Ratio (New Series) I1 2 December 1989 0034-0066 $2.00

ON DESIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Ivan Sol1

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

In the German philosophical tradition these two variants are represented by Schopenhauer and Hegel. Schopenhauer’s pessim- ism and Hegel’s far more positive view of human existence are united by a common rejection of the possibility of truly satisfying our desires, a view also shared by many other philosophical and religious thinkers.

The way in which Hegel makes the case for this dismal conclusion both diverges from and overlaps with Schopenhauer’s argumentation and rhetoric to the same end. In examining these commonalities and differences, I hope to shed some light upon the central philosophical issue of whether there is good reason to believe, as so many have, that the life of desire is doomed to frustration and failure, and should be, as far as possible, rejected or transcended.

‘This Intellectual Caliban’

Whenever Schopenhauer deigns to mention Hegel, i t is to revile him. With a hostility, animated in part by his envy of Hegel’s far more illustrious career and in part by his distaste for Hegel’s obscure style, Schopenhauer repeatedly savages his philosophical b2te noire, the man he called ‘this intellectual Caliban,” generally neglecting to present Hegel’s views with any care or to criticize them in any substantive manner. One might expect that Schopen- hauer’s exaggerated nastiness and his suppression rather than discussion of Hegel’s ideas, would have aroused suspicion or even protest. The repeated, exaggerated denigration of a philosopher,

’ Schopenhauer, Arthur, World as Will and Representation, Preface to the Second Edition.

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whose ideas are never really examined, should serve as an indication that personal motives are here feverishly at work. Yet, because Schopenhauer was able to formulate his anti-Hegelian venom in such delightfully witty fashion, we tend to lose sight of its unfairness, implausibility, and lack of substance. Confronted with the bon mot describing Hegel as ‘this intellectual Caliban,’ we are more inclined to chuckle than to challenge it, more disposed to quote than to question it. Clever, caustic commentary, of the sort Schopenhauer used to attack Hegel, tends to be enjoyed for its wit and promulgated through repeated citation. In the process, the critical spirit is disarmed.

The intensity of Schopenhauer’s antipathy toward Hegel and his lack of any detailed discussion of the way in which his philosophy diverges from Hegel’s disposes one to assume that they must have held radically opposed views on most issues. Later in the century, Nietzsche, with an analogous combination of philosophical and personal motives, wanting to represent the influence of others upon him as minimal in order to emphasize his own originality, and struggling to establish his personal and intellectual autonomy vis B vis Wagner, tried to distance himself from Wagner’s favorite philosopher - Schopenhauer. Though Nietzsche had previously considered Schopenhauer as his ‘great teacher,’ he came to repress their similarities and deny the considerable influence that Schopen- hauer had exerted upon him. Nietzsche hyperbolically and misleadingly claimed that he and Schopenhauer were antipodes in every way.* This is essentially the same impression that Schopen- hauer had tried to create and succeeded in creating with respect to Hegel. Sometimes in the history of thought the sins of the fathers are visited upon them by their children.

Schopenhauer’s rejection of Hegel (unlike Nietzsche’s rejection of Schopenhauer) does not seem to involve the suppression of a considerable philosophical influence. It has, however, discouraged detailed comparisons and contrasts of their views. Such careful comparisons would reveal a number of issues upon which Schopenhauer and Hegel hold similar views. This is really not so surprising. T o a great extent Schopenhauer’s antipathy to Hegel was motivated, on the one hand, by jealousy, and on the other hand, by the feeling that Hegel’s oppressive obscurity both concealed and was designed to conceal the poverty of his thought. I t was thus not based

I have examined Nictzschc’s rcjcction of Schoprnhaucr and i t s motives in an cssay, ‘Thc International Sludzer zn Phzlosophy, Hopclcssncss of Hedonism and thc Will to l’owcr,’

XVIII/2, 1986.

DESIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS 171 primarily upon differences in philosophical position.

In order to transcend the conventional and simplistic picture of Hegel and Schopenhauer as being, in some not clearly specified manner, ‘opposites’ or ‘antipodes,’ we should begin the process of comparing their views on specific issues.

The Downfall of Desire: a Convergence of the ‘Antipodes’

A usually overlooked but remarkable convergence of their views occurs with respect to an issue that is, interestingly enough, at the very center of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. A crucial component in the construction of Schopenhauer’s pessimism is the claim that desire can never be truly gratified.3 Hegel, I want to argue, had actually held a similar view in his Phenomenology of Spirit . Hegel, like Schopenhauer, seems to have held that desire must ineluctably fail to achieve real satisfaction in every case. If this contention is true, then an essential element of Schopenhauer’s pessimism is already to be found in Hegel’s philosophy. That Hegel from this common point of departure, i.e., that desire must remain ultimately unfulfilled, did not reach the same pessimistic conclusions as Schopenhauer, promises to be of interest to a critical assessment of Schopenhauerian pessimism.

Desire in the Service of Self-consiousness

In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit the concept of desire (Begierde) is introduced as an immediate consequence of ‘consciousness’s becoming self-consciousness’ (or, alternatively formulated, of the conscious subject becoming aware that its object is really itself) .4 For Hegel, ‘consciousness,’ in a narrower sense of the term, is only applicable to those forms of consciousness having objects that appear to be external to the consciousness itself, that seem to be ‘other’ than the conscious subject. In this restricted sense of ‘consciousness’, self-consciousness is opposed to consciousness, rather than being one of its varieties. The Phenomenology begins with a discussion of the dialectical development of several stages of this ‘consciousness,’ 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 of Spirzt, B . Self-consciousness, IV. Thc Truth of Self-ccrtainty. ’ These stages are ( I ) the direct awareness of simple sensuous particulars, ‘unmediated’

by any conceptualization, (2) the perception of an external world composcd of objects, each containing and uniting a number of qualities, and (3) the understanding of the world as regulated and constituted by general laws. Hegel calls them ‘sense certainty,’ ‘perception,’ and ‘understanding.’

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this development, ‘consciousness’ (the conscious subject) comes to the momentous realization that its object really is, and really has been all along, itself, I t becomes aware of itself as being self- consciousness, or, as Hegel also expresses the transition, it ‘becomes self-consciousness.’

Because, for Hegel, the attainment of self-consciousness is supposed to represent an advance in the development of the human spirit, it cannot have as its object something which is poorer in content than the external world which was the object of the just transcended form of consciousness. Thus, self-consciousness cannot exclude from its object the richness of the external world. The self, which by definition is the object of self-consciousness, cannot be a bare and simple ego but must somehow continue to include the variety and richness of the external world. Because the dialectical development of the spirit is supposed to display progress, there can be no impoverishment of content involved in the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness.

On the other hand, in order to realize its essential nature, which is to be a consciousness of itself, self-consciousness must have nothing but itself as its object. This is the requirement that self- consciousness become what it is supposed to be, a requirement for the self-realization of self-consciousness.

These opposed demands, first, to avoid excluding the external world (so as not to lose any of the richness of its detail and variety) and, second, to exclude it completely (so that the self-consciousness, as its definition and essence demand, have only itself for an object) confronts the self-conscious spirit with a seemingly paradoxical task. They create a field of logical tension in which the dialectical development of self-consciousness, which is equivalent to the entire subsequent 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 conflicting demands. First, inasmuch as the object of desire is something in the external 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 of the book, however, that in this series succccding categories are to be understood as modifications and further dcvelopmcnts of their predeccssors, not as departures from them. Just as self-consciousncss is a special form of consciousness, ‘reason,’ in the context of this work, is a spccial form of ‘sclf-consciousness’. Just as thc entire book is supposed to be a presentation of the development of human consciousness, everything from the appcarance of sclf-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 the dialectical dcvclopmcnt in the latter parts of thc book.

b ‘

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richness of content. Secondly, inasmuch as desire has as its goal the use or consumption (Verzehrung) of its object, not just the consciousness or contemplation of it, it also aims at that negation or removal of the external world, which is required for the realization of self-consci~usness.~

Desire as the Attempt to Remove the External World

According to Hegel, desire, as a strategy for the self-realization of self-consciousness, is, however, doomed to failure. He conceives the immediate goal of desire generally to be the taking possession of parts of the external world, using them for one’s pleasure and satisfaction, and in this process using them up.8 He suggests that even though desire achieves these immediate goals, it still cannot achieve its ultimate goal, which is the complete removal of the external world.

An obvious and apparently insuperable obstacle to consuming or using up the external world piece by piece and thereby completely removing it lies in its presumed infinity and thus inexhaustibility. Assuming the world’s endlessness, there would always be, after any process of piecemeal consumption, no matter how long, an unconsumed remainder. If Hegel’s claim, that desire’s piecemeal consumption of the world cannot ultimately succeed, were based upon the purportedly inexhaustible nature. of the world, then his critique of desire would be analogous to one important aspect of Kant’s critique of reason. Kant, taking the task of ‘reason’ (as opposed to ‘understanding’) to be the knowledge of the entire world, argues that this task is unfulfillable because of the world’s infinity. But Hegel’s critique of desire, his claim that desire cannot reach its ultimate goal of completely negating and removing the world, is not based upon the world’s purportedly infinite nature.

Instead, Hegel derives his critique of desire from what he

’ An interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology ofSpirit as the tracing of the long, dialectical development and realization of self-consciousness, of Hegel’s theory of desire as a crucial stage in this development, is to be found in my book, An Introduction to Hegel’s Mefuphysicf, Chicago and London, 1969, Ch. I . ’ Hegel’s coniention, that the goal of desire, in all cases, consists in the consumption Verzehren) 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, Hegel’s consumption model fits only the first. Consumption, in its strict sense of using up, not in the looser sense of merely using or enjoying, is what we do to our food, but not, at least not in the ideal cases, to our lovers.

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conceives as the dynamic nature of desire and its satisfaction. The crucial argument is quite concisely stated:

In this satisfaction [of desire], however, it experiences the independence of its object. Desire and the certainty of itself achieved in its satisfaction is determined by the object, for its satisfaction takes place in removing (Aufheben) this other. In order for there to be this removing (Aufheben), there must be this other. For this reason, self-consciousness is not able to remove the object; self-consciousness rather continues to recreate the object, as well as desire.9

Hegel had called attention to what he took to be a dialectical and philosophically felicitous polysemy in the concept, Aujheben, that it means both to cancel and to preserve." Hegel does not mention that Aufheben also means to lift up, perhaps because this more literal, concrete, and etymological meaning seemed so obvious as not to require mentioning. Aufheben as used by Hegel is often meant to be understood in both or all three of these meanings. The Hegelian dialectic, whether in his Phenomenolo<gy or Science o f Logic, is a process in which forms of consciousness or conceptions of the world give way to subsequent forms that replace them. The earlier forms, argues Hegel, are cancelled in this process but yet somehow preserved as elements of the later ones, and the level of consciousness rises or is lzfted up in the process. Thus the dialectic proceeds in theory by a process of Aufheben in all three of its senses. But despite Hegel's insistence on what he viewed as a philosophically fortuitous polysemy, there are a number of texts in which one or two of the meanings of Aufheben recede in importance, even to the point of ceasing to play any role in the meaning of the passage. The passage just quoted is one of these. Aufheben here seems to refer primarily to cancellation or removal.

There is another, less dialectical and less distinctive duality in the concept of AuJheben, which is not mentioned (and perhaps not noticed) by Hegel, but which is crucial for bringing his analysis of desire into focus. Like other substantives derived from infinitives of verbs indicating a process that normally has a termination, dus

' Phenomcnolou of' Spirit, loc. cit. My translation. '" This polysemy is dialectical in that the two meanings are seemingly opposed oncs, and

in bringing together apparently opposed meanings, i t calls attention to the fact that these apparently opposed meanings and the processrs to which they refer arc, in fact, not mutually exclusive. It is philosophically fclicitous for Hegel, in that it reveals a particular dialectical truth and furnishes support for the general adoption of a dialcctical methodology.

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Aufheben can refer to both the process and the product of this process. The cancellation or removal of something can refer both to the process in which this occurs, the removing o f it. and to the state at the end of the process, its removal as an accomplished fac t , The same duality is true of the infinitives used as substantives indicating the processes and results of change, termination, initiation, creation, succeeding, failing and many others.

An attempt to locate the logic of Hegel’s argument makes clear, however, that Aujheben in this passage refers to the process of removing rather than the removal as the product of this process. Hegel claims that desire cannot achieve its end of doing away with the external world because desire finds its satisfaction in ‘the Aufheben of this other,’ and because, ‘In order for there to be this Aufheben, there must be this other.’ This line of argument begins to make sense only if Aufheben is understood to refer to the process of removing the external object, not to the resultant state of its having been removed. If the satisfaction of desire consisted in the state in which the object, having been removed, is simply no longer present, then it would not follow that for this satisfaction to occur there must be an external object, or ‘other.’ The continued absence of the object would produce the continuation of the satisfaction. And on this interpretation of Aujheben, it would certainly not follow that: ‘For this reason, self-consciousness is not able to remove the object; self-consciousness rather continues to recreate the object, as well as desire.’ If desire’s satisfaction consisted in the absence of the object, in the result of its removal, desire would have no need to recreate its object anew.

If the satisfaction of desire, which consists in the Aufheben of an external object, is located in the process of removing the object as opposed to the state of its having been removed, the logic of Hegel’s argument emerges. If the satisfaction of desire takes place only in the process of consuming a part of the external world, desire cannot completely remove the external world if its satisfaction is to continue. I t must recreate its object in order to maintain its satisfaction, and it must recreate itself as a desiring being which initiates the process of consumption and removal in which alone satisfaction is found.

The point of Hegel’s argument is not that desire cannot complete its task of removing the external world because the world is inexhaustible and the task endless. I t is rather that desire may not complete its task without terminating its satisfaction.

Because the satisfaction of desire takes place only in the process

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of removing an external object, desire is condemned never to be able to achieve its ultimate aim, which, for Hegel, is the complete removal of the external world. Since the removal of all external objects 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, is doomed to failure. Desire is represented by Hegel as ultimately striving for the cancellation of the external world inasmuch as it is a strategy to achieve full self-consciousness. Yet it must avoid the complete removal of the external world inasmuch as its satisfaction is found only within the process in which something external to i t is consumed and removed. The paradoxical project of self-conscious- ness, to negate and to preserve the external world, which desire was supposed to resolve, re-emerges here as a paradox in the heart of desire itself.

Thus, desire reveals itself to be unable to realize the perplexing project of the self-conscious spirit. This spirit must, therefore, undergo a development through further stages and strategies, attempting in other ways to realize itself. Hegel’s Phenomenology and the spirit whose journey it recounts continue on their way.

Immediate Ends, Ultimate Ends

Schopenhauer, like Hegel, held that desire cannot ultimately achieve any real satisfaction. Defenders of this dismal view are often brought to distinguishing between immediate and ultimate satisfaction, for it is hardly possible for them to deny the fact that we often achieve the immediate ends of our desires. The question generally raised by those who propound this disheartening conception of the human condition is whether or not we thereby achieve the ultimate ends of our desires. Proponents of the futility of desire (like Hegel and Schopenhauer) generally proceed by denying the possibility of attaining our ultimate ends through the achieving of the immediate ends of our desires.

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

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is a part of our final goal or a means to it, is more or less to deny that it is a real satisfaction at all.

This last inference is made more clearly and more emphatically by Schopenhauer than it is by Hegel. I n order to support his radical pessimism, Schopenhauer had to represent the apparent, concrete satisfactions of our desire as thoroughly ephemeral and illusory. Hegel, whose task at this juncture of the Phenomenology of Spirit was only to send the human spirit on its way to further development, to argue that i t could not find all that it really needed and wanted in the life of desire and its satisfactions, did not need to attack the worth and substance of desiring so thoroughly. Because it was not his project to construct a thoroughly pessimistic vision of the life of desire, he, in contrast to Schopenhauer, could allow desire to have some, if not ultimate, worth.

Satisfaction as the Self-destruction of the Will Schopenhauer’s more radical critique of desire rests, like Hegel’s, upon the purported inability of desire to attain its ultimate goal. Unlike Hegel who conceived of this goal as the realization of full self-consciousness, which brings with it the full realization of knowledge and freedom, Schopenhauer viewed the ultimate aim of desire as a final stilling and cancellation of the will and of all further striving.” For Schopenhauer the immediate, as well as the ultimate, satisfaction of a desire consists essentially in the removal or destruction of the desire itself, not, as on Hegel’s analysis, in the removal 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, but in the static state of its having been removed. Because the state in which a desire has been removed is, aside from residual memories, identical with a state in which the desire simply does not exist, this way of conceiving of the satisfaction of desire tends to erase the distinction between the removal of the desire and its absence. As a consequence there is an objectionable blurring of the distinction between removing a desire by satisfying it and simply not having the desire. The satisfaction of hunger or lust is not simply the absence of hunger or lust, but, if the satisfaction of hunger is identified with the state in which it has been removed, it becomes

” How Hegel connects the realization of self-consciousness with the attainment of truth and of freedom is explained in chapters I and 2 of An lnlroduction to Hegel’s Melaphyrics.

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difficult to distinguish this state phenomenologically from that in which hunger is simply absent.

T o distinguish the two, a proponent of the conception that the satisfaction of a desire is located and consists in a state in which that desire no longer exists, might emphasize that only the state of satisfied desire is preceded by the desire and is accompanied by the memories of the desire now removed. But conceiving of the satisfaction of desire as a state in which the desire has been reinoved but is remembered will still not do because it obliterates the important difference between the removal of desire through satisfaction and its removal through distraction, repression, fear, fatigue, disillusionment, or reconsideration. There are a number of processes, other than satisfaction, in which desire is removed. Satisfaction cannot therefore be equated simply with the removal of desire, where removal is distinguished from mere absence. An adequate account of the satisfaction of desire must explain what makes the removal of a desire through satisfaction different from its removal in these other ways. And this concern forces our attention back to the process in which the removal occurs and to theories, that locate the satisfaction of a desire in this process rather than in a static condition conceived of as the result of the process.’*

The location of the satisfaction of desire in a state in which the desire no longer exists tends to obliterate the essential and intrinsic connection between the desire and its satisfaction. The connection between desire and its satisfaction appears instead as an external one, like the relation between causes and their effects on David Hume’s classical account. The conception of the satisfaction of desire as a state in which the desire is not present preceded by a state in which it was depicts the relation between a desire and its satisfaction as external, i.e., as between two conditions each of which can obtain or be conceived independently of the other. Inasmuch as satisfaction is defined as a state posterior to the desire and characterized simply by the absence of the desire, there is no intrinsic reference in the experience of the satisfaction to the desire of 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 makes distinguishing among different types of satisfaction on experiential grounds diflicult. If the satisfaction of hunger consists in the

This consideration inclincs us, therefore, to thcorics likc Hcgcl’s rathcr than thcorics like Schopenhauer’s. But Hegcl’s theory, though correct in focussing upon thc proccss in which thc desire is satisfied, docs not offcr a satisfactory account of the naturr of this process.

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absence of hunger and the satisfaction of lust in the absence of lust, how are we to distinguish experientially between the two. A state in which I have satisfied my hunger and simply had no lust and a state in which I have satisfied my lust but simply had no hunger will both be characterized by the absence of hunger and lust.

This inadequate conception of satisfaction as something separate and isolable from desire is not only inadequate for the reasons just adduced; i t has the further unfortunate consequence of providing the conceptual basis for a number of negative assessments of desire and the life of desire, including Schopenhauer’s. In separating and isolating the value-positive notion of satisfaction from that of desire, the way is prepared to view desire as something altogether unfortunate.

Fteeting uersus Lasting Satisfaction

I have already argued that Schopenhauer’s pessimistic rejection of the possibility of satisfying desire depends upon identifying true satisfaction with the attaining of ultimate as opposed to immediate ends. I t also depends upon identifying lasting as opposed to fleeting satisfaction as the only true satisfaction. The strategy of pessimism is to argue, or assume, that those passing pleasures that we are clearly capable of encountering turn out to be insubstantial and really not satisfying, because they do not abide.

If pleasures can be ‘short and sweet,’ why can they not be short and still provide real satisfaction? Are not even the most fleeting pleasures real enough while they briefly abide? What is supposed to be the force of the claim that the only true satisfaction is lasting satisfaction?

In part, the force of this idea derives from an implicit appeal to unspecified but specific contexts in which a satisfaction can be so fleeting as to be experienced as insubstantial. If I labor long in the legislature for the passage of a tax reform bill, which finally passes but is almost immediately amended so as to undermine the reform originally intended, I would be likely to have this feeling. If my ardent and arduous courting finally meets with success, but the object of the quest soon loses interest in me or for me, or is forced to move away, or dies, I might easily feel that the pleasure was too short to be ‘really satisfying.’

Clearly the occurrence of such feelings or their absence, is determined by the vicissitudes of context. What seems too fleeting to be satisfying depends upon the particular case, the particular

180 IVAN SOI.1,

expectations, the amount of effort and time invested in securing the satisfaction, and the duration of the satisfaction relative to the difficulty and delay involved in obtaining it. We have here a context-bound truth, that in particular, specifiable but not neces- sarily specified situations, pleasures that do not last long enough are 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. Whatever appearance of plausibility the context-free claim possesses, it borrows from its more modest context-bound cousin. Although it seems incontrovertible that in some situations a pleasure or satisfaction can be too short to be really satisfying, i t seems plainly false that all pleasures that eventually come to an end are experienced, for that reason, as ultimately unsatisfying. We experi- ence some pleasures as lasting long enough to provide us with real, though limited, satisfaction. I t is even arguable that the perfection of some pleasures consists, precisely in the relevant experiences not lasting longer than they do. Think of the delicious thrill of free fall on a ride at an amusement park or in diving off the high board. Is it not possible that in these and other cases the limited duration of the experience should be considered as helping to constitute the pleasure rather than as simply curtailing it?

The Obscure Object of Desire

Schopenhauer’s notion that real satisfaction must be permanent derives also in part from his idea that the end of desire is to do away with itself, the aim of hunger to abolish hunger, the aim of lust to abolish lust. And the plausibility of this idea is in turn dependent upon his analysis of desiring as a condition in which we lack what we desire and suffer this lack, i.e., desiring is represented as being essentially a state of suffering. If desire is essentially a state of suffering, it seems plausible that its aim is to remove itself and thereby the suffering. And if desire aimed to obliterate itself because it was an intrinsically painful state, i t would seem plausible that its goal be to permanently obliterate itself.

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

DESIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS 181 ‘suffering the lack of it’ only in the trivial sense of enduring or experiencing it. But it is not at all clear that i t entails that we suffer in the sense of painfully experiencing every lack we are in the process of removing. Wants, lacks, and desires, whose fulfillment seems imminent, are, as a matter of fact, regularly experienced in a pleasurable way. It is true that some (though not all) desires tong unsatisfied are experienced as uncomfortable and even sometimes as painful, and that those for which satisfaction seems remote or only a remote possibility tend to be experienced as, and with, a curse. But the ‘suffering’ of desires in this non-trivial sense occurs only with respect to some of our desires and thus does not show that desires as such are, or entail, states of suffering some degree of discomfort or pain. In the sense that every lack is suffered, ‘suffering a lack,’ contrary to what the words may superficially suggest, does not entail suffering, that is, not in any sense that will support Schopenhauer’s analysis of the goal of desire or the pessimistic conclusions based upon this analysis.

Schopenhauer’s rhetorical strategy also relies upon blurring the crucial distinction between pleasures that end so quickly that they do not provide substantial satisfaction and pleasures that, though they eventually end, last long enough to provide real satisfaction, between those that are so fleeting as to frustrate satisfaction, and those that end only after providing considerable satisfaction, between those that are objectionably ephemeral and those that are merely finite. The proponent of pessimism trades on the trivial sense in which all pleasures or satisfactions that end are ‘ephemeral’ and ‘fleeting.’ He glosses over the fact, that a pleasure’s being ‘ephemeral’ 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 real one, because it finally came to an end, and, connected with this, to consider a satisfaction as lasting only if it lasts forever, is both unjustified and perverse. I t is, perhaps, best to view this, and other Schopenhauerian arguments for the impossibility of finding real satisfaction as the symptom of an underlying malaise rather than as the cause of his pessimistic stance.

Final Solutions

To the obvious objection, that we in fact encounter finite but suficiently enduring pleasures, which provide us with temporally

182 IVAN S0I.I.

limited but real satisfaction, the defender of the view, that only permanent satisfactions are real satisfactions, has a rejoinder. He can argue that we try as well as we can to reconcile ourselves to the limited satisfactions that are possible in life, faut de mieux. But what we really want, he suggests, are those permanent satisfactions that are unavailable, the lasting removal of the various desires, each a source of pain and suffering as long as it still exists. The permanent stilling 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, depends upon conceiving of desiring as being basically a state of suffering. And as I have briefly indicated, there are some grave and obvious objections to this conception of desire. But apart from its implausibility, there are other reasons to reject the idea that what we would really like to obtain, if i t were only possible, is the permanent removal of those desires and drives that bedevil us.

In order to see more clearly that the permanent stilling of desire is not even our unattainable but nevertheless desired ideal, we only need imagine ourselves in the situation of being actually able to achieve it. Imagine being offered the possibility of satisfying your desires so completely that you would never again be beset by longings and wants. Would this not be a divine and heavenly prospect? Is heaven not the place in which, by definition, we would no 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 you really like to eat a meal that would still your hunger forever? How would you like to drink something that removed your thirst forever? How would you actually be disposed toward a sexual experience that would do away with your sexual desire forever?

As soon as one begins to consider the enticing offer of a complete and enduring satisfaction even a bit more concretely, it reveals a repellent side. Is the condition in which one no longer experiences desires, longings, and wants a heaven in which we experience no

"' This pcrspcctivc is conncctcd to thc philosophical and thcolo~jcal notion that a pcrfcct bcing would havc no dcsircs and that a pcrfcct statc of bcing is one in which thcrc arc no dcsircs, bccausc to dcsirc somcthing is to lack somcthing and thus entails an imperfection. For cxamplc, 'I dcsirc - that is, . . . I lack somcthing and am not at all pcrfcct . . . . But if I wcrc indcpcndcnt of anything clsc and wcrc thc author of my own bcing, I would doubt nothing, I would experzence no desires, and finally I would lack no pcrfcction. For I would h a w cndowcd mysclf with all thosc pcrfcctions ofwhich I had any notion, and thus would be God himsclf.' (Dcscartcs, Meditations, 3rd Mcditation. My italics.)

DESIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS 183

lack of anything, or a hell in which our appetites have withered away? Do we necessarily celebrate the loss of appetites, of lust, of hunger, of thirst, of curiosity, of the interest in social interchange, to the extent that they can disappear under certain circumstances in this world? Do we really want an existence in which we want for nothing if i t entails wanting nothing? An enticing description of an existence free of lusts and desires can seduce us into seeking unwittingly a condition from which all lustiness and desirability has departed. The angelic ideal turns out to be a diabolical piece ofwork.

In Praise of Desire

Schopenhauer’s logic and rhetoric of pessimism overlooks or suppresses the Janus-like character of desire and other volitional concepts like wanting, appetite, striving, and longing. Even if, as he repeatedly insists, all desire implies the lack of what is desired, one should not forget, as he does, that it is also desire that makes satisfaction possible. He does not seem to understand that without desire there is no satisfaction, that satisfaction is the satisfaction of desire. Satisfaction does not merely follow a state in which it was absent or even one in which it was sought. Satisfaction carries the desire of which i t is a satisfaction somehow within itself, as an inseparable component of itself. The dream of a state of satisfaction in which there are no desires, of a satisfaction indeed constituted by the absence of desires, the dream of Schopenhauer, but also a dream to be found in Buddhism, Stoicism, and Christianity, is not just unattainable in this world but incoherent. A satisfaction cannot be separated from the desire, want, or need for which it is a satisfaction, either conceptually or experientially.

This fundamental but frequently forgotten fact, that satisfaction and desire are inseparable, is better captured in dynamic concep- tions of satisfaction, like Hegel’s, than in static conceptions like Schopenhauer’s. Inasmuch as the satisfaction is located in the process of fulfilling the desire, the desire is conceived as an essential component of the satisfaction.

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

184 IVAN SOIJ.

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

Considering the dependence of satisfaction on desire, the eternal recurrence of desire should be seen as a triumph rather than a failure of the life of desire. The downfall of desire does not consist in its inevitable phoenix-like reemergence from its own ashes; i t would consist rather in that cessation of the rebirth of desire, which has been misconceived as its ultimate if unattainable goal. Nirvana is the death of desire, not its satisfaction.

We should embrace, affirm, and celebrate the eternal recurrence of desire, in just the way Nietzsche wanted us joyously to embrace the mythic possibility of the eternal recurrence of our entire lives exactly as we have lived them. In both cases, what is at issue is the affirmation of our lives as they are. But in the case of the eternal recurrence of our desires, we are concerned with a directly experienced and ineluctable feature ofour daily existence, not, as in the case of the Nietzschean recurrence, a merely concocted cosmological conceit.

Nietzsche proclaimed in Thus Spake Zarathustra, ‘Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit - will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit’, standardly translated as, ‘But alljoy wants eternity, wants deep, deep eternity.’Is I would like to remind the readers of this translation that the German ‘Lust’ means ‘lust’ as well as ‘pleasure’ or ‘joy.’ Perhaps lust and desire crave to maintain 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 Philosophy 5185 Helen C. White Hall University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin 53706 USA

removing the object of desire and viewing the disappearance of the desire itself as a consequence of the removal of its object.

I s Also Sprach Zarathustra, 111, ‘Das Andere Tanrlied,’ sec. 3 and IV, ‘Dar Nachtwandler-Lied,’ sec. 12. Translation by Walter Kaufmann, Viking Portable Nittzxhe, pp. 339 and 436. My italics.