Chiodo scaccia chiodi! Spigolature dalle tradizioni intellettuali sud-asiatiche sull’amore e/o desiderio (kāma) come antidoto ai desideri

Abstract

Love, desire, and the desire for love (kāma) are probably the most powerful of all forces. They dismay and disarm human beings while also filling them with limitlessness. Human beings as such are constitutively desirous, since they are constantly pregnant with one or more desires. In the South Asian Brahmanical world, this simple assimilation opens up to a series of treatises on the relationship between desire and desiring and/or love and lover. This essay investigates some prevailing Indian conceptions on love/desire, outlining a path that leads to the revision of some commonplaces, to arrive finally - through a textual path - to the sublimation of the very ideas of love and desire.