Fantasy, Pleasure, Desire, and Morality

Abstract It is natural to suppose that to fantasize about something is just to pleasantly imagine it, and thus that investigating the natures of imagination and pleasure is all we need to do to investigate the nature of fantasy. I argue that this picture is too simple. Even if fantasizing about something is pleasantly imagining it, it is unclear what the nature and object of the relevant pleasure are. I distinguish two natural views about this, the Activity View and the Object View, and I argue that the latter makes it easier than the former to justify two claims: that one cannot fantasize about something without desiring it, and that it can be inherently morally objectionable to fantasize about certain things. Although I suggest that we should therefore accept the Object View, my larger aim is to encourage inquiry into the nature of fantasy by illustrating how interesting it can be.