You desire what your biology imposes on you: whatever external things happen to trigger your internal biological desire are the things you become to desire. As a mature human being your desires are capable of being more complex and abstract and need not necessarily depend on your biology.

>>7998530
>self-consciousness is Desire in general

how does that relate to biological needs?

>>7998535
OP asked to explain desire in the development of self-consciousness. "The development of self-consciousness", at least for me, suggests that we're talking about newborn toddlers that have not yet reached self-consciousness, so my first sentence was addressing toddlers and the second sentence, adults

You're not telling me "Desire" is a special Hegelian term, are you?

>>7998545
yes, it is

>>7998513
Self-consciousness has for itself two objects, first the world of sensuous appearance, that is the actually appearing things before it, and second the consciousness of this as a world of appearance. Consciousness is perception, understanding, etc, while self-consciousness is the consciousness of perception and understanding as moments of consciousness.
In simpler terms, realising that the true object of the self is appearance in general, and not the things slotted into appearance. Appearance is not static, but a continous movement between the fact of appearing, and what is appearing (the universal and the particular). The "difference which is not a difference" is between the object of consciousness and the object of self-consciousness which preserves the former, but as a moment of itself. The way I see it, the process by which things are negated (appearances removed from appearance) is the movement forward of self-consciousness (an act of understanding), which is desire.

>>7998642
To clarify, because the object of self-consciousness is reflected into itself (the appearing thing is realised as being produced by the fact of appearance) it realises itself as Life and itself as its own desire.

By Life is meant not 'a life' or 'a sample of life' but both life in general and life specifically, the same with Desire.

hegel was the stupidest thing western civilization ever came up with, at least until wittgenstein came on the scene...seriously retarded shit.

>>7998513
OP anyone who gives you a two-line answer on this board as to what Desire is in Hegelian context is probably mistaken and certainly misleading.

Basically everyone who has read Hegel has taken this in a different direction, but the roots of Hegel's own engagement with the problem are 1) theological (see his Early Theological Writings) and 2) Neoplatonic/hermetic (see Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition by Magee, also Heterodox Hegel by O'Regan).

Judith Butler's Subject's of Desire is a fantastic reception history in the francophone literature. Everyone knows the story on the German side - with the inversions of Feuerbach and Stirner, Marx. And British Idealism took Hegel in a totally different direction.

Anyway this is assuming you have some basic understanding of Hegel in the first place, which, if you're asking how Desire works, you probably don't.

Just look up Neoplatonic emanation and return - that's exactly where Hegel is coming from.