Sexual Desire (book)

Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation

The first edition, with cover art depicting Pierre-Auguste Renoir's La Danse à Bouigval
Author Roger Scruton
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Philosophy
Published 1986 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)
Media type Print
Pages 428
ISBN 1-85799-100-1

Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation is a 1986 book about the philosophy of sex by Roger Scruton. The book, which has received both praise and criticism from reviewers, has been seen as one of the most important works in the philosophy of sex.[1][2]

Summary

Scruton, influenced by the work of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,[3] attempts to develop a conservative sexual ethic.[4] Citing The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), he summarizes Hegel as arguing that, "The final end of every rational being is the building of the self—of a recognisable personal entity, which flourishes according to its own autonomous nature, in a world which it partly creates."[5] This process involves recognizing the other as an end in himself or herself.[6]

Discussing sexual perversion, Scruton argues that its "major structural feature" is the "complete or partial failure to recognise, in and through desire, the personal existence of the other", which in turn is "an affront, both to him and oneself." Scruton calls perversion, "narcissistic, often solipsistic".[7] In his chapter on perversion, Scruton considers masturbation, bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, sado-masochism, homosexuality, incest, and fetishism. Scruton argues that there are two forms of masturbation, and only one is perverted.[8] Though aware of arguments that homosexuality should not be considered a perversion, Scruton writes that homosexuality is "significantly different from heterosexuality, in a way that explains, even if it does not justify, the traditional judgement of homosexuality as a perversion." Heterosexuality involves dealing with the different and complementary nature of the opposite sex, whereas homosexuality does not: "Desire directed towards the other gender elicits not its simulacrum but its complement." Scruton writes that, "In the heterosexual act, it might be said, I move out from my body towards the other, whose flesh is unknown to me; while in the homosexual act I remain locked within my body narcissistically contemplating in the other an excitement that is the mirror of my own." Scruton dismisses Kenneth Dover's Greek Homosexuality (1978) as "trivialising" and faults Michael Levin's arguments for the abnormality of homosexuality, calling them absurd.[9] In Scruton's view, normal sexuality involves not only giving recognition to the other's person in and through desire for him or her, but also according them accountability and care in the process.[4] Scruton argues that sex is morally permissible only if it involves love and intimacy.[10]

Thinkers of whom Scruton is critical include the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who he believes created an impersonal metaphysics in which "the 'self' and all its mysteries" vanish, Sigmund Freud and later psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein and Wilhelm Reich,[11] as well as Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown and Michel Foucault.[12] Though unconvinced by Sir Karl Popper's criticism of Freud, Scruton faults Freud for developing theories that depend upon metaphor and as such are not genuinely scientific. Scruton finds Freud's theory of the libido incoherent and believes it rests on unacceptable use of metaphor. Scruton is critical of sociobiological explanations of human behaviour.[13]

Scholarly reception

Sexual Desire received a mixture of criticism and praise from philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who in The New York Review of Books accused Scruton of "vagueness and haste about crucial distinctions, lack of clarity about argumentative structure, and the substitution of truculent rhetoric for careful inquiry" and of misunderstanding Kant's moral philosophy,[14] but also wrote in a subsequent article that Scruton's work helps one understand sexual objectification and provides "the most interesting philosophical attempt as yet to work through the moral issues involved in our treatment of persons as sex partners."[1] Philosophers have noted that Sexual Desire has a special place within the tradition of analytic philosophy: Christopher Hamilton calls the book "certainly by a long way the most interesting and insightful philosophical account of sexual desire" produced within analytic philosophy,[2] while Christopher Janaway writes that it is one of several works in which Scruton challenges its conventional boundaries.[15] The philosopher and radio broadcaster Mark Dooley describes Sexual Desire as "magisterial" and writes that Scruton's objective is to show that sexual desire trades in "the currency of the sacred".[16]

John Ryle wrote in a review in the London Review of Books that Scruton "is bent on recapturing eros in the name of the old morality and restoring him to his proper place in the ethical zoo."[17] Philosopher Michael Ruse argues in his Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry (1988) that Scruton's criticism of Freud is typical of weak critiques of Freud and thus unconvincing. Ruse believes that Scruton's view that genuine science does not involve metaphor is "incredibly anachronistic" and that "metaphor runs rampant through science, from physics to sociology." Ruse believes Scruton's criticism of sociobiology shows that he falsely views rationality as an "ethereal, beyond-biology phenomenon".[18]

Sociologist Jonathan Dollimore writes that Scruton sees homosexuality as a perversion. He sees Scruton's philosophy of sex as open to many possible objections. He finds Scruton's writing to be jargon-ridden, believing that its Hegelian language and talk of otherness bestows "a spurious profundity on a normative sexual politics which is at heart timid, conservative, and deeply ignorant." Dollimore also believes that, notwithstanding Scruton's attack on psychoanalysis, his defense of sexual difference is to some degree indebted to psychoanalytic theory, commenting that, "Although Scruton's frame of reference is thoroughly philosophical, and despite the fact that he roundly attacks the psychoanalytic perspective on sexuality...his own defence of sexual difference owes more to that perspective than he admits."[19] Jurist and legal theorist Richard Posner argues that Scruton does not provide any adequate reason for viewing homosexuality as immoral.[20] Philosopher Alan Soble criticized Scruton's treatment of masturbation and found some of his judgments "silly", for example that all masturbation is "obscene".[21] Philosopher James Giles believes that Scruton is mistaken to think that sexual desire essentially aims at an individual person since it can be desire simply for sexual activity.[22] According to Scruton, philosopher A. J. Ayer dismissed Sexual Desire as "silly". Scruton finds this part of a pattern of negative responses to his work, and replies that he considers the work cogent and an answer to Foucault's "mendacious" The History of Sexuality (1976).[23]

Classicist David M. Halperin writes in his One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (1990) that Scruton's textual practice of retaining the masculine pronoun for both the subject and object of desire is the best illustration of philosopher and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray's concept of hom(m)osexualité, observing "Here we see the paradoxical implications of what Scruton calls 'traditional practice' plainly exposed: by regularly treating the ungendered subject as male and thus excluding women, it creates a unitary, universalizing discourse whose uniquely masculine terms, for all their ostensible involvement in heterosexist paradigms, produce an unintended homoerotic effect — precisely the conjunction that Irigaray's coinage is designed to represent."[24] Classicist Norman O. Brown believes that Scruton is correct in seeing Spinoza as his philosophical antagonist.[25] Classical scholar Kenneth Dover writes that he understands what Scruton meant by describing his Greek Homosexuality as "trivialising", but added that, "I am not abashed, because despite profound agreement with part of his analysis of sexual emotion, I attach importance to some phenomena which he ignores."[26]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Nussbaum 1997. p. 293.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hamilton 2008. p. 101.
  3. ↑ Scruton 1994. pp. 56-7.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Dollimore 1991. pp. 260-262.
  5. ↑ Scruton 1994. pp. 298-9.
  6. ↑ Scruton 1994. p. 301.
  7. ↑ Scruton 1994. p. 289.
  8. ↑ Scruton 1994. pp. 284-321.
  9. ↑ Scruton 1994. pp. 305-310, 410.
  10. ↑ Belliotti 1997. p. 318.
  11. ↑ Scruton 1994. pp. 195-6.
  12. ↑ Scruton 1994. pp. 118, 205, 350, 362.
  13. ↑ Scruton 1994. p. 201-3, 184-5.
  14. ↑ Nussbaum 2015.
  15. ↑ Janaway 1995. p. 816.
  16. ↑ Dooley 2009. p. 53.
  17. ↑ Ryle 2015.
  18. ↑ Ruse 1988. pp. 28, 140.
  19. ↑ Dollimore 1991. pp. 261-2.
  20. ↑ Posner 1992. pp. 228-9.
  21. ↑ Soble 1997. pp. 82-3.
  22. ↑ Giles 2004. p. 73.
  23. ↑ Scruton 2005. p. 55.
  24. ↑ Halperin 1990. pp. 210-1.
  25. ↑ Brown 1991. p. 123.
  26. ↑ Dover 1995. p. 115.

Bibliography

Books
  • Belliotti, Raymond A. (1997). Singer, Peter, ed. A Companion to Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-18785-5.
  • Brown, Norman O. (1991). Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07298-7.
  • Dollimore, Jonathan (1991). Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-811269-6.
  • Dooley, Mark (2009). Roger Scruton: The Philosopher on Dover Beach. London: Continuum. ISBN 978-1847060136.
  • Dover, Kenneth (1995). Marginal Comment: A Memoir. London: Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-2630-2.
  • Giles, James (2004). The Nature of Sexual Desire. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-95995-3.
  • Halperin, David M. (1990). One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90097-2.
  • Hamilton, Christopher (2008). Soble, Alan; Power, Nicholas P., eds. The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, Fifth Edition. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0742547981.
  • Janaway, Christopher (1995). Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosopher. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866132-0.
  • Nussbaum, Martha (1997). Soble, Alan, ed. The Philosophy of Sex, Contemporary Readings, Third Edition. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 0-8476-8481-4.
  • Posner, Richard (1992). Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-80279-9.
  • Ruse, Michael (1988). Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-15275-X.
  • Scruton, Roger (2005). Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-8033-0.
  • Scruton, Roger (1994). Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation. London: Phoenix. ISBN 1-85799-100-1.
  • Soble, Alan (1997). Soble, Alan, ed. The Philosophy of Sex, Contemporary Readings, Third Edition. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 0-8476-8481-4.
Online articles

External links