The Tyranny of Pleasure

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Did the Sexual Revolution bring us happiness or deeper misery?This book relates the classics of philosophy to today's world, from Plato to Roland Barthes, and articulates the choices we have made and identifies the paradoxical downstream effects that have brought us to today: floundering between the unacceptable alternatives of unbounded permissiveness and nostalgic moralism.

About the Book

This book hits the question of sexual morals head-on, asking what is the place of the forbidden in modern society. Sexuality is a matter of history, psychoanalysis, anthropology, theology, political philosophy, demography, economics, and criminology. But there is little communication among these professions. The author revisits each field of knowledge to produce a richly nuanced analysis.The book's title is borrowed from Plato. In The Laws, Plato speaks in praise of pleasure, but he regards as weak and condemnable the man who lets "the tyrant Eros" rule his heart.Tyranny sheds a salutary light on a question that today is largely "taboo," for reasons that are vigorously contrary to the Puritanism of yesteryear. Since the Sixties, there has been a widespread sense that a "liberation" had definitely been achieved in the world of morality. The revolution of the "Sixties" supposedly freed us of a yoke that had crushed all the generations before. However, a broad consideration of history shows the naivete of such a view.Jean-Claude Guillebaud is a prominent French Catholic intellectual from the Left.AWARDED THE FRENCH " RENAUDOT PRIZE FOR ESSAYS ," 1998Originally published by Seuil, in Paris, 1998. Translated from French by Algora Publishing.