PP233 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Paraphilia, Masturbation, Virtual Reality
Document Summary
Jacobsen notes that the distinction between the objects of desire and desirable features of objects hasn"t been made clear enough through history. In plato"s symposium, it is suggested that our desire for a beautiful body isn"t a desire for that particular body, but for the beauty instantiated in it. For plato, beauty is a universal something that can be present in many different particulars. This belief led plato to adopting a kind of promiscuous attitude toward sex and love that one should find it in as many people as they can. The problem with plato"s view is that it collapses the distinction between object and feature. What we had previously taken to be a feature of an object (beauty) becomes the object of desire itself. Jacobsen rejects plato"s view because it collapses the distinction between object and feature. Jacobsen responds to the simple suggestion that sexual desire has the object of sex.
