Desire

Summary

Dominique Pagani treats desire as a constant object of philosophy. He holds it to be primary, even for knowledge: we judge things good because we desire them1. He contrasts it with need, which is determinate and finite, like thirst. Human desire, by contrast, is infinite because it is indeterminate, and its content mixes nature and history2. Being modern, in his view, means recognizing this absence of measure, unlike the Greeks, who held to measure; Rousseau and Faust illustrate it. Following Hegel, he holds that consciousness is desire and that desire destroys its object, which nevertheless keeps reappearing3. In aesthetics, he maintains against Kant that every pleasure presupposes a satisfied desire, often an unconscious one: the beautiful object knows more about me than I do4. For him, production serves desire rather than need, and therefore has no end point. With Clouscard, he criticizes Deleuze's presentation of desire as creative, which goes along with libidinal consumption5.

1. 1D for Desire17 Dec 2014 · 3:09
2. 2Worldliness in Clouscard: the clash of worlds?9 Jul 2023 · 54:17
3. 3Hegel on the Beach 2/51 Feb 2016 · 26:39
4. 4#12 Return to the logics of the subject2 Jul 2020 · 1:18:25
5. 5#4 Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: on the thought of M. Clouscard26 Sept 2014 · 52:03

Summary produced automatically from 85 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.