Book review: Anastosios Korkotsides, Against Utility-Based Economics: On a Life-Based Approach (Routledge, Oxfordshire, UK and New York, NY, USA 2013) 296 pp

Philip Pilkington
Additional contact information
Philip Pilkington: Kingston University, UK

Review of Keynesian Economics, 2014, vol. 2, issue 3, 406-409

Abstract: What is desire and why is it that we, as humans, desire? This may seem like an odd question to ask at the beginning of a book review, but I think it is absolutely necessary that we should proceed in an orderly fashion. The word 'desire', according to our etymological dictionary, derives from the Latin term desiderare, a verb that means to 'long for, wish for; demand, expect'. To desire, then, is to want something that we do not have. We desire, as Korkotsides recognises, because we lack (p. 100). We lack what? Everything and anything – and that is why we desire. If we did not lack something we would no longer, by definition, desire. Thus desire is sustained upon the basis of lack. Korkotsides's book revolves around the central question of desire; one which he derives from the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, either directly or second-hand from the post-structuralists who followed in Lacan's wake. This implicit source is not unimportant, as we shall see in what follows.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/roke/2-3/roke.2014.03.11.xml (application/pdf)
Restricted access

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:rokejn:v:2:y:2014:i:3:p406-409

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Keynesian Economics is currently edited by Thomas Palley, Matías Vernengo and Esteban Pérez Caldentey

More articles in Review of Keynesian Economics from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Phillip Thompson ().