Doug Henwood wrote:
> But we've been through the desire debate on this list already.
Have we?
*****
"Wouldn't you count assent and dissent," I asked, "seeking and and avoidance, and liking and disliking, as all pairs of opposites? It'll make no difference whether you think of them as ways of acting or of being acted on."
"Yes, they're opposites," he answered.
"What about thirst and hunger and the desires generally," I went on, "and what about wishing and wanting? Wouldn't you say that all these things belong somewhere among the sets we've just mentioned? For example, won't you describe the mind of anyone who is in a state of desire as seeking to fulfill his desires, or as liking whatever the desired object is? Or again, to the extent that it wants to get hold of something, don't you think it is internally assenting to this thing, as if in response to a question, and is longing for it to happen?"
"Yes, I do."
"And what about the state of antipathy, reluctance, or unwillingness? Won't we put these states in the opposite category, which includes dislike and aversion?"
"Of course?"
"Under these circumstances, then, won't we say that there is a category which consists of the desires, and that the most conspicuous desires are the ones called thirst and hunger?" ****
[NOTA BENE: Even Plato seemed to doubt the existence of an abstract desire. prior to and independent of the object of desire. It looks like he would have condemned Lacan as too Platonic. The existence of desire does not automatically follow from the existence of desires.]
*****
"Yes," he said.
"And the one is desire for drink, the other desire for food?"
[NOTA BENE: It is not reasonable to posit a desire which is indifferently for food or drink. Thirst and hunger (but not desire as an entity in its own right) are real forms. Desire is not. It is an empty abstraction, a mere convenience for] classification purposes.]
"Yes."
"Now, is thirst, in itself, the mental desire for anything more than the object we mentioned? For example is thirst thirst for a hot drink or a cold one, a lot of drink or a little, or in short for any particular kind of drink at all? Doesn't it take heat in addition to thirst to give it the extra feature of being a desire for something cold, and cold to make it desire for something hot? Doesn't it take a thirst which has been aggravated into becoming strong to produce the desire for a lot of drink, and doesn't it take a weak thirst to produce the desire for a little drink? The actual state of being thirsty, however, cannot possibly be a desire for anything other than its natural object, which is just drink; and the same goes for hunger and food."
"Yes," he said. "Each desire is for its natural object only, and the desire for an object of this or that type is a result of some addition."
"It should be quite possible, then," I said, "for anyone to catch us unawares and rattle us with the claim that no one desires drink, but a good drink, and no one desires food, but good food. Everyone desires good, they say, so if thirst is a desire, it must be a desire for a good drink or whatever; and so on for the other desires."
"There might seem to be some plausibility to the claim," he remarked.
"But there are only two categories of things whose nature it is to be relative," I said. "The first category consists, in my opinion, of things which have particular qualities; the second category consists of things which are just what they are and whose correlates are just what they are."
"I don't understand," he said.*****
Plato, *Republic*, tr. Waterfield (Oxford, 1993),
pp. 146-8 (437b-438b)
Carrol