Concept
Desire
Overview
emotion of longing or hoping for a person, object, or outcome
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Desire is discussed.
It would be easy to say that, just as belief is one kind of feeling in relation to this content, so desire is another kind. According to this view, what comes first in desire is something imagined, with a specific feeling related to it, namely, that specific feeling which we call "desiring" it. The discomfort associated with unsatisfied desire, and the actions which aim at satisfying desire, are, in this view, both…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
In any case, emotions rise and cluster about the object. This stands out so conspicuously in immediate experience that it monopolizes the central position in the traditional psychological theory of desire. Barring gross self-deception or the frustration of external circumstance, the outcome, or end-result, of desire is regarded by this theory as similar to the end-in-view or object consciously desired. Such…
John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
The attraction to the goal is a shorthand way of describing the effects of learning together with the fact that our efforts will continue till the goal is achieved, provided the time required is not too long. There are feelings of various kinds connected with desire, and in the case of familiar desires, such as hunger, these feelings become associated with what we know will cause the desire to cease. But I see no…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
Sec. 1. THE OBJECT OF DESIRE =Hedonistic Theory of Desire.=--That phase of utilitarianism which holds that the object of desire is pleasure, is termed hedonism, or sometimes psychological hedonism to distinguish it from ethical hedonism, the theory that pleasure is the standard for judging acts. The fundamental fallacy of psychological hedonism has been well stated by Green to be supposing that a desire can be…
John Dewey, Ethics
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
Endeavour; Appetite; Desire; Hunger; Thirst; Aversion This Endeavour, when it is toward something which causes it, is called APPETITE, or DESIRE; the later, being the generall name; and the other, oftentimes restrayned to signifie the Desire of Food, namely Hunger and Thirst. And when the Endeavour is fromward something, it is generally called AVERSION. These words Appetite, and Aversion we have from the Latines…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Desire
Related ideas
- Belief
- Emotion
- Fear
- Gustave Flaubert
- Gilles Deleuze
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Operant conditioning
- Harry Frankfurt
- Hinduism
- Hindus
- Immanuel Kant
- John Stuart Mill
- Republic (Plato)
- Jacques Lacan
- On the Soul
- Pleasure
- Fiction
- Neuron
- Nirvana
- Person
- Well-being
- Plato
- Motivation
- Bhagavad Gita
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Absurdism.