Abstract

This book provides a full account of the nature of desire. It is a work about a single phenomenon that is more general than passionate yearning, but less general than the whole of the pro attitudes. It is a phenomenon for which everyday usage has at least three labels: ‘desiring’, ‘wanting’, and ‘wishing’. The book is a work on intrinsic desires, wants, and wishes: on desires. It faces a danger shared by other books importing science into philosophy: that it will be understood only by those who have made a special study of both fields.