beyond wishful thinking 17to us. It does not seem that the growth of scientifi c knowledge ever
would or could alter this circumstance. If there is one universe or
many, if the universe is eternal or time- bound, if it had a beginning in
time or began together with time, we would simply have diff erent ways
of expressing a riddle that we would remain powerless to solve.Insatiability
Our desires are insatiable. We seek from the limited the unlimited. We
must fail. Our insatiability is a third incurable defect in human life.
Our insatiability is rooted in our natural constitution. Human de-
sires are indeterminate. Th ey fail to exhibit the targeted and scripted
quality of desire among other animals. Even when, as in addiction and
obsession, they fi x on par tic u lar objects, we make those par tic u lar ob-
jects serve as proxies for longings to which they have a loose or arbitrary
relation. We force the limited to serve as a surrogate for the unlimited.
Th is misalliance, revealed most starkly in our obsessional and addictive
behavior, carries over to our entire experience of wanting and seeking.
Th e retreat or vagueness of biological determination in the shaping
of our desires opens space for the working of four forces that, together,
make our desires insatiable.
A fi rst root of insatiability is the imprinting of the dialectic of em-
bodiment and transcendence on the life of desire. We suff er when de-
sire goes unsatisfi ed and, when it is satisfi ed, we are briefl y relieved of
pain. Our desires, however, are unlimited in both their number and their
reach. Th e moment of dissatisfaction is soon followed by other unre-
quited wants. Contentment remains a momentary interlude in an expe-
rience of privation and longing that has no end.
How could it be diff erent? No narrowly directed set of desires de-
fi nes our natures. Hence no par tic u lar satisfactions can leave us last-
ingly at ease. Th e problem with the par tic u lar desires and the par tic u-
lar satisfactions is that they are par tic u lar and that we, in a sense (the
sense of our excess over all the social and conceptual regimes that
we engage), are not.
A second root of insatiability is the social construction of desire.
Our desires lack a predetermined content. To a large extent, we get the