on desire and its discontents soll ratio

7/27/2019 On Desire and Its Discontents Soll Ratio

1/16

Ratio (New Series) I1 2 December 19890034-0066 $2.00

ON DESIRE AND IT S DISCONTENTSIvan Sol1

There exists a long and widespread tradition, with roots in classicalGreek and eastern thought, which maintains that the life of desire,the life in which the pursuit of the satisfaction of desires occupies acentral place, is doomed to failure and frustration. Those of thispersuasion, who also believe life to be ineluctably fraught withdesire, are naturally pessimistic about the possibility of living well.Those who are pessimistic about the satisfaction of desire, but whoallow for the possibility of living a fulfilled life, naturally locate thispossibility in the rejection or transcendence of the life of desire.

In the German philosophical tradition these two variants arerepresented by Schopenhauer and Hegel. Schopenhauers pessim-ism and Hegels far more positive view of human existence areunited by a common rejection of the possibility of truly satisfyingour desires, a view also shared by many other philosophical andreligious thinkers.

The way in which Hegel makes the case for this dismalconclusion both diverges from and overlaps with Schopenhauersargumentation and rhetoric to the same end. In examining thesecommonalities and differences, I hope to shed some light upon thecentral philosophical issue of whether there is good reason tobelieve, as so many have, that the life of desire is doomed tofrustration and failure, and should be, as far as possible, rejected ortranscended.

This ntellectual CalibanWhenever Schopenhauer deigns to mention Hegel, i t is to revilehim. With a hostility, animated in part by his envy of Hegels farmore illustrious career and in part by his distaste for Hegelsobscure style, Schopenhauer repeatedly savages his philosophicalb2te noire, the man he called this intellectual Caliban, generallyneglecting to present Hegels views with any care or to criticizethem in any substantive manner. One might expect that Schopen-hauers exaggerated nastiness and his suppression rather thandiscussion of Hegels ideas, would have aroused suspicion or evenprotest. The repeated, exaggerated denigration of a philosopher,

Schopenhauer, Arthur , World as Wi ll and Representation, Preface to the Second Ed ition.


2/16

170 I V A N S0I.I.whose ideas are never really examined, should serve as anindication that personal motives are here feverishly at work. Yet,because Schopenhauer was able to formulate his anti-Hegelianvenom in such delightfully witty fashion, we tend to lose sight of itsunfairness, implausibility, and lack of substance. Confronted withthe bon mot describing Hegel as this intellectual Caliban, we aremore inclined to chuckle than to challenge i t , more disposed toquote than to question it. Clever, caustic commentary, of the sortSchopenhauer used to attack Hegel, tends to be enjoyed for its witand promulgated through repeated citation. In the process, thecritical spiri t is disarmed.

The intensity of Schopenhauers antipathy toward Hegel and hislack of any detailed discussion of the way in which his philosophydiverges from Hegels disposes one to assume that they must haveheld radically opposed views on most issues. Later in the century,Nietzsche, with an analogous combination of philosophical andpersonal motives, wanting to represent the influence of others uponhim as minimal in order to emphasize his own originality, andstruggling to establish his personal and intellectual autonomy vis Bvis Wagner, tried to distance himself from Wagners favoritephilosopher - Schopenhauer. Though Nietzsche had previouslyconsidered Schopenhauer as his great teacher, he came to represstheir similarities and deny the considerable influence that Schopen-hauer had exerted upon him. Nietzsche hyperbolically andmisleadingly claimed that he and Schopenhauer were antipodes inevery way.* This is essentially the same impression that Schopen-hauer had tried to create and succeeded in creat ing with respect toHegel. Sometimes in the history of thought the sins of the fathersare visited upon them by their children.

Schopenhauers rejection of Hegel (unlike Nietzsches rejection ofSchopenhauer) does not seem to involve the suppression of aconsiderable philosophical influence. It has, however, discourageddetailed comparisons and contrasts of their views. Such carefulcomparisons would reveal a number of issues upon whichSchopenhauer and Hegel hold similar views. This is really not sosurprising. T o a great extent Schopenhauers antipathy to Hegel wasmotivated, on the one hand, by jealousy, and on the other hand, bythe feeling that Hegels oppressive obscurity both concealed a nd wasdesigned to conceal the poverty of his thought. I t was thus not based

I have examined Nictzschcs rcjcction of Schoprnhaucr and i ts motives in an cssay, ThcInternational Sludzer zn Phzlosophy,opclcssncss of Hedonism and thc Will to lowcr,X V I I I / 2 , 1986.


3/16

DESIRE AND IT S DISCONTENTS 171primarily upon differences in philosophical position.

In order to transcend the conventional and simplistic picture ofHegel and Schopenhauer as being, in some not clearly specifiedmanner, opposites or antipodes, we should begin the process ofcomparing their views on specific issues.The Downfall of Desire: a Convergence of the AntipodesA usually overlooked but remarkable convergence of their viewsoccurs with respect to an issue that is, interestingly enough, at thevery center of Schopenhauers philosophy. A crucial component inthe construction of Schopenhauers pessimism is the claim thatdesire can never be truly gratified.3 Hegel, I want to argue, hadactually held a similar view in his Phenomenology of Spiri t . Hegel,like Schopenhauer, seems to have held that desire must ineluctablyfail to achieve real satisfaction in every case. If this contention istrue, then an essential element of Schopenhauers pessimism isalready to be found in Hegels philosophy. That Hegel from thiscommon point of departure, i.e., that desire must remain ultimatelyunfulfilled, did not reach the same pessimistic conclusions asSchopenhauer, promises to be of interest to a critical assessment ofSchopenhauerian pessimism.Desire in the Service of Self-consiousnessIn Hegels Phenomenology of Spir it the concept of desire (Begierde) isintroduced as an immediate consequence of consciousnesssbecoming self-consciousness (or, alternatively formulated, of theconscious subject becoming aware that its object is really itself).4For Hegel, consciousness, in a narrower sense of the term, is onlyapplicable to those forms of consciousness having objects thatappear to be external to the consciousness itself, that seem to beother than the conscious subject. In this restricted sense ofconsciousness, self-consciousness is opposed to consciousness,rather than being one of its varieties. The Phenomenology begins witha discussion of the dialectical development of several stages of thisconsciousness, which has an object other than itself.5 At the end of

See Schopenhauer , Arthur, The World as W d l and Representation, Vol. I , Ch. 38 and 57.Hcgcl, Phenomeno1o.U o Spirzt,B . Self-consciousness, IV . Thc Truth of Self-ccrtainty.

These stages are ( I ) the direct awareness of simple sensuous particulars, unmediatedby any conceptualization, (2 ) the perception of an external world composcd of objects, eachcontaining and uniting a number of qualities, and ( 3 ) the understanding of the world asregulated and constituted by general laws. Hegel calls them sense certainty, perception,and understanding.


4/16

172 I V A N S 0 I . I .this development, consciousness ( the conscious subject) comes tothe momentous realization that its object really is, and really hasbeen all along, itself, It becomes aware of itself as being self-consciousness, or, as Hegel also expresses the transition, itbecomes self-consciousness.Because, for Hegel, the attainment of self-consciousness issupposed to represent an advance in the development of the humanspirit, it cannot have as its object something which is poorer incontent than the external world which was the object of the justtranscended form of consciousness. Thus, self-consciousness cannotexclude from its object the richness of the external world. T he self,which by definition is the object of self-consciousness, cannot be abare and simple ego but must somehow continue to include thevariety and richness of the external world. Because the dialecticaldevelopment of the spirit is supposed to display progress, there canbe no impoverishment of content involved in the transition fromconsciousness to self-consciousness.

On the other hand, in order to realize its essential nature, whichis to be a consciousness of itself, self-consciousness must havenothing but itself as its object. This is the requirement that self-consciousness become what it is supposed to be, a requirement forthe self-realization of self-consciousness.

These opposed demands, first, to avoid excluding the externalworld (so as not to lose any of the richness of its detail an d variety)and, second, to exclude it completely (so that the self-consciousness,as its definition and essence demand, have only itself for a n object)confronts the self-conscious spirit with a seemingly paradoxicaltask. They create a field of logical tension in which the dialecticaldevelopment of self-consciousness, which is equivalent to the entiresubsequent development of the Phenomenology, unfolds.6

Desire is, according to Hegel, the very first strategy of the self-conscious spirit to satisfy both of these apparently conflictingdemands. First, inasmuch as the object of desire is something in theexternal world, i t retains a consciousness of this world and its

Self-consciousness is the titlc of the second of three divisions of the Phenomenology,preceded by Consciousness and succecdcd by Reason. I t seems clear from the content ofthe book, however, that in this series succccding categories ar e to be understood asmodifications an d fur ther dcvelopmcnts of their predeccssors, not as departure s from them.Jus t as self-consciousncss is a special form of consciousness, reason, in the context of thiswork, is a spccial form of sclf-consciousness. Just as thc entire book is supposed to be apresentation of the development of human consciousness, everything from the appcarance ofsclf-consciousncss onward is supposcd 10 be a prcscntation of the development of self-consciousncss. Thc paradox of sclf-consciousness continues to furnish a major motor for thedialectical dcvclopmcnt in the latter parts of thc book.

b


5/16

DESIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS 173richness of content. Secondly, inasmuch as desire has a s its goal theuse or consumption (Verzehrung) of its object, not just theconsciousness or contemplation of it, it also aims a t that negation orremoval of the external world, which is required for the realizationof self-consci~usness.~Desire as the Attempt to Remove the External WorldAccording to Hegel, desire, as a strategy for the self-realization ofself-consciousness, is, however, doomed to failure. He conceives theimmediate goal of desire generally to be the taking possession ofparts of the external world, using them for ones pleasure andsatisfaction, and in this process using them up.8 He suggests thateven though desire achieves these immediate goals, it still cannotachieve its ultimate goal, which is the complete removal of theexternal world.

An obvious and apparently insuperable obstacle to consuming orusing up the external world piece by piece and thereby completelyremoving i t lies in its presumed infinity and thus inexhaustibility.Assuming the worlds endlessness, there would always be, after anyprocess of piecemeal consumption, no matter how long, anunconsumed remainder. If Hegels claim, that desires piecemealconsumption of the world cannot ultimately succeed, were basedupon the purportedly inexhaustible nature . of the world, then hiscritique of desire would be analogous to one important aspect ofKants critique of reason. Kant, taking the task of reason (asopposed to understanding) to be the knowledge of the entireworld, argues that this task is unfulfillable because of the worldsinfinity. But Hegels critique of desire, his claim that desire cannotreach its ultimate goal of completely negating and removing theworld, is not based upon the worlds purportedly infinite nature.

Instead, Hegel derives his critique of desire from what heAn interpretation of Hegels Phenomenology ofSpir i t as the tracing of the long, dialectical

development and realization of self-consciousness, of Hegels theory of desire as a crucialstage in this development, is to be found in my book, An Introduction to Hegels Mefuphysicf,Chicago and London, 1969, Ch. I .Hegels coniention, that the goal of desire, in all cases, consists in the consumptionVerzehren) or removal of its objects, is itself problematic. Even limiting ourselves to the two

primary and primitive examples most strongly suggested by the German notion of Begierde,hunger and lust, the desire for food and the desire for sex, Hegels consumption model fitsonly the first. Consumption, in its strict sense of using up, not in the looser sense of merelyusing or enjoying, is what we do to our food, but not, at least not in the ideal cases, to ourlovers.


6/16

174 I V A N S 0 I . I .conceives as the dynamic nature of desire and it s satisfaction. The crucialargument is quite concisely stated:

In this satisfaction [of desire], however, i t experiences theindependence of its object. Desire and the certainty of itselfachieved in its satisfaction is determined by the object, for itssatisfaction takes place in removing (Aufheben) this other. Inorder for there to be this removing (Aufheben) ,there must be thisother. For this reason, self-consciousness is not able to removethe object; self-consciousness rather continues to recreate theobject, as well as desire.9Hegel had called attention to what he took to be a dialectical and

philosophically felicitous polysemy in the concept, Aujheben, that i tmeans both to cancel and to preserve." Hegel does not mentionthat Aufheben also means to lift up, perhaps because this moreliteral, concrete, and etymological meaning seemed so obvious asnot to require mentioning. Aufheben as used by Hegel is often meantto be understood in both or all three of these meanings. TheHegelian dialectic, whether in his Phenomenolo


7/16

D E S I R E A N D I T S D I S C ON T E N T S 175Aufheben can refer to both the process and the product of thisprocess. T he cancellation or removal of something can refer both tothe process in which this occurs, the removing o f it. and to the state atthe end of the process, its removal as an accomplished f a c t , Th e sameduality is true of the infinitives used as substantives indicating theprocesses and results of change, termination, initiation, creation,succeeding, failing and many others.

An attempt to locate the logic of Hegels argument makes clear,however, that Aujheben in this passage refers to the process ofremoving rather than the removal as the product of this process.Hegel claims that desire cannot achieve its end of doing away withthe external world because desire finds its satisfaction in theAufheben of this other, and because, In order for there to be thisAufheben, there must be this other. This line of argument begins tomake sense only if Aufheben is understood to refer to the process ofremoving the external object, not to the resultant state of its havingbeen removed. If the satisfaction of desire consisted in the state inwhich the object, having been removed, is simply no longerpresent, then it would not follow that for this satisfaction to occurthere must be an external object, or other. The continued absenceof the object would produce the continuation of the satisfaction.And on this interpretation of Aujheben, it would certainly not followthat: For this reason, self-consciousness is not able to remove theobject; self-consciousness rather continues to recreate the object, aswell as desire. If desires satisfaction consisted in the absence of theobject, in the result of its removal, desire would have no need torecreate its object anew.

If the satisfaction of desire, which consists in the Aufheben of anexternal object, is located in the process of removing the object asopposed to the state of its having been removed, the logic of Hegelsargument emerges. If the satisfaction of desire takes place only inthe process of consuming a part of the external world, desire cannotcompletely remove the external world if its satisfaction is tocontinue. It must recreate its object in order to maintain itssatisfaction, and it must recreate itself as a desiring being whichinitiates the process of consumption and removal in which alonesatisfaction is found.

The point of Hegels argument is not that desire cannot completeits task of removing the external world because the world isinexhaustible and the task endless. I t is rather that desire may notcomplete its task without terminating its satisfaction.

Because the satisfaction of desire takes place only in the process


8/16

176 I V A N S 0 I . I .of removing an external object, desire is condemned never to beable to achieve its ultimate aim, which, for Hegel, is the completeremoval of the external world. Since the removal of all externalobjects would be tantamount to the complete realization of self-consciousness as a consciousness with only itself for its object,desire, as a strategy for the realization of self-consciousness, isdoomed to failure. Desire is represented by Hegel as ultimatelystriving for the cancellation of the external world inasmuch as it isa strategy to achieve full self-consciousness. Yet it must avoid thecomplete removal of the external world inasmuch as its satisfactionis found only within the process in which something external to i t isconsumed and removed. The paradoxical project of self-conscious-ness, to negate and to preserve the external world, which desire wassupposed to resolve, re-emerges here as a paradox in the heart ofdesire itself.

Thus, desire reveals itself to be unable to realize the perplexingproject of the self-conscious spirit. This spirit must, therefore,undergo a development through further stages and strategies,attempting in other ways to realize itself. Hegels Phenomenology andthe spirit whose journey i t recounts continue on their way.Immediate Ends, Ultimate EndsSchopenhauer, like Hegel, held that desire cannot ultimatelyachieve any real satisfaction. Defenders of this dismal view areoften brought to distinguishing between immediate and ultimatesatisfaction, for it is hardly possible for them to deny the fact thatwe often achieve the immediate ends of our desires. The questiongenerally raised by those who propound this dishearteningconception of the human condition is whether or not we therebyachieve the ultimate ends of our desires. Proponents of the futilityof desire (like Hegel and Schopenhauer) generally proceed bydenying the possibility of attaining our ultimate ends through theachieving of the immediate ends of our desires.

Since the immediate goals of our willing, desiring and action canbe easily conceived as means to our ultimate goal or goals, theultimate goal appears, when the matter is conceived in this way, asour only real goal. Such a constellation of ideas is not unusual.Those who adhere to it, and this adherence can of course beimplicit, will tend to view all immediate satisfactions that d o notlead to what is taken to be our ultimate goal to be insubstantial ornot genuine. In this context, to deny that an immediate satisfaction


9/16

D E S I R E A N D ITS D I S C O N T E N T S 177is a part of our final goal or a means to i t , is more or less to denythat it is a real satisfaction at all.

This last inference is made more clearly and more emphaticallyby Schopenhauer than it is by Hegel. I n order to support hisradical pessimism, Schopenhauer had to represent the apparent,concrete satisfactions of our desire as thoroughly ephemeral andillusory. Hegel, whose task at this juncture of the Phenomenology ofSpirit was only to send the human spirit on its way to furtherdevelopment, to argue tha t i t could not find all that it really neededand wanted in the life of desire and its satisfactions, did not need toattack the worth and substance of desiring so thoroughly. Becauseit was not his project to construct a thoroughly pessimistic vision ofthe life of desire, he, in contrast to Schopenhauer, could allowdesire to have some, if not ultimate, worth.

Satisfaction as the Self-destruction of the WillSchopenhauers more radical critique of desire rests, like Hegels,upon the purported inability of desire to attain its ultimate goal.Unlike Hegel who conceived of this goal as the realization of fullself-consciousness, which brings with i t the full realization ofknowledge and freedom, Schopenhauer viewed the ultimate aim ofdesire as a final stilling and cancellation of the will and of all fur therstriving. For Schopenhauer the immediate, as well as theultimate, satisfaction of a desire consists essentially in the removalor destruction of the desire itself, not, as on Hegels analysis, in theremoval of its object.

Moreover, the satisfaction of a desire is located by Schopenhauer,in contrast to Hegel, not in the dynamic process of its removal, bu tin the stat ic state of its having been removed. Because the state inwhich a desire has been removed is, aside from residual memories,identical with a state in which the desire simply does not exist, thisway of conceiving of the satisfaction of desire tends to erase thedistinction between the removal of the desire and its absence. As aconsequence there is an objectionable blurring of the distinctionbetween removing a desire by satisfying i t and simply not havingthe desire. The satisfaction of hunger or lust is not simply theabsence of hunger or lust, but, if the satisfaction of hunger isidentified with the state in which i t has been removed, i t becomes How Hegel connects the realization of self-consciousness with the atta inment of truth

and of freedom is explained in chapters I and 2 of An lnlroduction to Hegels Melaphyrics.


10/16

178 I V A N S 0 I . I .difficult to distinguish this state phenomenologically from that inwhich hunger is simply absent.

T o distinguish the two, a proponent of the conception that thesatisfaction of a desire is located and consists in a state in whichthat desire no longer exists, might emphasize that only the state ofsatisfied desire is preceded by the desire and is accompanied by thememories of the desire now removed. But conceiving of thesatisfaction of desire as a state in which the desire has beenreinoved but is remembered will still not do because i t obliteratesthe important difference between the removal of desire throughsatisfaction and its removal through distraction, repression, fear,fatigue, disillusionment, or reconsideration. There are a number ofprocesses, other than satisfaction, in which desire is removed.Satisfaction cannot therefore be equated simply with the removal ofdesire, where removal is distinguished from mere absence. Anadequate account of the satisfaction of desire must explain whatmakes the removal of a desire through satisfaction different from itsremoval in these other ways. And this concern forces our attentionback to the process in which the removal occurs and to theories,that locate the satisfaction of a desire in this process rather than ina static condition conceived of as the result of the process.*The location of the satisfaction of desire in a state in which thedesire no longer exists tends to obliterate the essential and intrinsicconnection between the desire and its satisfaction. The connectionbetween desire and its satisfaction appears instead as an externalone, like the relation between causes and their effects on DavidHumes classical account. The conception of the satisfaction ofdesire as a state in which the desire is not present preceded by astate in which i t was depicts the relation between a desire and itssatisfaction as external, i.e., as between two conditions each ofwhich can obtain or be conceived independently of the other.Inasmuch as satisfaction is defined as a state posterior to the desireand characterized simply by the absence of the desire, there is nointrinsic reference in the experience of the satisfaction to the desireof which it is a satisfaction. Just such a reference is needed.

Another unfortunate consequence of this conceptual and exist-ential separation of desire and satisfaction is that it makesdistinguishing among different types of satisfaction on experientialgrounds diflicult. If the satisfaction of hunger consists in the

This consideration inclincs us, therefore, to thcorics likc Hcgcls rathcr than thcoricslike Schopenhauers. But Hegcls theory, though correct in focussing upon thc proccss inwhich thc desire is satisfied , doc s not offcr a satisfactory a ccou nt of the naturr o f this process.


11/16

DESIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS 179absence of hunger and the satisfaction of lust in the absence of lust,how are we to distinguish experientially between the two. A state inwhich I have satisfied my hunger and simply had no lust and astate in which I have satisfied my lust but simply had no hungerwill both be characterized by the absence of hunger and lust.

This inadequate conception of satisfaction as something separateand isolable from desire is not only inadequate for the reasons justadduced; i t has the further unfortunate consequence of providingthe conceptual basis for a number of negative assessments of desireand the life of desire, including Schopenhauers. In separating andisolating the value-positive notion of satisfaction from that ofdesire, the way is prepared to view desire as something altogetherunfortunate.

Fteeting uersus Lasting SatisfactionI have already argued that Schopenhauers pessimistic rejection ofthe possibility of satisfying desire depends upon identifying truesatisfaction with the attaining of ultimate as opposed to immediateends. I t also depends upon identifying lasting as opposed to fleetingsatisfaction as the only true satisfaction. T he strategy of pessimismis to argue, or assume, that those passing pleasures that we areclearly capable of encountering turn out to be insubstantial andreally not satisfying, because they do not abide.

If pleasures can be short and sweet, why can they not be shortand still provide real satisfaction? Are not even the most fleetingpleasures real enough while they briefly abide? What is supposed tobe the force of the claim that the only true satisfaction is lastingsatisfaction?In part, the force of this idea derives from an implicit appeal tounspecified but specific contexts in which a satisfaction can be sofleeting as to be experienced as insubstantia l. If I labor long in thelegislature for the passage of a tax reform bill, which finally passesbut is almost immediately amended so as to undermine the reformoriginally intended, I would be likely to have this feeling. If myardent and arduous courting finally meets with success, but theobject of the quest soon loses interest in me or for me, or is forced tomove away, or dies, I might easily feel that the pleasure was tooshort to be really satisfying.

Clearly the occurrence of such feelings or their absence, isdetermined by the vicissitudes of context. What seems too fleetingto be satisfying depends upon the particular case, the particular


12/16

180 I V A N SOI.1,expectations, the amount of effort and time invested in securing thesatisfaction, and the duration of the satisfaction relative to thedifficulty and delay involved in obtaining it. We have here acontext-bound truth, that in particular, specifiable but not neces-sarily specified situations, pleasures that do not last long enoughare unsatisfying. Schopenhauer, in constructing his pessimism,recasts this context-bound truth as a dubious context-free claim,that all satisfactions which come to an end - and all eventually do -are experienced as fleeting and thus not really satisfying. Whateverappearance of plausibility the context-free claim possesses, itborrows from its more modest context-bound cousin. Although itseems incontrovertible that in some situations a pleasure orsatisfaction can be too short to be really satisfying, i t seems plainlyfalse that all pleasures that eventually come to an end areexperienced, for that reason, as ultimately unsatisfying. We experi-ence some pleasures as lasting long enough to provide us with real,though limited, satisfaction. It is even arguable that the perfectionof some pleasures consists, precisely in the relevant experiences notlasting longer than they do. Think of the delicious thrill of free fallon a ride at an amusement park or in diving off the high board. I s itnot possible that in these and other cases the limited duration of theexperience should be considered as helping to constitute thepleasure rather than as simply curtailing i t ?The Obscure Object of DesireSchopenhauers notion that real satisfaction must be permanentderives also in part from his idea that the end of desire is to do awaywith itself, the aim of hunger to abolish hunger, the aim of lust toabolish lust. And the plausibility of this idea is in turn dependentupon his analysis of desiring as a condition in which we lack whatwe desire and suffer this lack, i.e., desiring is represented as beingessentially a state of suffering. If desire is essentially a state ofsuffering, it seems plausible that its aim is to remove itself andthereby the suffering. And if desire aimed to obliterate itselfbecause it was an intrinsically painful sta te, i t would seem plausiblethat its goal be to permanently obliterate itself.

The notion that the state of desiring something is basically acondition of suffering, which lends crucial support to the idea thatthe object of desire is the removal, and moreover, the permanentremoval of itself, is, however, unacceptable. Even if desiringsomething entails not having what is desired, i t clearly entails


13/16

DESIRE AND I TS DI SCO NTENTS 181suffering the lack of it only in the trivial sense of enduring orexperiencing it. But it is not at all clear that i t entails that we sufferin the sense of painfully experiencing every lack we are in theprocess of removing. Wants, lacks, and desires, whose fulfillmentseems imminent, are, as a matter of fact, regularly experienced in apleasurable way. It is true that some (though not all) desires tongunsatisfied are experienced as uncomfortable and even sometimesas painful, and that those for which satisfaction seems remote oronly a remote possibility tend to be experienced as, and with, acurse. But the suffering of desires in this non-trivial sense occursonly with respect to some of our desires and thus does not show thatdesires as such are, or entail, states of suffering some degree ofdiscomfort or pain. In the sense that every lack is suffered, sufferinga lack, contrary to what the words may superficially suggest, doesnot entail suffering, that is, not in any sense that will supportSchopenhauers analysis of the goal of desire or the pessimisticconclusions based upon this analysis.

Schopenhauers rhetorical strategy also relies upon blurring thecrucial distinction between pleasures that end so quickly that theydo not provide substantial satisfaction and pleasures that, thoughthey eventually end, last long enough to provide real satisfaction,between those that are so fleeting as to frustrate satisfaction, andthose that end only after providing considerable satisfaction,between those that are objectionably ephemeral and those that aremerely finite. The proponent of pessimism trades on the trivialsense in which all pleasures or satisfactions that end are ephemeraland fleeting. He glosses over the fact, that a pleasures beingephemeral or fleeting in the minimal sense of being of finite,though perhaps of considerable, duration, does not clearly under-mine its ability to provide real satisfaction.To lament that a long lasting satisfaction proved not to be a realone, because it finally came to an end, and, connected with this, toconsider a satisfaction as lasting only if it lasts forever, is bothunjustified and perverse. I t is, perhaps, best to view this, and otherSchopenhauerian arguments for the impossibility of finding realsatisfaction as the symptom of an underlying malaise rather than asthe cause of his pessimistic stance.

Final SolutionsTo the obvious objection, that we in fact encounter finite butsuficiently enduring pleasures, which provide us with temporally


14/16

182 IVAN S0I.I.limited but real satisfaction, the defender of the view, that onlypermanent satisfactions are real satisfactions, has a rejoinder. Hecan argue that we try as well as we can to reconcile ourselves to thelimited satisfactions that are possible in life,faut de mieux. But whatwe really want, he suggests, are those permanent satisfactions thatare unavailable, the lasting removal of the various desires, each asource of pain and suffering as long as i t still exists. T he permanentstilling of our desires, even though we realize it to be unobtainable,remains, on this view, the ultimate aim of our desire.

The plausibility of this response, as I have pointed out, dependsupon conceiving of desiring as being basically a state of suffering.And as I have briefly indicated, there are some grave and obviousobjections to this conception of desire. But apart from itsimplausibility, there are other reasons to reject the idea that whatwe would really like to obtain, if i t were only possible, is thepermanent removal of those desires and drives that bedevil us.

In order to see more clearly that the permanent stilling of desire isnot even our unattainable but nevertheless desired ideal, we onlyneed imagine ourselves in the situation of being actually able toachieve it. Imagine being offered the possibility of satisfying yourdesires so completely that you would never again be beset bylongings and wants. Would this not be a divine and heavenlyprospect? Is heaven not the place in which, by definition, we wouldno longer have needs, wants, and longings, a condition in which,completely satisfied, we would no longer have to desire and~ t r i v e ? ' ~

Let us consider this alluring offer more closely! How would youreally like to eat a meal that would still your hunger forever? Howwould you like to drink something that removed your thirst forever?How would you actually be disposed toward a sexual experiencethat would do away with your sexual desire forever?

As soon as one begins to consider the enticing offer of a completeand enduring satisfaction even a bit more concretely, it reveals arepellent side. Is the condition in which one no longer experiencesdesires, longings, and wants a heaven in which we experience no"'This pcrspcctivc is conncctcd to thc philosophical and thcolo~ jc al otion that a pcrfcct

bcing would havc no dcsircs and that a pcrfcct statc of bcing is one in which thcrc arc nodcsircs, bccausc to dcsirc somcthing is to lack somcthing and thus entails an imperfection.For cxamplc, ' I dcsirc - hat is, . . . I lack somcthing and am not at all pcrfcct . . . .But if Iwcrc indcpcndcnt o f anything clsc and wcrc thc author of my own bcing, I would doubtnothing, I would experzence no desires, and finally I would lack no pcrfcction. For I would hawcndowcd mysclf with all thosc pcrfcctions ofwhich I had any notion, and thus would be Godhimsclf.' (Dcscartcs, Meditations, 3rd Mcditation. My italics.)


15/16

D E S IR E A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T S 183lack of anything, or a hell in which our appetites have witheredaway? Do we necessarily celebrate the loss of appetites, of lust, ofhunger, of thirst, of curiosity, of the interest in social interchange,to the extent that they can disappear under certain circumstancesin this world? Do we really want an existence in which we want fornothing if i t entails wanting nothing? An enticing description of anexistence free of lusts and desires can seduce us into seekingunwittingly a condition from which all lustiness an d desirability hasdeparted. The angelic ideal turns out to be a diabolical piece ofwork.

In Praise of DesireSchopenhauers logic and rhetoric of pessimism overlooks orsuppresses the Janus-like character of desire and other volitionalconcepts like wanting, appetite, striving, and longing. Even if, as herepeatedly insists, all desire implies the lack of what is desired, oneshould not forget, as he does, that it is also desire that makessatisfaction possible. He does not seem to understand that withoutdesire there is no satisfaction, that satisfaction is the satisfaction ofdesire. Satisfaction does not merely follow a state in which it wasabsent or even one in which i t was sought. Satisfaction carries thedesire of which i t is a satisfaction somehow within itself, as aninseparable component of itself. The dream of a state of satisfactionin which there are no desires, of a satisfaction indeed constituted bythe absence of desires, the dream of Schopenhauer, bu t also adream to be found in Buddhism, Stoicism, and Christianity, is notjust unattainable in this world but incoherent. A satisfactioncannot be separated from the desire, want, or need for which i t is asatisfaction, either conceptually or experientially.

This fundamental but frequently forgotten fact, that satisfactionand desire are inseparable, is better captured in dynamic concep-tions of satisfaction, like Hegels, than in static conceptions likeSchopenhauers. Inasmuch as the satisfaction is located in theprocess of fulfilling the desire, the desire is conceived as an essentialcomponent of the satisfaction.

Yet Hegel, like Schopenhauer, makes the crucial mistake ofviewing the ineradicability of desire as evidence of its failure to findsatisfaction. Viewing the inevitable return of desire a s a sign of itsfailure derives in both cases from an all too simple identification ofthe satisfaction of a desire with the removal of the d e ~ i r e . ~s I

l 4 Schopenhauer directly identifies the satisfaction of desire with thc removal of the desire.Hegel indirectly identifies the two, first identifying the satisfaction with the process of


16/16

184 IVAN SOIJ.pointed out earlier, desires can be removed without being satisfied.And though to satisfy a desire may entail removing i t in some sense,it does not entail permanently eradicating the desire.

Considering the dependence of satisfaction on desire, the eternalrecurrence of desire should be seen as a triumph rather than afailure of the life of desire. T he downfall of desire does not consist inits inevitable phoenix-like reemergence from its own ashes; i t wouldconsist rather in that cessation of the rebirth of desire, which hasbeen misconceived as its ultimate if unattainable goal. Nirvana isthe death of desire, not its satisfaction.

We should embrace, affirm, and celebrate the eternal recurrenceof desire, in just the way Nietzsche wanted us joyously to embracethe mythic possibility of the eternal recurrence of our entire livesexactly as we have lived them. In both cases, what is at issue is theaffirmation of our lives as they are. But in the case of the eternalrecurrence of our desires, we are concerned with a directlyexperienced and ineluctable feature ofour daily existence, not, as inthe case of the Nietzschean recurrence, a merely concoctedcosmological conceit.

Nietzsche proclaimed in Thus Spake Zarathustra, D och alle Lustwill Ewigkeit -will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit, standardly translated as, Butalljoy wants eternity, wants deep, deep eternity.Is I would like toremind the readers of this translation that the German Lust meanslust as well as pleasure or joy. Perhaps lust and desire crave tomaintain themselves just as much as pleasure does - and understand-a b b so.

We should not forget the crucial but commonly ignored truth,that desire is itself desirable. Long live desire!Department of Philosophy5185 Helen C . White HallUniversity of WisconsinMadison, Wisconsin 53706USAremoving the object of desire and viewing the disappearance of the desire itself as aconsequence of the removal of its object.

I s Also Sprach Zarathustra, 111, D as Andere Ta nrlied, sec. 3 an d IV , Dar Nachtwandler-Lied,sec. 12. Translation by Walter Kaufmann, Viking Portable Nittzxhe, pp. 339 an d 436. M yitalics.

on desire and its discontents soll ratio

Documents