For a Kinder, Gentler Society
The Tyranny Of Pleasure
  • Jean-Claude Guillebaud
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About the Author

Jean-Claude Guillebaud is an award-winning author, journalist and editor. A one-time Sixties liberal, he has been a leading voice for the European Left for 25 years, analyzing and writing about social and political issues from a multi-national perspective.

About the Book
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" was definitely achieved...
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" was definitely 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.

Did the Sexual Revolution bring us happiness or deeper misery? This book 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.

Unlike most books on this topic, Guillebaud overcomes the compartmentalized approach to analyses of sexuality and sets his reflections in the contexts of history, psychoanalysis, anthropology, philosophy and demography.

AWARDED THE FRENCH " RENAUDOT PRIZE FOR ESSAYS ," 1998

Considers tough questions about marriage, Women's Lib, Gay rights and child pornography.

IIncorporates views on sexual morality from the Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Greco-Roman, Confucian and Buddhist perspectives.

Relates the classics of philosophy to today's world, from Plato to Roland Barthes.
Excerpt

Originally published by Seuil, in Paris, 1998.

Translated from French by Algora Publishing.


Originally published by Seuil, in Paris, 1998.

Translated from French by Algora Publishing.



Pages 372
Year: 1999
LC code: HQ31 .G954
Dewey code: 176—dc21
BISAC: PHI005000
BISAC: SOC032000
BISAC: PSY016000

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