On Desire: Why We Want What We Want

337 Pages·2005·2.4 MB·English

by  William B. Irvine

On Desire:
Why We Want What
We Want
William B. Irvine
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
On Desire
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On Desire
Why We Want What We Want
William B. Irvine
2006
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that
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Copyright © 2006 by William B. Irvine
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Irvine, William Braxton, 1952–
On desire : why we want what we want / William B. Irvine
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-518862-2
ISBN-10: 0-19-518862-4
1. Desire. I. Title.
BF575.D4178 2005
128'.3—dc22 2005005938
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Jamie
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
PART ONE
THE SECRET LIFE OF DESIRE
ONE
The Ebb and Flow of Desire 11
TWO
Other People 31
PART TWO
THE SCIENCE OF DESIRE
THREE
Mapping Our Desires 55
FOUR
The Wellsprings of Desire 68
FIVE
The Psychology of Desire 91
SIX
The Evolution of Desire 120
viii Contents
SEVEN
The Biological Incentive System 145
PART THREE
DEALING WITH OUR DESIRES
EIGHT
The Human Condition 175
NINE
Religious Advice 182
TEN
Religious Advice Continued: Protestant Sects 211
ELEVEN
Philosophical Advice 238
TWELVE
The Eccentrics 258
THIRTEEN
Conclusions 279
Notes 298
Works Cited 309
Index 316
Acknowledgments
I
f the hard drive of my computer can be trusted, I first got the
idea to write a book on desire—succumbed, one might say, to the
desire to write such a book—in September 2000. Between that
time and when the final words were being written in the closing
days of 2004, many people contributed to the book in a variety of
ways. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them.
First, thanks to the students who signed up for the desire
seminars I taught in the winter of 2001 and the winter of 2003;
to Derek Vanhoose and Jason Phillips, who did independent
study with me on desire; and especially to Nicholas Barnard,
Chris Poteet, and Sarah Kaplan, who read the manuscript out-
side of class. These students were the guinea pigs on whom I
tested my work in progress.
Thanks to my colleagues in Wright State University’s Col-
lege of Liberal Arts and Department of Philosophy for allow-
ing me to lecture them about desire. Thanks to my colleagues
Scott Baird and Don Cipollini in the Biology Department; Scott
discussed the evolution of desire with me, and Don arranged
for me to give a seminar on the topic. A special thanks to my
colleague James McDougal in the Department of Pharmacol-
ogy and Toxicology for reading and commenting on chapter