust on desire satisfaction

Kubala¹

2022

The Proustian Mind

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For a certain ordinary class of desires, Marcel Proust's thoughts on their sa.sfac.on can be summed up in one word: don't. Don't sa.sfy your desires; doing so will fail to sa.sfy you.Should you therefore seek to eliminate desire? Absolutely not: desiring itself sustains you. The disappointment of aTaining what you desire is one of Proust's most persistent themes, elaborated in the florid unfolding of À la recherche du temps perdu but already expressed succinctly in an early story from Les plaisirs et les jours: "Desire makes all things blossom; possession wilts them." If you believed this, what should you do? Best to aim not to sa.sfy your desires at all. This paper is a development and limited defense of these baldly stated claims, and includes discussions of the role of the imagina.on in the forma.on of desire, the dis.nc.on between the hypothe.cal imagina.on and the imagina.veness that is involved in the percep.on of beauty, and the rela.onship between desire, desire sa.sfac.on, and agent sa.sfac.on.For a certain ordinary class of desires, Proust's thoughts on their sa.sfac.on can be summed up in one word: don't. Don't sa.sfy your desires; doing so will fail to sa.sfy you. Should you therefore seek to eliminate desire? Absolutely not: desiring itself sustains you. The disappointment of aTaining what you desire is one of Proust's most persistent themes, elaborated in the florid unfolding of the Recherche but already expressed succinctly in an early story from Les plaisirs et les jours, apparently wriTen when he was only 18: "Desire makes all things blossom; possession wilts them" (2001: 115). If you believed this, what should you do? 1 Best to aim not to sa.sfy your desires at all.This paper is a development and limited defense of these baldly stated claims. The defense is limited in two respects. First, we have to restrict the class of desires in ques.on to desires for comple.ng one's long-term projects, which I call 'project-based desires'. Second, we have to restrict the scope of the subjects to whom these claims apply. Although my primary goal is to explore what ra.onally follows from a line of thought in Proust's work, and not to argue, on textual and biographical grounds, for the aTribu.on of this line of thought to the historical author, I do think that Proust himself intended to express something general about human psychology, and not merely to delineate the con.ngent .cs and quirks of one fic.onal character's personality. Nevertheless, while I will suggest that these ideas are more general in their applica.on, they may not hold universally.In sec.on 1, I discuss the view of desire that emerges in the Recherche, on which desire is bound up with the imagina.on. Sec.on 2 explains why desire sa.sfac.on fails to sa.sfy us, and sec.on 3 argues that the novel does not ul.mately endorse the view that we should aim to eliminate our desires. In sec.on 4, I argue for the alterna.ve strategy of prolonging the pursuit of our desires, both as a maTer of interpreta.on and on substan.ve grounds, before concluding in ...

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Section: "Desire Makes All Things Blossom"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Proust on desire satisfaction

Kubala¹

2022

The Proustian Mind

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On Content Uniformity for Beliefs and Desires

Skibra

2020

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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On the “How” and the “Why”: Nietzsche on Happiness and the Meaningful Life

Faustino

2024

Open Philosophy

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Nietzsche is commonly interpreted as strongly rejecting and even despising any possible conception (or pursuit) of happiness. And yet, one of the most pervasive topics in Nietzsche’s work is the problem of human suffering, the pursuit of meaning (or purpose) in life, and the possibility of a joyful or affirmative disposition toward existence. In this article, I argue that Nietzsche’s criticism of common conceptions of happiness should be seen as a redefinition, rather than a rejection, of the notion of human happiness, with important implications for contemporary discussions on the topic. I start by addressing three of the main contemporary theories of happiness from a Nietzschean perspective, underlining both the points of convergence and the points of divergence between Nietzsche and each of these accounts. I then gather the conclusions of the previous section, add Nietzsche’s positive claims on happiness and the meaningful life, and sketch what might be called a Nietzschean theory of happiness. Finally, I situate Nietzsche’s position in the contemporary debate on the topic and outline what I take to be his most important contributions to current discussions on happiness, meaning, and well-being in human life.

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Desire and Satisfaction

Cited by 3 publications

References 18 publications

Proust on desire satisfaction

Proust on desire satisfaction

On Content Uniformity for Beliefs and Desires

On the “How” and the “Why”: Nietzsche on Happiness and the Meaningful Life

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