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In Vagaries of Desire, Timo Airaksinen develops a new philosophical account of desire understood as mental state that focuses on a desirable possible world. Literary and philosophical themes, including sexuality, are discussed in terms of their metaphoric and metonymic features. Readership: Advanced students and specialists in philosophy of mind, anyone who is interested in the application of rhetorical notions to literature and philosophy, students and specialist in sexual ethics.

Irony and sarcasm are common linguistic tropes. They are both based on falsehoods that the speaker pretends to be true. I briefly characterize their differences. A third trope exists that works when the relevant propositions are true – yet its rhetorical effect resembles irony and sarcasm, I call it mocking. It is mimetic evil: an agent copies another so that the result ridicules him. The image is, in a limited way, true of him and it hurts; we all are vulnerable. I provide a systematic framework for understanding this phenomenon, mocking, in terms of emulation and simulation. Finally, I introduce an idea of universal mimesis and discuss René Girard's theory of desire. He argues that desires are copies of a model. This may not be possible, and I suggest a modification to his theory. I pay attention to his idea of mimetic desire as a source of hatred, which is obviously related to what I call here mimetic mocking.

This is a collection of mutually independent but interrelated papers on desire in it many forms. The first part of strictly analytical, Kafka-papers employ methods of literary criticism and rhetorical terms. The final sections deal with queer sexuality and Nagel's idea of perversion, which I demolish conclusively -- as I hope ; Names: Airaksinen, Timo, 1947- author. Title: Vagaries of desire : a collection of philosophical essays / Timo Airaksinen. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill-Rodopi, 2019. | Series: Value inquiry book series, 0929-8436 ; volume 340. Philosophy, literature, and politics | Includes index. | Summary: "Vagaries of Desire is a major collection of new essays by Timo Airaksinen on the philosophy of desire. The first part develops a novel account of the philosophical theory of desire, including Girard. The second part discusses Kafka's main works, namely The Castle, The Trial, and Amerika, and Thomas Hobbes and the problems of intentionality. The text develops such linguistic tropes as metaphor and metonymy in connection with topics like death and then applies them to Kafka's texts. The third part makes an effort to understand the mysteries of sadism and masochism in philosophical and rhetorical terms. The last article criticizes Thomas Nagel's influential account of sexual perversion and develops a viable alternative"-- ; Peer reviewed

Threats and coercion occur in conflict situations. Sometimes mere force and violence are applied. But people also make offers in order to exercise their power. Coercion is characterized as such rational social interaction and exercise of power that the weaker party is threatened by the stronger party. The weaker party will suffer a loss whatever it does, and the stronger party will gain from such action Two different interpretations of coercion are possible: descriptive and normative. In many cases, both interpretations apply to a given case, as Robert Nozick has shown The problem is that this creates a harmful ambiguity in the sense that one and the same case may involve both an offer and a threat. This is impossible. The weaker party is either threatened or is presented with an offer. It is actually very difficult to distinguish analytically between threats and offers, although morally the difference is all important. This paper presents a theory of how such a distinction can be made and analyzes a number of detailed examples as test cases. It is argued that the victim of coercion has a choice between two disequilibrium situations. Offers are different in this respect. Coercion is compared with exploitation. Some coercion is morally justifiable. This feature is also difficult to understand because coercion is always a prima facie evil strategy. The final result is that in many cases a concept like coercion cannot be applied in any value-free manner. This suggestion has deep methodological consequences for social science. Some social science concepts have value elements in their deep structure.