Myth, ritual, desire, and gender

Joseph H. Smith

pp. 431-444

in: Babette Babich (ed), From phenomenology to thought, errancy, and desire, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

The fundamental response to being born into the world, according to Descartes echoing Aristotle in his Treatise on Passions, is that of wonder. This is an observation psychoanalysts, in the effort to clarify the manifold connections between early experience and later events, can easily overlook. The object of wonder neither repels nor attracts. It incites neither flight nor approach. Wonder to the second power — wonder that carries one to a simultaneous apprehension of the object of wonder and the subject in wonder — is awe.