ABSTRACT
One aim of this paper is to identify the causes or reasons which have stood in the way of our understanding the absolute and final human desire. And here I would begin modestly by making a distinction between deep desire, on the one hand, and wishes, hopes, urges, temptations, and internal demands, a distinction which I can claim no originality for, since it goes back at least to Plato and is developed in more recent times by Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud, and is also shown clearly enough in folklore, as, for example, in the well-known stories of King Midas and the Three Wishes.
