Scruton Roger. Sexual Desire. A Philosophical Investigation

London: Phoenix, 2001. — 439 p. — ISBN: I 842I2 514 I.The subject of sexual desire has been largely ignored by modern philosophy, and the biographies of the great modern philosophers suggest that they have tended to avoid the experience of desire as scrupulously as they have avoided its analysis. I leave it to others to offer theories as to why this is so. But the subject requires that I make a general remark concerning the trouble that philosophy encounters when it enters this domain.
Until the late nineteenth century it was almost impossible to discuss sexual desire, except as part of erotic love, and even then convention required that the peculiarities of desire remain unmentioned. When the interdiction was fi nally lifted - by such writers as Krafft-Ebing, Fere and Havelock Ellis - it was by virtue of an allegedly 'scientific' approach to a widespread natural phenomenon.
It became necessary to assume that sexual conduct is an aspect of man's 'animal' condition - an 'instinct' whose expression exhibits the undiscovered laws of a complex biological process. But, as I argue in the following pages, no biological taxonomy could capture the lineaments of sexual desire. Desire is indeed a natural phenomenon, but it is one that lies beyond the reach of any 'natural science' of man.Advice to the reader
The problem
Arousal
Persons
Desire
The individual object
Sexual phenomena
The science of sex
Love
Sex and gender
Perversion
Sexual morality
The politics of sex
Epilogue
Appendix I The fi rst person
Appendix 2 Intentionality
Notes
Index of Names
Index of Subjects