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 | | On Desire: Why We Want What We Want by William B. Irvine ISBN-10: 9780195327076 ISBN-10: 0-19-532707-1 ISBN-13: 9780195327076 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-532707-6 Paperback 2007-06-18 Oxford University Press, USA Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description A married person falls deeply in love with someone else. A man of average income feels he cannot be truly happy unless he owns an expensive luxury car. A dieter has an irresistible craving for ice cream. Desires often come to us unbidden and unwanted, and they can have a dramatic impact, sometimes changing the course of our lives. In On Desire, William B. Irvine takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our impulses, wants, and needs, showing us where these feelings come from and how we can try to rein them in. Spicing his account with engaging observations by writers like Seneca, Tolstoy, and Freud, Irvine considers the teachings of Buddhists, Hindus, the Amish, Shakers, and Catholic saints, as well as those of ancient Greek and Roman and modern European philosophers. Irvine also looks at what modern science can tell us about desire--such as what happens in the brain when we desire something and how animals evolved particular desires--and he advances a new theory about how desire itself evolved. Irvine also suggests that at the same time that we gained the ability to desire, we were "programmed" to find some things more desirable than others. Irvine concludes that the best way to attain lasting happiness is not to change the world around us or our place in it, but to change ourselves. If we can convince ourselves to want what we already have, we can dramatically enhance our happiness. Brimming with wisdom and practical advice, On Desire offers a thoughtful approach to controlling unwanted passions and attaining a more meaningful life. | ||
Reviews | ||
Can we control our desires? This book does a good job of explaining the biological origins of desire in a way that makes it easy to understand. It is a bit academic, but that is not unexpected for a college professor. I like the way the author gets the reader to understand that human beings may not be in total control of desires. However, by recognizing why we have them, and by examining their root causes we have a better chance at managing them. He goes on to explain why we rationalize away our actions, and this is an important step in understanding why we do what we do. I read this book after an unusually large number of politicians have been in the news about their extra-marital affairs. This book helps me to understand what in the world they were thinking--or not thinking. | ||
So-so I thought the second part was too repetitive, and the third part doesn't seem to deliver the promised advice. It does get you thinking about how desires work though. Kenneth Kloby. | ||
Might be a good book if you like self help books A good portion of the book is stoicism history. The rest is self help on the uselessness of certain desires. Not rocket science; not very brillant | ||
Siddhartha Meets Darwin Most good philosophy books draw our attention to features of human experience that are so "obvious" that we take them for granted. That's the key to the brilliance of "On Desire," which unpacks the meaning of four often overlooked truths: (1) that our conscious and unconscious life is permeated by basic (or "terminal") desires for food, sex, social prestige, physical safety and so forth; (2) that our non-basic desires are usually instrumental desires aimed at achieving our basic desires; (3) that our basic desires are not chosen by us, but are bequeathed by natural selection; and (4) that fulfillment of our basic desires may help us to survive and reproduce, but does not necessarily make us happy, since happiness it not a concern of natural selection. The bottom line is that we are slaves to desires that are indifferent to our happiness and personal satisfaction. We spend our lives beavering away to fulfill these desires and then wonder why the results don't make us happy. That's an important (if depressing) truth about the human condition, and it sets the stage for the author's exposition of Buddhism, Stoicism, and other strategies for mastering our desires and regaining control of our lives. The writing is lucid and the book is filled with common sense and casual erudition. I knocked off one star only because the sections on "coping" philosophies were really too brief to do them justice. | ||
I want...you to read this book. More people should. I majored in biology so I already knew the basis for most of his arguments (re: evolutionary programming), but reading it in all the different contexts (religious, philosophical, etc.) was to view the ways we try to adapt and understand our wants in a singular or communal setting (have a new respect for the Amish and Mennonites!). A portion that really stuck with me though was in discovering that our brain knows what we want before our conscious actually does -- much to chew on in that section. Live your life by controlling your desires, don't let them control you is essentially what I took away from the vast landscape he manages to cover in this little book. Read it and see what message you come back with. | ||