Sex has received little attention in the history of western philosophy, and what it did receive was not good:
Plato denigrated it, arguing that it should lead to something higher or better (Phaedrus, Symposium),
Aristotle barely mentioned it, and Christian philosophers condemned it:
Augustine argued that its pleasures are dangerous in mastering us, and allowed sex only for procreation (City of God, bk 14; On Marriage and Concupiscence), while Aquinas confined its permissibility to conjugal, procreative acts (Summa contra gentiles III.2; Summa theologia IIa-IIae).
Immanuel Kant (Lectures on Ethics) considered it the only inclination that cannot satisfy the Categorical Imperative,
and Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that sexual desire aims to capture the other’s freedom (1943: pt. III, ch. 3]).
The Marquis de Sade (a philosopher of sorts) went to the opposite extreme, celebrating all types of sexual acts, including rape (1785; 1791; 1795). Only during contemporary times do philosophers, beginning with Bertrand Russell (1929) and including Sigmund Freud (1905), think of sex as generally good (see Soble 2006b and 2008: ch. 2 for a brief yet excellent chapters on this history; see also Belliotti 1993: Pt. I).
Sex raises fascinating issues. Rooted in our biology, pervaded by our intentionality, and (normally) directed at other human beings, sexual desire is complex and not confined to specific mating seasons. Its pleasures are powerful and have ruined many lives. Men and women seem to exhibit, desire, and experience sex differently (e.g., men, much more than women, consume pornography, have sex with prostitutes, frequent strip clubs, and have fetishes
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