SSP-100 (042) Self and Desire

Reg Lilly, Professor of Philosophy

What do we mean by the desiring self, the topic of this seminar? Students in this seminar will examine the nature and different forms of desire and its role in the constitution of the human subject, as well as the destabilizing force desire exerts on the self. The figure of Don Juan—often presented in literature, opera and film—introduces the question of the relation of the self to the self, of the self to the other, of desire to (self-)mastery, of pleasure to pain, and of imagination to reality. Students will use philosophical, literary and psychological readings as well as films to bring critical concepts to bear on the phenomena of the desiring self.