Lust: The Seven Deadly Sins pdf

Simon Blackburn è un filosofo accademico inglese noto per il suo lavoro nella metaetica, dove difende il quasi-realismo, e nella filosofia del linguaggio; più recentemente, ha ottenuto un vasto pubblico generale dai suoi sforzi per rendere popolare la filosofia. Si è ritirato come professore di filosofia all'Università di Cambridge nel 2011, ma rimane un illustre professore di filosofia all'Università della Carolina del Nord a Chapel Hill, insegnando ogni semestre autunnale. È anche membro del Trinity College di Cambridge e membro della cattedra del New College of the Humanities. In precedenza è stato membro del Pembroke College di Oxford e ha anche insegnato a tempo pieno all'Università della Carolina del Nord come Edna J. Koury Professor. È un ex presidente della Società Aristotelica, avendo servito il mandato 2009-2010. È stato eletto Fellow della British Academy nel 2002 e Foreign Honorary Fellow dell'American Academy of Arts & Sciences nel 2008.

Lust: The Seven Deadly Sins pdf da Simon Blackburn

In the uneven 7 Deadly sins series, copublished by Oxford University press and the New York Public Library, three of the volumes are stinkers, one is above average, and three are quite good. The best of the lot is Robert Thurman's treatment of anger; third best is Francine Prose on gluttony. Second place goes to philosopher Simon Blackburn's witty, urbane, and analytically precise treatment of lust. In Blackburn's hands (pardon the bad pun) lust loses the automatically pessimistic sheen of sin that the Christian tradition has bestowed on it. As Blackburn says (p. 27), "we [should] no more criticize lust because it can get out of hand, than we [should][ criticize hunger because it can lead to gluttony or thirst because it can lead to drunkenness." Looked at in itself, lust--desire for sexual pleasure--is neutral. Context and disposition are the dividing lines in separating moral from immoral lust. Lust that fully recognizes the partner as a fellow human being and desires his or her sexual fulfillment in the encounter is, says Blackburn, the optimal situation. There's a kind of feedback look that occurs when sexual partners mutually recognize one another: I desire your pleasure, and seeing it enhances my pleasure, which enhances yours... Blackburn refers to this as Hobbesian unity (from a passage from Hobbes in which he writes of the relationship between imagination and mutual pleasuring in sex). This doesn't mean that all lust which falls short of Hobbesian unity is tarnished. One of the healthier aspects of Blackburn's approach is his recognition of degrees. As he says (p. 133), "if Hobbesian unity cannot be achieved, it can at least be aimed at, and even if it cannot be aimed at, it can be imagined and dreamed." Blackburn's book achieves what all good philosophical treatments do: it simply has the ring of familiar common sense.