What do you think?
Rate this book
Τα Επτά Θανάσιμα Αμαρτήματα #2
Lust: The Seven Deadly Sins
Lust, says Simon Blackburn, is furtive, headlong, always sizing up opportunities. It is a trail of clothing in the hallway, the trashy cousin of love. But be that as it may, the aim of this delightful book is to rescue lust "from the denunciations of old men of the deserts, to deliver it from the pallid and envious confessor and the stocks and pillories of the Puritans, to drag it from the category of sin to that of virtue."
Blackburn, author of such popular philosophy books as Think and Being Good, here offers a sharp-edged probe into the heart of lust, blending together insight from some of the world's greatest thinkers on sex, human nature, and our common cultural foibles. Blackburn takes a wide ranging, historical approach, discussing lust as viewed by Aristophanes and Plato, lust in the light of the Stoic mistrust of emotion, and the Christian fear of the flesh that catapulted lust to the level of deadly sin. He describes how philosophical pessimists like Schopenhauer and Sartre contributed to our thinking about lust and explores the false starts in understanding lust represented by Freud, Kinsey, and modern "evolutionary psychology." But most important, Blackburn reminds us that lust is also life-affirming, invigorating, fun. He points to the work of David Hume (Blackburn's favorite philosopher) who saw lust not only as a sensual delight but also "a joy of the mind."
Written by one of the most eminent living philosophers, attractively illustrated and colorfully packaged, Lust is a book that anyone would lust over.
Blackburn, author of such popular philosophy books as Think and Being Good, here offers a sharp-edged probe into the heart of lust, blending together insight from some of the world's greatest thinkers on sex, human nature, and our common cultural foibles. Blackburn takes a wide ranging, historical approach, discussing lust as viewed by Aristophanes and Plato, lust in the light of the Stoic mistrust of emotion, and the Christian fear of the flesh that catapulted lust to the level of deadly sin. He describes how philosophical pessimists like Schopenhauer and Sartre contributed to our thinking about lust and explores the false starts in understanding lust represented by Freud, Kinsey, and modern "evolutionary psychology." But most important, Blackburn reminds us that lust is also life-affirming, invigorating, fun. He points to the work of David Hume (Blackburn's favorite philosopher) who saw lust not only as a sensual delight but also "a joy of the mind."
Written by one of the most eminent living philosophers, attractively illustrated and colorfully packaged, Lust is a book that anyone would lust over.
192 pages, Paperback
First published December 19, 2003
14 people are currently reading
440 people want to read
About the author
Simon Blackburn
75 books277 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Simon Blackburn FBA is an English academic philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language; more recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts to popularise philosophy.
He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009–2010 term. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.
Simon Blackburn FBA is an English academic philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language; more recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts to popularise philosophy.
He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009–2010 term. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
January 5, 2019
I will review this book by parts.
The Editor's Note explains that this is but a part of a lecture and book series on the Seven Deadly Sins cosponsored by the New York Public Library and Oxford University Press. Interesting to note then that the author/lecturer never equated lust with sin.
The Preface, indeed, says the book is about lust itself and/or ideas about lust.
In the Introduction the author expresses his intent to speak FOR lust and asserts that lust may qualify as a virtue.
Chapter 1 (Desire), after a long philosophical discussion, gives a working definition of LUST: "the enthusiastic desire that infuses the body for sexual activity and its pleasures for their own sake."
Chapter 2 (Excess) defends lust against being equated with excess, the author saying that we can't criticize lust because it can get out of hand, just the same as we can't criticize hunger because it can lead to gluttony. Even mystics, he says, sometimes modeled communion with God with sexual ecstasy using the same metaphors of surrender, burning, losing oneself, becoming blind or temporarily destroyed, or suffering "a little death". Saint Teresa of Avila, for example, had talked religiously of an "arrow driven into the very depths of the entrails and the heart (so that the soul does not) know either what is the matter with it or what it desires", describing this religious experience as one "so delectable that life holds no delight that can give greater satisfaction."
Chapter 3 (Two Problems from Plato) discusses ancient Greek philosophers' theories and myths about sexual desire. Here is where the notion that lust is misshappen, shameful and needs restraint was said to have started.
Chapter 4 (Stiff Upper Lips) could have been very well entitled "Shame". Without going into any conclusions, it discusses viewpoints about sexual decorum. One of the most interesting was by the Greek school of philosophy called The Cynics (the"dog philosophers") headed by Diogenes who argued that no shame is attached to the sexual act. Diogenes' pupil Crates and his wife Hipparchia were said to have openly fucked on the steps of the temple as they got married and thereafter repeated the same happily many times more in public.
Chapter 5 is aptly entitled "The Christian Panic" as it discusses how Christians had demonized lust starting with Saint Augustine who saw the involuntary rebellious nature of sexual desire as a symbol or emblem of the whole fallen state of mankind.
"The Legacy" (Chapter6) fittingly follows. With sex outside of procreation viewed as generally dirty, contraception, homosexuality, oral sex and sodomy are now capital offenses.
Chapter 7 (What Nature Intended) points out that nature is full of strange sexual behavior which had nothing to do with procreation (e.g., transvestism, homosexuality, masturbation, having multiple partners, etc. One example given is the male lion which was observed to have had sex with two partners 157 times in just 55 hours).
In Chapter 8 (Some Consequences) the author enumerates some of the psychic turmoil which results from sex/lust being both intensely desirable yet culturally identified as intensely shameful.
Chapter 9 (Shakespeare versus Dorothy Parker) attempts to answer the question of whether erotic love is madness, blindness and illusion (Shakespeare) or a fully conscious state where lovers just lie to each other. The proposed answer was:
"...The poetry or feigning can take over the self, and for the moment at least we are what we imagine ourselves to be. (The lovers) swear eternal truth, and in their imaginations they are, for the moment, eternally faithful. They swear never to look at anyone else, and neither would they, were they always as they now imagine themselves to be. When things go wrong, it may be unduly severe to charge the lover with making lying promises, because at the time of making there was no definite self other than the one in whom the promise was sincere, and no definite intention need have been misrepresented by the promise. A faithful self was being constructed, even if it later fell down.
"The performance can bring about its own truth, and evolutionarily this may be the function of romantic love. The imagining is in part a fixing of the self and of a decision, and the communication is in part a request for a like decision from someone else. If all goes well, the play becomes the reality; the poem becomes true."
Chapter 10 (Hobbesian Unity) is about the idea of the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes who wrote:
"The appetite which men call LUST...is a sensual pleasure, but not only that; there is in it also a delight of the mind: for it consist of two appetites together, to please and to be pleased; and the delight men take in delighting, is not sensual, but a pleasure or joy of the mind, consisting in the imagination of the power they have so much to please."
According to the author, this theory helps explains why the ecstatic finale in sex can be an experience of communion or being at one with someone else. Hobbes also explains why the communion in sex has a better chance of being real than communion with the divine since conversations with the divine tend to be more one-sided.
Chapter 11 (Disasters) starts with a quote from another philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who asserted that sexual love only makes the loved person "an object of appetite." Lust objectifies the other person, Kant argues, using him/her only as a tool for one's pleasure, and therefore dehumanizing and degrading. This is supposed to be the reason why people have sex in private and are generally scandalized by those who display erotic affection in public. But it should not be viewed like that, says the author:
"...The intense desire for sexual privacy is frequently misinterpreted as shame at doing something that therefore must be intrinsically shameful or even disgusting. But the desire for privacy should not be moralized like that. Our intimacies are just as private as our couplings. Embarassment arises because when we are looked upon or overheard by someone else, there is a complete dissonance between what they witness--infantile prattlings, or, if their gaze is obscene, just the twitchings and spasms of the bare forked animals--and the view from the inside, the meanings that are infusing the whole enterprise."
Chapter 12 (Substitutions) briefly discusses prostitution and pornography, areas where there can never be any Hobbesian unity. Then, lust's friendliness with substitutionality (think having multiple partners) is next discussed. It is possible, neverthess, that a lover may stick to one partner. In terms of lust, one beautiful partner can be as good a fuck as another beautiful person. But one person can be unique, or unlike no other person in this planet. How? By his/her sharing experiences with his/her lover. This would make him/her unique and irreplaceable.
"Evolution and Desire" is Chapter 13. It concludes that evolutionary psychology has not helped us understand why we are governed by desire. The theory that desire is there to propagate the human race does not explain why a lot of sex (some of which were enumerated earlier) have nothing to do at all with reproduction.
Chapter 14, "Overcoming Pessimism" argues that lust/sex need not be looked down upon and that the "project" of sexual desire is the project of obtaining a Hobbesian unity which is not metaphysically impossible.
Finally, the "Farewell" reads:
"So everything is all right. Hobbesian unity can be achieved, and if it cannot be achieved, it can at least be aimed at, and even if it cannot be aimed at, it can be imagined and dreamed. By understanding it for what it is, we can reclaim lust for humanity, and we can learn that lust best flourishes when it is unencumbered by bad philosophy and ideology, by falsities, by controls, by distortions, by corruptions and perversions and suspicions, which prevent its freedom of flow. It is not easy--and we do not side with Diogenes and Crates, after all. But it is not impossible. And when we remember the long train of human crimes that have ensued on getting it wrong, it is surely worth getting it right."
Even in dogs, therefore, you can find philosophy.
The Editor's Note explains that this is but a part of a lecture and book series on the Seven Deadly Sins cosponsored by the New York Public Library and Oxford University Press. Interesting to note then that the author/lecturer never equated lust with sin.
The Preface, indeed, says the book is about lust itself and/or ideas about lust.
In the Introduction the author expresses his intent to speak FOR lust and asserts that lust may qualify as a virtue.
Chapter 1 (Desire), after a long philosophical discussion, gives a working definition of LUST: "the enthusiastic desire that infuses the body for sexual activity and its pleasures for their own sake."
Chapter 2 (Excess) defends lust against being equated with excess, the author saying that we can't criticize lust because it can get out of hand, just the same as we can't criticize hunger because it can lead to gluttony. Even mystics, he says, sometimes modeled communion with God with sexual ecstasy using the same metaphors of surrender, burning, losing oneself, becoming blind or temporarily destroyed, or suffering "a little death". Saint Teresa of Avila, for example, had talked religiously of an "arrow driven into the very depths of the entrails and the heart (so that the soul does not) know either what is the matter with it or what it desires", describing this religious experience as one "so delectable that life holds no delight that can give greater satisfaction."
Chapter 3 (Two Problems from Plato) discusses ancient Greek philosophers' theories and myths about sexual desire. Here is where the notion that lust is misshappen, shameful and needs restraint was said to have started.
Chapter 4 (Stiff Upper Lips) could have been very well entitled "Shame". Without going into any conclusions, it discusses viewpoints about sexual decorum. One of the most interesting was by the Greek school of philosophy called The Cynics (the"dog philosophers") headed by Diogenes who argued that no shame is attached to the sexual act. Diogenes' pupil Crates and his wife Hipparchia were said to have openly fucked on the steps of the temple as they got married and thereafter repeated the same happily many times more in public.
Chapter 5 is aptly entitled "The Christian Panic" as it discusses how Christians had demonized lust starting with Saint Augustine who saw the involuntary rebellious nature of sexual desire as a symbol or emblem of the whole fallen state of mankind.
"The Legacy" (Chapter6) fittingly follows. With sex outside of procreation viewed as generally dirty, contraception, homosexuality, oral sex and sodomy are now capital offenses.
Chapter 7 (What Nature Intended) points out that nature is full of strange sexual behavior which had nothing to do with procreation (e.g., transvestism, homosexuality, masturbation, having multiple partners, etc. One example given is the male lion which was observed to have had sex with two partners 157 times in just 55 hours).
In Chapter 8 (Some Consequences) the author enumerates some of the psychic turmoil which results from sex/lust being both intensely desirable yet culturally identified as intensely shameful.
Chapter 9 (Shakespeare versus Dorothy Parker) attempts to answer the question of whether erotic love is madness, blindness and illusion (Shakespeare) or a fully conscious state where lovers just lie to each other. The proposed answer was:
"...The poetry or feigning can take over the self, and for the moment at least we are what we imagine ourselves to be. (The lovers) swear eternal truth, and in their imaginations they are, for the moment, eternally faithful. They swear never to look at anyone else, and neither would they, were they always as they now imagine themselves to be. When things go wrong, it may be unduly severe to charge the lover with making lying promises, because at the time of making there was no definite self other than the one in whom the promise was sincere, and no definite intention need have been misrepresented by the promise. A faithful self was being constructed, even if it later fell down.
"The performance can bring about its own truth, and evolutionarily this may be the function of romantic love. The imagining is in part a fixing of the self and of a decision, and the communication is in part a request for a like decision from someone else. If all goes well, the play becomes the reality; the poem becomes true."
Chapter 10 (Hobbesian Unity) is about the idea of the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes who wrote:
"The appetite which men call LUST...is a sensual pleasure, but not only that; there is in it also a delight of the mind: for it consist of two appetites together, to please and to be pleased; and the delight men take in delighting, is not sensual, but a pleasure or joy of the mind, consisting in the imagination of the power they have so much to please."
According to the author, this theory helps explains why the ecstatic finale in sex can be an experience of communion or being at one with someone else. Hobbes also explains why the communion in sex has a better chance of being real than communion with the divine since conversations with the divine tend to be more one-sided.
Chapter 11 (Disasters) starts with a quote from another philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who asserted that sexual love only makes the loved person "an object of appetite." Lust objectifies the other person, Kant argues, using him/her only as a tool for one's pleasure, and therefore dehumanizing and degrading. This is supposed to be the reason why people have sex in private and are generally scandalized by those who display erotic affection in public. But it should not be viewed like that, says the author:
"...The intense desire for sexual privacy is frequently misinterpreted as shame at doing something that therefore must be intrinsically shameful or even disgusting. But the desire for privacy should not be moralized like that. Our intimacies are just as private as our couplings. Embarassment arises because when we are looked upon or overheard by someone else, there is a complete dissonance between what they witness--infantile prattlings, or, if their gaze is obscene, just the twitchings and spasms of the bare forked animals--and the view from the inside, the meanings that are infusing the whole enterprise."
Chapter 12 (Substitutions) briefly discusses prostitution and pornography, areas where there can never be any Hobbesian unity. Then, lust's friendliness with substitutionality (think having multiple partners) is next discussed. It is possible, neverthess, that a lover may stick to one partner. In terms of lust, one beautiful partner can be as good a fuck as another beautiful person. But one person can be unique, or unlike no other person in this planet. How? By his/her sharing experiences with his/her lover. This would make him/her unique and irreplaceable.
"Evolution and Desire" is Chapter 13. It concludes that evolutionary psychology has not helped us understand why we are governed by desire. The theory that desire is there to propagate the human race does not explain why a lot of sex (some of which were enumerated earlier) have nothing to do at all with reproduction.
Chapter 14, "Overcoming Pessimism" argues that lust/sex need not be looked down upon and that the "project" of sexual desire is the project of obtaining a Hobbesian unity which is not metaphysically impossible.
Finally, the "Farewell" reads:
"So everything is all right. Hobbesian unity can be achieved, and if it cannot be achieved, it can at least be aimed at, and even if it cannot be aimed at, it can be imagined and dreamed. By understanding it for what it is, we can reclaim lust for humanity, and we can learn that lust best flourishes when it is unencumbered by bad philosophy and ideology, by falsities, by controls, by distortions, by corruptions and perversions and suspicions, which prevent its freedom of flow. It is not easy--and we do not side with Diogenes and Crates, after all. But it is not impossible. And when we remember the long train of human crimes that have ensued on getting it wrong, it is surely worth getting it right."
Even in dogs, therefore, you can find philosophy.
April 22, 2025
BEFORE MY COWORKERS JUDGE ME ON HERE - this is an academic series of essays deconstructing the idea of lust, not me reading smut (but hope you wouldn’t judge me on that regardless).
Gave this a 3 purely based on my own enjoyment of the book, I struggled to get in the flow of reading this and didn’t feel massively compelled to pick it up but this was more of a me problem than the author’s own doing.
This book was thematically interesting and well researched, I would definitely recommend this to my friends who enjoy non fiction :)
Gave this a 3 purely based on my own enjoyment of the book, I struggled to get in the flow of reading this and didn’t feel massively compelled to pick it up but this was more of a me problem than the author’s own doing.
This book was thematically interesting and well researched, I would definitely recommend this to my friends who enjoy non fiction :)
June 5, 2007
Loved it Loved it Loved it. This book was an in-depth deconstruction and analysis of Lust. There's a whole series of these books on the seven deadly sins published by Oxford University Press. This particular book was written by a philosopher. Perfect blend of humor, history, and his own thoughts on the matter.
May 27, 2024
3.5/5 stars
Keeping in mind that this is a companion book to a public lecture, this work is a brief investigation of lust. Love and lust are sometimes used together for comparison's sake and after the early chapters, the piece tends to focus on sexual lust specifically, which I mean... I guess that is a smart strategy because that's probably the type of lust the audience started reading this book to investigate.
There is a sort of historical who's-who approach to lust here and some astute observations are made (example: lust is not always directed towards a sexual goal - there can be lust for power) but I'm not too sure what the point of the project was? The philosopher tends to favour Thomas Hobbes' approach and while there are competing approaches, I just don't come away too convinced of the same.
Overall, this was a very quick and interesting read.
Keeping in mind that this is a companion book to a public lecture, this work is a brief investigation of lust. Love and lust are sometimes used together for comparison's sake and after the early chapters, the piece tends to focus on sexual lust specifically, which I mean... I guess that is a smart strategy because that's probably the type of lust the audience started reading this book to investigate.
There is a sort of historical who's-who approach to lust here and some astute observations are made (example: lust is not always directed towards a sexual goal - there can be lust for power) but I'm not too sure what the point of the project was? The philosopher tends to favour Thomas Hobbes' approach and while there are competing approaches, I just don't come away too convinced of the same.
Overall, this was a very quick and interesting read.
September 30, 2021
Oxford University Press has a series where each of the Seven Sins are explored by philosophers. I started with lust (no particular reason for that :)) and liked what I sampled.
Blackburn traces some of the ideas around it through the works of Plato (The Chariot allegory), Aristotle's Ethics, Kant's maxims, Sartre's Keyhole thought experiment, Freud's Oedipal Complex, St. Augustine's Original Sin etc.
Came out a bit wiser. Now onwards in full speed towards the other remaining sins....
Blackburn traces some of the ideas around it through the works of Plato (The Chariot allegory), Aristotle's Ethics, Kant's maxims, Sartre's Keyhole thought experiment, Freud's Oedipal Complex, St. Augustine's Original Sin etc.
Came out a bit wiser. Now onwards in full speed towards the other remaining sins....
July 23, 2018
Based on a lecture that Simon Blackburn gave, this rather short book looks at the deadly sin of lust. Blackburn makes an argument for lust as a necessary aspect of what drives human nature, as he tries to extricate the concept from the bad associations it has accrued. The book is slight and, at times, seems to move off point, but remains entertaining.
May 12, 2022
An elegant defense of sex-positivity, accompanied by a brief miscellany of Western attitudes to sex and their societal consequences.
Blackburn discusses lust specifically as the desire for sexual intimacy. He looks at qualities unique to it, and takes pains to separate lust from all the negative things that have been lumped with it for so long that some think them as an intrinsic to lust: objectification, aggression, violence, and oppression. All of these, outside of the realm of consensual kink (which is sadly not covered) are definite evils that do harm to the human person, but they are by no means necessary to lust in and of itself.
All in all, a worthwhile book for anyone looking to understand sex positivity
Blackburn discusses lust specifically as the desire for sexual intimacy. He looks at qualities unique to it, and takes pains to separate lust from all the negative things that have been lumped with it for so long that some think them as an intrinsic to lust: objectification, aggression, violence, and oppression. All of these, outside of the realm of consensual kink (which is sadly not covered) are definite evils that do harm to the human person, but they are by no means necessary to lust in and of itself.
All in all, a worthwhile book for anyone looking to understand sex positivity
February 28, 2023
Philosopher Simon Blackburn offers the volume on Lust in the New York Public Library's series on the Seven Deadly Sins. Blackburn actually offers a defense of lust. The book meanders quite a bit, but the main thrust of his argument is that lust is a "natural" phenomenon. However, he fails to adequately wrestle with the Augustinian notion that what seems "natural" in a fallen world, is not natural in terms of our purpose (telos). Some interesting bits from Shakespeare, but by and large I recommend skipping this volume.
May 19, 2023
Enticing but ultimately empty.
Blackburn takes a positive spin on lust that (sometimes fairly, often not) castigates Christian attitudes towards sex. He does not distinguish sexual desire from lust, however, which, in a sense is making the same mistake the Augustines of the Christian tradition made, just from the other side of the street.
Blackburn takes a positive spin on lust that (sometimes fairly, often not) castigates Christian attitudes towards sex. He does not distinguish sexual desire from lust, however, which, in a sense is making the same mistake the Augustines of the Christian tradition made, just from the other side of the street.
February 28, 2024
This was an odd essay. Blackburn aimed to defend lust and honestly failed. He played loose and fast with the definition and kept moving the goalposts. The credit I give him was that his prose and knowledge of philosophy was rather delightful. If anything this was thought provoking and fun to internally refute.
December 2, 2018
Picked up useful concepts in this book such as "Hobbesian unity" to help me understand this seemingly irrational, almost-universally condemned "sin." A quote that stuck with me is this: "It is not the movements, but the thought behind them, that matter to lust."
March 16, 2020
Gozada máxima
November 9, 2021
Fantasía
July 26, 2023
Has a few pearls. Impactful. Certainly on the liberal -and liberating- side.
Want to read
March 15, 2024ملاحظة لي: لم اقرا الكتاب بعد -
دعوة للانحلال ولقبول رزايا الشهوة الجنسية تحديدا ، تحت غطاء فلسفي من احد المشهورين في كامبريدج
دعوة للانحلال ولقبول رزايا الشهوة الجنسية تحديدا ، تحت غطاء فلسفي من احد المشهورين في كامبريدج
Read
July 21, 2025I want to
October 18, 2025
felt like it could have gone deeper 🤔
February 10, 2015
The Oxford University Press enlisted seven different philosophers to each address one of the Seven Deadly Sins in a philosophical analysis. One of these is Simon Blackburn's LUST, 2004. In his preface, Blackburn says,
People presume each other to be acquainted with sin. So when the New York Library and Oxford University Press asked me to lecture on one of the Seven Deadly Sins, I was modest enough not to ask "Why me?" I did worry in case I got landed with sloth, not because of unfamiliarity with the vice, but because of doubts about having the energy to find something to say about it. Otherwise the field seemed wide open."
In a very enjoyable and entertaining lecture, Professor Blackburn takes us through an analysis of this Deadly Sin. Combing through the history of art, music, literature, philosophy, theology, and the more recent evolutionary psychology, he draws out the differing views humans have had toward lust, where these views may have originated, and what we are to make of it all. The book includes over fifteen figures showing lust in its various forms as portrayed through the arts in such works as Aristotle and Phyllis, Venus and Mars, Ecstasy of St Teresa, Nymph and Satyr, and An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, with commentary by Blackburn. Throughout, the text is peppered with quotes from Shakespeare, Spenser, Aristotle, Hume, Plato, Sartre, St Augustine, and many others which Blackburn uses to great effect in his analysis. There is this cynical, and humorous, take on love and lust from Dorothy Parker:
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying --
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying. [Dorothy Parker]
What is desire, and where does it come from? Can there be desire without a concrete object of that desire, in other words, desire "in the abstract"? Is lust a subset of desire, an excess of desire, as in "the lust for gold" or "lust for power"?
And Blackburn is at times very funny.
Broadminded though we take ourselves to be, lust gets a bad press. It is the fly in the ointment, the black sheep of the family, the ill-bred, trashy cousin of upstanding members like love and friendship. It lives on the wrong side of the tracks, lumbers around elbowing its way into too much of our lives, and blushes when it comes into company. [2]
All in all, a very pleasurable read. I'll be interested to read what the other philosophers have to say about Pride, Greed, Envy, Gluttony, Anger, and Sloth.
People presume each other to be acquainted with sin. So when the New York Library and Oxford University Press asked me to lecture on one of the Seven Deadly Sins, I was modest enough not to ask "Why me?" I did worry in case I got landed with sloth, not because of unfamiliarity with the vice, but because of doubts about having the energy to find something to say about it. Otherwise the field seemed wide open."
In a very enjoyable and entertaining lecture, Professor Blackburn takes us through an analysis of this Deadly Sin. Combing through the history of art, music, literature, philosophy, theology, and the more recent evolutionary psychology, he draws out the differing views humans have had toward lust, where these views may have originated, and what we are to make of it all. The book includes over fifteen figures showing lust in its various forms as portrayed through the arts in such works as Aristotle and Phyllis, Venus and Mars, Ecstasy of St Teresa, Nymph and Satyr, and An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, with commentary by Blackburn. Throughout, the text is peppered with quotes from Shakespeare, Spenser, Aristotle, Hume, Plato, Sartre, St Augustine, and many others which Blackburn uses to great effect in his analysis. There is this cynical, and humorous, take on love and lust from Dorothy Parker:
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying --
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying. [Dorothy Parker]
What is desire, and where does it come from? Can there be desire without a concrete object of that desire, in other words, desire "in the abstract"? Is lust a subset of desire, an excess of desire, as in "the lust for gold" or "lust for power"?
And Blackburn is at times very funny.
Broadminded though we take ourselves to be, lust gets a bad press. It is the fly in the ointment, the black sheep of the family, the ill-bred, trashy cousin of upstanding members like love and friendship. It lives on the wrong side of the tracks, lumbers around elbowing its way into too much of our lives, and blushes when it comes into company. [2]
All in all, a very pleasurable read. I'll be interested to read what the other philosophers have to say about Pride, Greed, Envy, Gluttony, Anger, and Sloth.
August 15, 2012
Lust is a slender, compact book, a sort of philosophical speed-date that introduces you to an extraordinary array of Western philosophers wrangling with the meaning of sex. Blackburn excels at pitting philosophers from different historical moments against each other in imaginary debates about the proper meaning and place of lust in morality and culture, and he can’t help cracking wise about the moral struggles of our ancestors (I will grant that it's difficult to take Kant’s notion that “marriage is a contract for each to use the other’s genitals” as the final word on marital ethics).
A curious passage from Augustine’s City of God, in which sexual desire is compared to farting and the proper control of sexual desire is compared to musical farting, causes Blackburn much glee: “Such people can do some things with their bodies which are for others utterly impossible and well-nigh incredible when they are reported. Some can swallow an incredible number of articles and then with a slight contraction of the diaphragm can produce, as if out of a bag, any article they please, in perfect condition. A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behinds (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region.” Thus, the Will can control the natural functions of the body, just as you yourself should be able to control your urge to sleep with that flirty, athletic guy at your brother-in-law’s barbecue or that new woman in accounting who wears the alluring high-necked bodice.
Blackburn’s lightning-fast tour of the nerve highway connecting our heads to our hearts and nether regions is over so quickly that it’s easy to forget that he didn’t fully discuss all of the scenery as it whipped by. The author gives issues of marital fidelity short shrift, and he dismisses feminist arguments about the power of the objectifying gaze almost out of hand, so the perspective has its shortcomings; but as a broad overview of historical attitudes about lust, ranging from Lucretius to Woody Allen, Lust is seductive and fun. But it returns you to the genuine article of your own lust with all the same doubts you had when you started.
A curious passage from Augustine’s City of God, in which sexual desire is compared to farting and the proper control of sexual desire is compared to musical farting, causes Blackburn much glee: “Such people can do some things with their bodies which are for others utterly impossible and well-nigh incredible when they are reported. Some can swallow an incredible number of articles and then with a slight contraction of the diaphragm can produce, as if out of a bag, any article they please, in perfect condition. A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behinds (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region.” Thus, the Will can control the natural functions of the body, just as you yourself should be able to control your urge to sleep with that flirty, athletic guy at your brother-in-law’s barbecue or that new woman in accounting who wears the alluring high-necked bodice.
Blackburn’s lightning-fast tour of the nerve highway connecting our heads to our hearts and nether regions is over so quickly that it’s easy to forget that he didn’t fully discuss all of the scenery as it whipped by. The author gives issues of marital fidelity short shrift, and he dismisses feminist arguments about the power of the objectifying gaze almost out of hand, so the perspective has its shortcomings; but as a broad overview of historical attitudes about lust, ranging from Lucretius to Woody Allen, Lust is seductive and fun. But it returns you to the genuine article of your own lust with all the same doubts you had when you started.
August 17, 2008
Blackburn doesn't focus as much on the culture as on the tiny philosophical gradations of definition of the idea of LUST. And so I lost interest. There were a couple of interesting ideas though.
First was the suggestion by Roger Scruton that before there is a specific object for sexual desire, ie. a person, that desire does not really exist. Blackburn argues that it does, because a sailor getting off a boat has a desire to ease his "womanlessness," and that when he finds a woman he may transfer all his attentions to her, his lust becomes for THAT woman, but before that he is still experiencing lust. In the same way a person can walk around angry before finding someone to yell at.
Another interesting idea is biological, in that the shape of human male genitalia indicates that evolutionarily the human male might have expected to have at least some competition with the sperm of another male, therefore women are not (naturally, at any rate) the chaste and pure creatures our culture would have them be. Citing Hume, Blackburn states "In many and various ways, girls are educated into sexual reserve. Consider that many of the most wounding things young girls call each other imply sexual laxity: slag, bitch, whore, tart. . . . None of this would be necessary if evolution had designed the psychology for us, any more than we need to put cultural pressure on each other to grow hair or see colors. When nature has done it for us, moralists can go home."
A third idea that has less to do specifically with lust is one of Satre's: "In a nutshell, for Sartre, consciousness has a big problem with the gaze of the other, the moment when your own subjectivity is itself being subjected to the scrutiny of a different consciousness. In one of his central examples, you are crouched at a keyhole concentrating upon the scene within, when you become aware that you yourself are being gazed at. This engenders embarassment and shame. To overcome this shame you have to overcome the gaze of the other."
First was the suggestion by Roger Scruton that before there is a specific object for sexual desire, ie. a person, that desire does not really exist. Blackburn argues that it does, because a sailor getting off a boat has a desire to ease his "womanlessness," and that when he finds a woman he may transfer all his attentions to her, his lust becomes for THAT woman, but before that he is still experiencing lust. In the same way a person can walk around angry before finding someone to yell at.
Another interesting idea is biological, in that the shape of human male genitalia indicates that evolutionarily the human male might have expected to have at least some competition with the sperm of another male, therefore women are not (naturally, at any rate) the chaste and pure creatures our culture would have them be. Citing Hume, Blackburn states "In many and various ways, girls are educated into sexual reserve. Consider that many of the most wounding things young girls call each other imply sexual laxity: slag, bitch, whore, tart. . . . None of this would be necessary if evolution had designed the psychology for us, any more than we need to put cultural pressure on each other to grow hair or see colors. When nature has done it for us, moralists can go home."
A third idea that has less to do specifically with lust is one of Satre's: "In a nutshell, for Sartre, consciousness has a big problem with the gaze of the other, the moment when your own subjectivity is itself being subjected to the scrutiny of a different consciousness. In one of his central examples, you are crouched at a keyhole concentrating upon the scene within, when you become aware that you yourself are being gazed at. This engenders embarassment and shame. To overcome this shame you have to overcome the gaze of the other."
June 2, 2016
This is a very interesting discussion of the phenomenon of lust, which, in my view, gets a lot of the relevant judgements it discusses right. Blackburn is justifiably skeptical of both feminist and historic Christian paranoias about lust, and offers a persuasive account of what lust is, in and of itself, early in the book. He is scrupulously fair; not content to simply blame the West's ambivalent attitude to lust on Augustine, he traces the origins of this ambivalence back through Stoicism to Plato.
It is, however, a short work, and one feels much more could have been said. For example, while philosophical perspectives on lust are well documented, there is little consideration of how historical changes in technology and social organisation such as the development of contraception and the welfare state change our thinking about lust. In other words, there is no consideration of how changes in the general conditions of society change the probable outcomes of giving in to lust, and therefore our attitudes to it.
Similarly, the connection between the experience of lust as one of being taken over by one's body and crimes such as rape is not explored, nor is there any significant discussion of either pornography or prostitution, despite there being considerable evidence that both are harmful to the people involved.
Perhaps the biggest omission is that, while Blackburn admits that lust often serves as a conduit for other emotional needs; bondage expressing a need, paradoxically, for safety and trust, for example, he does not explore how playing out certain needs might be harmful or unethical, either directly to the participants, or because the need itself is illegitimate or could best be met some other way.
Thus, this rather rosy portrait of lust, while interesting as far as it goes, is only so rosy by being incomplete, skirting as it does most of the major ethical issues that attach themselves to behaviour informed by lust.
It is, however, a short work, and one feels much more could have been said. For example, while philosophical perspectives on lust are well documented, there is little consideration of how historical changes in technology and social organisation such as the development of contraception and the welfare state change our thinking about lust. In other words, there is no consideration of how changes in the general conditions of society change the probable outcomes of giving in to lust, and therefore our attitudes to it.
Similarly, the connection between the experience of lust as one of being taken over by one's body and crimes such as rape is not explored, nor is there any significant discussion of either pornography or prostitution, despite there being considerable evidence that both are harmful to the people involved.
Perhaps the biggest omission is that, while Blackburn admits that lust often serves as a conduit for other emotional needs; bondage expressing a need, paradoxically, for safety and trust, for example, he does not explore how playing out certain needs might be harmful or unethical, either directly to the participants, or because the need itself is illegitimate or could best be met some other way.
Thus, this rather rosy portrait of lust, while interesting as far as it goes, is only so rosy by being incomplete, skirting as it does most of the major ethical issues that attach themselves to behaviour informed by lust.
December 27, 2024
So far, my second-favorite of the "sins" series from NY Public Library and Oxford press. You really could pick no one better to disseminate lust for a modern audience than an elderly British philosopher with a killer sense of humor. It's not as cohesive or well-argued as the tippity-top entry (Joseph Epstein's "Envy"), but I loved Blackburn's writing, and would absolutely pick up another of his books to get edumacated on matters philosophical.
2024 update: Having re-read this after consuming the series in its entirety, I'd say "Lust" drops down a sin or two in ranking—say, below "Greed" but above "Gluttony". The writing is wonderful (which includes wonderfully fun to read) and his points well argued (or certainly footnoted). After cruising Blackburn's wikipedia page, I have ideas about what I might read next but oh, yeah—I'm fiction fiction fiction for 2025, along with no-sugar and 8H daily. Preserving cognitive health takes far greater priority over hanky panky these days.
2024 update: Having re-read this after consuming the series in its entirety, I'd say "Lust" drops down a sin or two in ranking—say, below "Greed" but above "Gluttony". The writing is wonderful (which includes wonderfully fun to read) and his points well argued (or certainly footnoted). After cruising Blackburn's wikipedia page, I have ideas about what I might read next but oh, yeah—I'm fiction fiction fiction for 2025, along with no-sugar and 8H daily. Preserving cognitive health takes far greater priority over hanky panky these days.
January 4, 2011
It started off a little abstruse for my casual reading tastes. Initially there is a heavy emphasis on Aristotle, Plato, mythology etc that was dense but also difficult to follow without refresher course on mythology and old philosophers. However, midway through it becomes more accessible and interesting. The book ends with more accessible writing and a bit of fun. I'm glad I read it but it was more academically philosophical than I expected.
I intend to read the The Seven Deadly Sins series. I started with Sloth a few years ago and recall that as a thorough but humorous essay. I'm interested to discover other writing tacks authors use for this series.
I intend to read the The Seven Deadly Sins series. I started with Sloth a few years ago and recall that as a thorough but humorous essay. I'm interested to discover other writing tacks authors use for this series.
February 2, 2012
I got a little impatient with this, which is to be expected with a brief-introduction-style book, but it's been nice company on the bus. The brief chapter on intersubjectivity is as good an account of the decentralization of the subject as any that I've read. And I had a few laughs. In that respect Blackburn is always good value.
March 14, 2016
Blackburn's essay draws from multiple sources--Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein--to answer the questions of lust (lust for power? lust for love?).
I thought the essay agile and nimble, but I left with more questions than answers. Deftness wins here: Amusing, erudite, but...unsatisfying? Nahhh!
I thought the essay agile and nimble, but I left with more questions than answers. Deftness wins here: Amusing, erudite, but...unsatisfying? Nahhh!
June 30, 2008
The last of the deadly sins... Lust was a decent read (love the cover illustrations!) Very Western lit. meets intro to philosophy. Caveat emptor: you will probably not ACTUALLY be sexually aroused while reading this book, unless you're particularly titillated by Hegel or Grecian nudes.
March 23, 2012
I liked this. It was one of the more academic books in the series - but it is a quick and easy look at lust. And one that makes you think. It is not exhaustive - this series doesn't provide that opportunity. But it is thought provoking.
May 6, 2012
This is part of a great series on the Seven Deadly Sins done by the NYC public library. I love this volume, because it's philosophically serious and really funny. Which is pretty much what I aspire to as a writer.
July 22, 2015
- Blackburn is a Professor Of Philosophy at the University Of Cambridge
- one of the 'Seven Deadly Sins Series' (I have read "Envy" and "Gluttony" as well)
- this particular edition is too thickly academic for my liking
- one of the 'Seven Deadly Sins Series' (I have read "Envy" and "Gluttony" as well)
- this particular edition is too thickly academic for my liking
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews