At one time, desire was fashionable at psychology conferences. At every conference I gave then, I knew that at the end, when it came time to exchange with the audience or colleagues, someone would raise their hand and ask me: "Very well, but how do you articulate that with the question of desire?"
Que j’ai parlé d’estime de soi, d’anxiété, de dépression, de méditation, de consolation, de psychologie positive, il y avait toujours un lacanien dans la salle qui me demandait d’articuler ça avec la question du désir…
So, because of all these parrot-like colleagues, I got stuck on the concept of desire for years. I didn't want to hear about it anymore, at least on a theoretical level. I was wrong, of course! Desire is a real question, a big question...
Le désir ce n’est pas seulement le besoin, qui nous pousse vers ce qui nous manque ; ce n’est pas seulement la pulsion, cette force biologique animale et obscure. Le désir, c’est une mise en mouvement, un élan vers la vie, une force d’accomplissement de notre élan vital. Tout désir, quel que soit son objet, est un désir de vivre, de vivre plus fort encore, de tout vivre. Goethe écrivait ainsi : « Nos désirs sont les pressentiments de tous les possibles qui vivent en nous. »
Desire is beautiful, but it is not calm; it is tiring, sometimes exhausting, because it always pushes us to accelerate rather than slow down, to run rather than walk. It is sometimes violent, tyrannical, to the point of putting us in danger.
This is why philosophers have always pondered the thousand and one ways to control or extinguish one's desires, or the most violent of them. Listen to Epictetus:
“About every desire, ask yourself: what advantage does it have for me to not satisfy it?”
Calm down, air condition!
Meditation also encourages us on this path: when your desires overwhelm you, sit down, breathe, observe with detachment and kindness what is stirring within you and is about to shake up your life.
To desire is a transitive verb: we desire something.
But in truth, desire is intransitive by nature: we desire, period! We desire to live, we are full of desire, and it can rest on anything that will pass. This is the warning of the poet Paul-Jean Toulet:
“Beware of the sweetness of things / When you feel your heart beating without cause / Too heavy…”
Desire is what makes us alive. It is our ability to live in an augmented reality: it makes us see—sometimes to the point of blindness—things as even more beautiful than they are, more desirable, more moving.
Then a day comes when what we lack is no longer the objects of desire, but desire itself... For we do not die of old age, but of the extinction of our desires, and of the sorrow that follows.
In the meantime, desire, friends, desire, with all your might! And since summer is coming, here's a little vacation homework to last until the back-to-school column: at the end of the meal, with your friends, ask yourselves all together: "Is desiring living? Or is living desiring?"
I'm waiting for your copies!
Illustration: The extinction of desire, an ideal recommended by Buddhism… (photo by friend Matthieu Ricard, Aruchanal Pradesh, India, 2020)
PS : cet article reprend ma chronique du 24 juin 2025, que vous pouvez écouter ici, c’était dans l’émission de France Inter, Grand Bien Vous Fasse.