Descriptive
Are my desires my own?
On the axis: Relation to desire · the origin of desire
Do my desires arise from me, or do I desire what others desire, what society manufactures for me? If they are not my own, affirming or sorting them takes on a different meaning.
Philosophers' positions
60
35
5
Justification
Far from Stoic or Buddhist extinction, Rousseau takes desire and imagination to be the very source of the feeling of existence: one enjoys less what one possesses than what one hopes for, and happiness lies in the striving, not in full satisfaction. Yet this affirmation is not without sorting: one must follow the simple desires born of self-love and , and beware of those insatiable ones that inflates through comparison.
Woe to him who has nothing left to desire! He loses, as it were, all that he possesses.Julie, or the New Heloise, VI
Rousseau, Julie, or the New Heloise, VI · Rousseau, Emile, book II