Metaphysical Desire

A desire not to possess what another person, the model, possesses (or wants to possess) but to be the model. Metaphysical desire is the type of mimetic desire that has moved beyond acquisitive desire—the desire to acquire something that a model wants—to metaphysical desire—the desire to be who the model is.

Focus on Another's Possession

This desire is a sickness unto death, in the words of Kierkegaard, because there is no solution to it. The subject can never be the model. He longs for a being that is not his own. Metaphysical desire, then, is the desire to be someone who we are not. It is a fatal attraction, a desire for something that is ultimately impossible to bring to fulfillment.