The philosophy of sexuality, like the philosophy of science, art or law, is the study of the concepts and propositions surrounding its central protagonist, in this case `sex’. Its practitioners focus on conceptual, metaphysical and normative questions. Conceptual philosophy of sex analyses the notions of sexual desire, sexual activity and sexual pleasure. What makes a feeling a sexual sensation? Manipulation of and feelings in the genitals are not necessary, since other body parts yield sexual pleasure. What makes an act sexual?
A touch on the arm might be a friendly pat, an assault, or sex; physical properties alone do not distinguish them. What is the conceptual link between sexual pleasure and sexual activity? Neither the intention to produce sexual pleasure nor the actual experience of pleasure seems necessary for an act to be sexual. Other conceptual questions have to do not with what makes an act sexual, but with what makes it the type of sexual act it is. How should `rape’ be defined? What the conceptual differences are, if any, between obtaining sex through physical force and obtaining it by offering money is an interesting and important issue.
Metaphysical philosophy of sex discusses ontological and epistemological matters: the place of sexuality in human nature; the relationships among sexuality, emotion and cognition; the meaning of sexuality for the person, the species, the cosmos. What is sex all about, anyway? That sexual desire is a hormone-driven instinct implanted by a god or nature acting in the service of the species, and that it has a profound spiritual dimension, are two — not necessarily incompatible — views.
Perhaps the significance of sexuality is little different from that of eating, breathing and defecating; maybe, or in addition, sexuality is partially constitutive of moral personality. Normative philosophy of sex explores the perennial questions of sexual ethics. In what circumstances is it morally permissible to engage in sexual activity or experience sexual pleasure? With whom? For what purpose? With which body parts? For how long? The historically central answers come from Thomist natural law, Kantian deontology, and utilitarianism.
Normative philosophy of sex also addresses legal, social and political issues. Should society steer people in the direction of heterosexuality, marriage, family? May the law regulate sexual conduct by prohibiting prostitution or homosexuality? Normative philosophy of sex includes nonethical value questions as well. What is good sex? What is its contribution to the good life? The breadth of the philosophy of sex is shown by the variety of topics it investigates: abortion, contraception, acquaintance rape, pornography, sexual harassment, and objectification, to name a few.
The philosophy of sex begins with a picture of a privileged pattern of relationship, in which two adult heterosexuals love each other, are faithful to each other within a formal marriage, and look forward to procreation and family. Philosophy of sex, as the Socratic scrutiny of our sexual practices, beliefs and concepts, challenges this privileged pattern by exploring the virtues, and not only the vices, of adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, group sex, bestiality, masturbation, sadomasochism, incest, paedophilia and casual sex with anonymous strangers.
Doing so provides the same illumination about sex that is provided when the philosophies of science, art and law probe the privileged pictures of their own domains. The philosophy of sex investigates conceptual, metaphysical and normative questions, although the boundaries between these three are hardly firm. Metaphysical and normative philosophy of sex are well developed, stretching back to Plato and Augustine; sexual ethics has a famous history, and the contemplation of the place of sexuality in human nature is central to Christianity.
The analysis of sexual concepts, by contrast, is in its infancy. The subjects of analysis are these core concepts and the logical relationships among them: sexual desire, sensation, pleasure, act, arousal and satisfaction. Derivative sexual concepts, which presuppose an understanding of the core concepts, are also the subject of analysis. Among these are rape, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, sexual perversion, prostitution and pornography. Consider adultery. It can be defined as a sexual act that occurs between two persons, at least one of whom is married but not to the other.
The definition should also mention, as a necessary condition, willing and knowledgeable consent. Suppose X coerces Y, who is married to Z, into coitus. Y did not commit adultery, because Y did not have the proper frame of mind; Y never intended to commit adultery or engage in intercourse at all. Or suppose X and Y engage in coitus, both believing, on the basis of good evidence (but falsely), that X’s spouse Z died years ago; or the unmarried X has good reason to think (but falsely, due to Y’s deception) that Y, too, is not married.
Has X committed an adulterous sexual act, unwittingly and so, perhaps, not culpably; or is X’s lack of mens rea, X’s ignorance of the true state of affairs, incompatible with adultery? We cannot fully understand the derivative sexual concept `adultery’ until we have defined `sexual act’. If X and Y send to each other sexually arousing messages through the Internet, have they engaged in a sexual act (`cybersex’)? Is their exchange of messages sexual enough, quantitatively or qualitatively, to be adulterous, if one of them is married?
Here we can see the intertwining of conceptual and moral matters. A lack of clarity about `sexual act’ allows the exoneration of adultery by a convenient rediscription of what occurs between X and Y — it was only `fooling around’, not `real’ sex. Another, quite opposite, maneuver, is possible. Theologians often define adultery in the spirit of Matthew 5: 28, making a sexual fantasy sufficient, even in the absence of physical contact: X commits adultery if X thinks lustful thoughts about Y. Our interest in defining `sexual act’ is not merely philosophical; it is also practical.
Precise definitions of `sexual act’ are needed for social scientific studies of sexual behaviour and orientation (to be used in the consideration of questions about, for example, who engages in homosexual acts and whether this correlates with genetics, and how often people engage in sex) and for legislation in the areas of child abuse, rape, harassment and adultery. Sexual acts might be defined as those involving sexual body parts. The sexual parts of the body are first catalogued; acts are sexual if and only if they involve contact with one of these parts. `Sexual act’, on this view, is logically dependent on `sexual part’.
But do we clearly understand `sexual part’? Two people might shake hands briefly, without the act being sexual; they could, alternatively, warmly press their hands together and feel a surge of sexual pleasure. Sometimes, then, the hands are used nonsexually and sometimes they are used sexually. Are the hands a sexual part? Whether the hands are a sexual part depends on the activity in which they are engaged. Hence, instead of an act’s being sexual because it involves a sexual body part, a body part is sexual because of the sexual nature of the act in which it is used.
We might say that a genital examination is not a sexual act even though the genitals are touched; hence contact with a sexual part is not sufficient for an act to be sexual. But we could also say that not even the genitals are sexual parts in the requisite sense; for in the medical context the genitals are not being treated as sexual parts. The morality of sexuality has been understood by some in terms of its procreative function. Alternatively, the procreative nature of sexual activity might be employed analytically rather than normatively.
Sexual acts, on this view, are those having procreative potential in virtue of their biological structure. The principal case of such an act is heterosexual intercourse. This analysis, then, is too narrow, if taken as stating a necessary condition. Here is a more plausible formulation: sexual acts are (1) acts that are procreative in structure and (2) any acts that are the physiological or psychological precursors or concomitants of acts that are sexual by (1). This version casts a wider net, but not wide enough.
Masturbation, which is not a procreative act and not often a precursor or concomitant of coitus, turns out not to be a sexual act. Another emendation suggests itself: sexual acts are also (3) acts that bear a close physical resemblance to the acts judged sexual by (1) or (2). This vague condition does not save the proposed analysis. Some sexual perversions (such as fondling shoes) are sexual even though they bear no reasonable resemblance to coitus or its concomitants. This analysis also suggests that homosexual acts, all of which are nonprocreative, are sexual just because they sufficiently resemble heterosexual acts.
That seems to be the wrong reason for the right conclusion. Another view is that both homosexual and heterosexual acts are sexual in virtue of the type of pleasure or sensation they produce. Thus it seems reasonable to propose that sexual acts are those that produce sexual pleasure. But if pleasure is the criterion of the sexual, pleasure cannot be the gauge of the nonmoral quality of sex acts. The couple who have lost sexual interest in each other, and who engage in routine coitus from which they derive no pleasure, are still performing a sexual act.
We are forbidden, by this analysis, from saying that they engage in sex but that it is (nonmorally) bad sex. Rather, we can say, at most, that they tried to engage in sex, and failed. Furthermore, in this analysis `sexual act’ is logically dependent on `sexual pleasure’, so we cannot say that sexual pleasure is the pleasure produced by sexual acts. Then how might we distinguish sexual pleasure or sensations from others? This problem also arises for a more complex analysis: sexual acts are those acts that tend to satisfy sexual desire, where sexual desire is taken to be the desire for the pleasure of physical contact.
Pleasures of physical contact’ might not specify sexual pleasure accurately enough. An additional complication is that a gender difference in the experience and conceptualization of sexual pleasure might exist. Additionally, someone might experience sexual desire yet have no idea what to do as a result of having it, no idea that physical contact, or what kind of physical contact, is the next, but hardly mandatory, step. Sexual desire might not be a desire for something or that something at all. What, then, are the features of a desire that make it sexual?
Sexual desire is distinguished by being accompanied by sexual excitement and arousal. We can, in turn, ask what sexual excitement and arousal are, as opposed to other kinds of excitement and arousal. For Shaffer, sexual arousal is `directly sexual in that it involves the sexual parts, viz. , the genital areas’. Have we gone full circle? Finally, sexual acts might be understood as those involving a sexual intention. But an intention to produce or experience sexual pleasure, for example, might be neither necessary nor sufficient for an act to be sexual.
A couple engaging in coitus, both parties intending only that fertilization occur and neither concerned with sexual pleasure, performs a sexual act. Maybe this is not the correct sexual intention. But the intention to procreate is not it: gays and lesbians experience desire and arousal and engage in sex without any procreative intent. Furthermore, intentions are arguably irrelevant in making sexual acts sexual. Rape can be sexual whether the rapist intends to get sexual pleasure from it, to humiliate his victim, or to assert his masculinity.
From the fact that in some rapes, rapists intend to degrade their victims, to dominate and exert power over them, it does not follow that the act is not sexual. Indeed, the rapist might have chosen a sexual act quite on purpose as his method to humiliate and degrade. His victim is degraded exactly by the sexual nature of the act endured; the victim experiences a shame that accompanies a forced sexual act but would not accompany sexless assault. What, then, are sexual acts? Maybe they have no transcultural or ahistorical essence, and the analytic project is doomed.
Acts involving the same body parts are sometimes sexual, sometimes not. Some touches and movements are deemed sexual in one culture but not in others; the fragrances, mannerisms and costumes that are sexually arousing vary among places and times. No lowest common denominator exists that makes all sexual acts sexual. Bodily movements acquire meaning — as sexual, or as something else — by existing within a culture that attaches meaning to them. There are, then, only variable social definitions of the sexual.
Such is the view known as social constructionism (or anti-essentialism). As one proponent puts it, `the very meaning and content of sexual arousal’ varies so much among genders, classes, and cultures that `there is no abstract and universal category of \”the erotic\” or \”the sexual\” applicable without change to all societies’ (Padgug 1979: 54; original emphasis). Nancy Hartstock elaborates: We should understand sexuality not as an essence or set of properties defining an individual, nor as a set of drives and needs (especially genital) of an individual.
Rather, we should understand sexuality as culturally and historically defined and constructed. Anything can become eroticized. (1983: 156) Hartsock’s expression `anything can become eroticized’ must mean `anything can be linked to sexual arousal and pleasure’. That might be true; after all, unusual items bring paraphiliacs sexual joy. If so, however, there seems to be a common denominator after all, an essential even if narrow core to the sexual: an unchanging, culturally invariable subjective experience of sexual pleasure.
The history of sexuality is the history of our discourse about sex, as Michel Foucault might have put it. We create things by using words. There really is no such thing as masturbatory insanity or nymphomania no — medical condition, no psychological character trait, no underlying pathology. Well, there is, but only because we have picked out some behavioral patterns and made up a word to name them, not because masturbatory insanity and nymphomania have, like the moon, an existence independent of our words, our observations, and our evaluations of it.
Social facts, such as the existence of `peasants’, `witches’ and `yuppies’, have an odd, plastic, fuzzy nature. Similar considerations apply to `perversion’, `philanderer’ and `homosexuality’. Thus the title of David Halperin’s social constructionist monograph, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (1990). It did not exist before the word `homosexual’ was coined by Karoly Maria Benkert in 1869. In sex we are vulnerable to another’s enticing words and seductive touch. Our wills are weak, so we are dominated as much by our desires as by the other’s physical strength or alluring beauty.
Engulfment or invasion of our bodies by the other’s gaze and flesh is hazardous. In exchange for exquisite pleasure, we make ourselves susceptible to embarrassment, anguish, betrayal. This psychology of sex provides reason for taking sex, and so sexual ethics, seriously. Its consequences — transmission of disease, the existence of a new human being — do so as well. If procreation is a couple’s contribution to God’s ongoing work of creation, if it is the sacred ground where humans and God engage in a shared project, then sexuality must be protected by stringent ethics.
Or if sexual personality resides at the core of moral personality, if the training of sexuality impinges on developing character in such a way that the failure to learn to control the pursuit of sexual pleasure undermines the achievement of virtue, then the moral education of the body is crucial. In light of sexuality’s intricate psychology and far-reaching consequences, sexual activity might be justifiable only by weighty nonsexual considerations. Consider the hostility of Christianity to sex, as in Augustine’s De nuptiis et concupiscentia (On marriage and Concupiscence), where we hear the strains of Plato’s Phaedrus:
A man turns to good use the evil of concupiscence … when he bridles and restrains its rage … and never relaxes his hold upon it except when intent on offspring, and then controls and applies it to the carnal generation of children … not to the subjection of the spirit to the flesh in a sordid servitude. Neither is Immanuel Kant kind to sexuality: `Sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite …. Taken by itself it is a degradation of human nature’.
If sexual desire objectifies, in virtue of pushing us to seek pleasure without regard for our partners, if sexual urges engender deception and manipulation, then sexuality is morally suspicious. Only special circumstances could make acting on these desires morally right. For these gloomy reasons, many conservative and religious thinkers, but also some feminists, believe that sexual activity is redeemed only by love or marriage. In contrast, sexual liberals suppose that sexuality is a wholesome bonding mechanism that allows persons to overcome the psychological and moral tension between egoism and benevolence.
Sexual activity involves pleasing the self and the other at the same time; these exchanges of pleasure generate gratitude and affection. Further, sexual pleasure is a valuable thing in its own right, the pursuit of which does not require external or nonsexual justification. And sexuality is a cardinal affirmation of the goodness of bodily existence. There is no contradiction in presuming that a virtuous person can lead a life in which sexual pleasure is sought for its own sake — in moderation, of course. Weak, not stringent, moral rules apply to sex.
The claim that sexual pleasure is valuable does not mean we should not condemn sexual misconduct. We often do, however, pardon sexually motivated misconduct when we would not excuse similar conduct motivated otherwise (see Pausanias in Plato’s Symposium 182e-183c), Does sex warrant this exculpation? If the most intense way we relate to another person is sexually, then maybe forgiveness for sexual offences should be graciously forthcoming. But sexuality is hardly unique in the depth of the personal relationship it elicits; think about mutual hatred.
Nor is there much intensity in the dull coitus of a long-married couple. According to another line of thought, sexuality has a peculiar ability to thwart reason: sexual impulses make us temporarily deranged (recall the dark horse of Plato’s Phaedrus). We are to be excused because in sexual matters we cannot control ourselves. But the lures of politics, ambition and money are just as powerful and devilish as the anticipations of the flesh. In none of these respects does sexuality seem unique or significant enough to deserve special attention.
Perhaps sexual desire — as a component of love and as opposed to mere `horniness’ — latches on to particular objects (I want Jennifer), in a way hunger does not (I want a sausage, and any fat, juicy one will do). Genuine eros makes us desire a particular person; crude desire is satisfiable by fungible bodies. But the distinction between eros and lust is a fine one, and in many instances doubtful; we only deceive ourselves that this person is not replaceable by others in our affections. A metaphysical illusion resides in the heart of sexual desire.
Sexual passion misleads us; it makes it appear that we are ontologically more than we are, transcendental selves rather than mere material beings. Plato, in the Symposium, also issued a warning: what we think we are seeking is not really what we want; our eros for bodies is really eros for truth and beauty. Augustine similarly thought that the search for God was hidden beneath the search for sensual pleasure in another’s body. And for Arthur Schopenhauer, the beauty of the object of sexual desire was nature’s way of tricking us (men? ) into thinking that the satisfaction of our erotic love for our beloveds is for our own individual good.
To the contrary, sexual love benefits only the species, for the good of which nature makes mere use of us. This naturalist vision of sex is not far removed from Atkinson’s anti-essentialism; both see its purpose in terms of the species and not of the individual. For Aquinas, sexual acts are morally wrong in two different ways (Summa theologiae IIaIIae. 154. 1). First, `when the act of its nature is incompatible with the purpose of the sex-act [procreation]. In so far as generation is blocked, we have unnatural vice, which is any complete sex-act from which of its nature generation cannot follow.
Aquinas gives four examples (IIaIIae. 154. 11) of sexual acts that are unnatural vice because not procreative: `the sin of self-abuse’, `intercourse with a thing of another species’, acts `with a person of the same sex’, and acts in which `the natural style of intercourse is not observed, as regards the proper organ or according to other rather beastly and monstrous techniques’. Second, `the conflict with right reason may arise from the nature of the act with respect to the other party’, as in incest, rape, seduction and adultery.
Sexual sins in the first category are the worst: `unnatural vice flouts nature by transgressing its basic principles of sexuality, [so] it is in this matter the gravest of sins’ (IIaIIae. 154. 12). Aquinas is replying to an interlocutor who argues that unnatural vice is not the morally worst sex. `The more a sin is against charity’, says the interlocutor, `the worse it is. Now adultery and seduction and rape harms our neighbor, whereas unnatural lust injures nobody else, and accordingly is not the worst form of lust. ‘ Aquinas rejects this thinking.
Seduction, rape and adultery violate only `the developed plan of living according to reason’ that derives from humans living in society, while `unnatural sins’, which violate the plan of creation, are an `affront to God’. If some sexual acts are unnatural, they are morally wrong, in Thomistic ethics, just for that reason. To the list of reasons sexual acts might be wrong — they are dishonest, cruel, unfair, manipulative, coercive, exploitative, selfish or negligently dangerous — a Thomist adds `unnatural’. Not so the sexual libertarian.
Mutual consent is, in the absence of third-party harm, sufficient for the morality of sexual acts, and no law of God or nature need supplement this basic principle of proper relations among humans. In arguing that sexual behaviour ought to conform to human nature within God’s plan, one must be able to justify particular conceptions of that nature and his intentions. Augustine and Aquinas knew, or thought they did, that God wanted sexuality to be the mechanism of procreation. Aquinas displays confidence in his account of human nature:
It is evident that the bringing up of a human child requires the care of a mother who nurses him, and much more the care of a father, under whose guidance and guardianship his earthly needs are supplied and his character developed. Therefore indiscriminate intercourse is against human nature. The union of one man with one woman is postulated, and with her he remains, not for a little while, but for a long period, or even for a whole lifetime. (IIaIIae. 154. 2) Christine Gudorf, however, argues for a new, non-Augustinian yet Christian understanding of the body.
Basing her view in part on the existence of the clitoris, an organ that on her view has only a pleasure-producing function and no procreative function, Gudorf argues that God designed the human body foremost for sexual pleasure. Although he appeals to biology and not the Lord’s plan, Michael Levin concludes, in agreement with Aquinas, that homosexual acts `involve the use of the genitals for what they aren’t for’. Homosexual anal intercourse is unnatural because being inside another man’s rectum is not what a man’s penis is `for’; it is for penetrating a woman’s vagina.
This kind of Thomism is susceptible to mockery (Does a man’s masturbation misuse the penis, or the hand? Does heterosexual cunnilingus misuse the tongue? ) but it has also received serious discussion. In deriving ethical judgments directly from nature, the problem is to come up with a coherent, plausible account of the `natural’. Whereas Aquinas claims that a man’s `indiscriminate intercourse is against human nature’, much recent biology claims that promiscuity in men is perfectly natural, the result of evolutionary mechanisms. In this way, science has the power to turn philosophical or theological reliance on nature on its head.
Thus, if the current research suggesting that homosexual orientation has a substantial genetic basis is vindicated, the Western religions might have to concede that such sexual desires and behavior are, after all, part of the design of nature. Patricia Jung and Ralph Smith (1993) offer a Christian defense of loving, homosexual marriages, in part based on the idea that being homosexual is little different from being left-handed. Most philosophers have had something to say about sex; with a little digging, one can uncover the unsystematic sexual thoughts of Aristotle, Descartes and Hume.
Others — such as Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Sartre — took sexuality more seriously. And for some, most notably Plato and Freud, the sexual was nearly the heart and soul. But in Kant’s sexual philosophy, the conceptual, the metaphysical and the ethical are most provocatively combined; and in Kant, contemporary philosophical problems and disputes about sex can be glimpsed clearly. Aquinas’ fame (or notoriety) rests with his natural law sexual ethics; Kant is important as the author of a sexual ethics of respect.
For Kant, human sexual interaction involves one person’s merely using another for the sake of pleasure: here is no way in which a human being can be made an Object of indulgence for another except through sexual impulse…. Sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite…. Sexual love… by itself and for itself… is nothing more than appetite…. As an Object of appetite for another a person becomes a thing and can be treated and used as such by every one. This is the only case in which a human being is designed by nature as the Object of another’s enjoyment.
If all sexual acts — not only rape, or those in which consent is absent — are objectifying and instrumental, is not celibacy required? Kant thinks not, Following Paul (‘The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife’, 1 Corinthians 7: 4), Kant lays down a stringent rule: The sole condition on which we are free to make use of our sexual desire depends upon the right to dispose over the person as a whole…. If I have the right over the whole person, I have also the right … o use that person’s organa sexualia for the satisfaction of sexual desire.
But how am I to obtain these rights over the whole person? Only by giving that person the same rights over the whole of myself. This happens only in marriage. Matrimony is an agreement between two persons by which they grant each other equal reciprocal rights, each of them undertaking to surrender the whole of their person to the other with a complete right of disposal over it …. If I yield myself completely to another and obtain the person of the other in return, I win myself back…. In this way the two persons become a unity of will…. Thus sexuality leads to a union of human beings, and in that union alone its exercise is possible. 1780-81: 166-7)
Mary Ann Gardell, instead of sensing the Pauline `marriage debt’ in the Kantian exchange of rights, reads Kant as benignly claiming that `marriage transforms an otherwise manipulative masturbatory relationship into one that is essentially altruistic in character’. But Kant speaks of marriage as a contract, an exchange of rights of access to the body.
So he might be claiming that the marital pledge, the voluntary assumption of the terms of an agreement, assures that the spouses are not treating each other only as means, but also as ends, in the marriage bed. Or Kant might be justifying marital sex by abolishing the mere possibility of instrumentality: after the ontological union of two persons into one by marriage, there cannot be any use of one person by another. This is why Kierkegaard found such views not benign but pernicious.
All pleasure is selfish. The pleasure of the lover … s not selfish with respect to the loved one, but in union they are both absolutely selfish, inasmuch as in union and in love they constitute one self’. Kant’s idea that marriage cleanses sex of instrumentality apparently implies that homosexual marriage would similarly cleanse same-sex sexuality. Kant sidesteps this conclusion, asserting that homosexuality is one of the crimina carnis contra naturam: Onanism … is abuse of the sexual faculty…. By it man sets aside his person and degrades himself below the level of animals…. Intercourse between sexus homogenii… oo is contrary to the ends of humanity; for the end of humanity in respect of sexuality is to preserve the species without debasing the person.
The homosexual `no longer deserves to be a person’‘. Kant, following Augustine and Aquinas, condemns nonprocreative sex as unnatural, even if it is, in his own sense, noninstrumental. Kant’s notion of marriage, in which a person obtains rights over a person and their genitals, might itself reduce the spouses to sex objects, unless the voluntary agreement of the spouses to the arrangement is sufficient to eliminate mere use.
But if we emphasize the voluntary nature of the exchange of rights that occurs in marriage, Kant’s contention that sex is permissible only in marriage is undermined, because two people — gay or straight — can grant each other reciprocal rights to dispose over their persons for a limited period of time (as in the casual sex of one evening). Nothing in the idea of an exchange of rights seems to entail that the exchange must be forever or exclusive. Is there something irreversible about this exchange of rights?
If not, Kant’s defense of monogamous, lifelong marriage in terms of a `unity of will’ is no more convincing than Aquinas’ appeal to human nature. PERSONAL CONCLUSION: Among the many topics explored by the philosophy of sexuality are procreation, contraception, celibacy, marriage, adultery, casual sex, flirting, prostitution, homosexuality, masturbation, seduction, rape, sexual harassment, sadomasochism, pornography, bestiality, and pedophilia. What do all these things have in common? All are related in various ways to the vast domain of human sexuality.
That is, they are related, on the one hand, to the human desires and activities that involve the search for and attainment of sexual pleasure or satisfaction and, on the other hand, to the human desires and activities that involve the creation of new human beings. For it is a natural feature of human beings that certain sorts of behaviors and certain bodily organs are and can be employed either for pleasure or for reproduction, or for both. The philosophy of sexuality explores these topics both conceptually and normatively.
Conceptual analysis is carried out in the philosophy of sexuality in order to clarify the fundamental notions of sexual desire and sexual activity. Conceptual analysis is also carried out in attempting to arrive at satisfactory definitions of adultery, prostitution, rape, pornography, and so forth. Conceptual analysis (for example: what are the distinctive features of a desire that make it sexual desire instead of something else? In what ways does seduction differ from nonviolent rapes often difficult and seemingly picky, but proves rewarding in unanticipated and surprising ways.
Normative philosophy of sexuality inquires about the value of sexual activity and sexual pleasure and of the various forms they take. Thus the philosophy of sexuality is concerned with the perennial questions of sexual morality and constitutes a large branch of applied ethics . Normative philosophy of sexuality investigates what contribution is made to the good or virtuous life by sexuality, and tries to determi
