Reason And Sexuality In Western Thought

by West, David

• ISBN13: 9780745624211
• ISBN10: 0745624219
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-06
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

This book traces the genealogy of ideas of reason, self and sexuality in the West, opening the way to a richer and more diverse understanding of sexual experience.Western philosophy and religion have distorted and continue to distort our experience of sex and love through three far-reaching constellations of reason, self and sexuality. Thinkers like Plato, Aquinas and Kant helped to fashion an ascetic ideal of reason hostile to bodily pleasures and sexual diversity. By contrast, philosophical hedonism advocates a less demanding conception of rationality and defends sexual pleasure. But this approach of thinkers like Hume, Bentham, La Mettrie and de Sade is still one-sided and limiting. A third constellation, Romanticism avoids the limitations of both forms of rationalism, but in the name of a religion of love and passion that ultimately threatens the integrity of the self.In Reason and Sexuality in Western Thought, a richer understanding of sexual experience is traced to a dissident philosophical tradition. In their different ways Montaigne, Spinoza, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Marcuse and Foucault contribute to a more holistic, multi-layered and open conception of reason, sexuality and the self. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and gender studies.

Author Biography

David West, Reader in Political Theory, Australian National University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(8)
1 The Ascetic Idealism of Reason	9	(39)
1 Eros and the Idealism of Platonic Reason	9	(9)
2 Aristotelian Virtue, Love and the Ends of Nature	18	(8)
3 God, Will and Unruly Sex	26	(7)
4 Divine Order of Nature	33	(7)
5 Intolerance of Universal Reason	40	(8)
2 Rationality in the Service of Desire	48	(39)
1 Epicureanism and Sexual Realism	48	(6)
2 Renaissance and the Humanization of Eros	54	(7)
3 Hedonism within the Bounds of Rational Order	61	(9)
4 Progressive Rationality and Sexual Reform	70	(9)
5 Libertinism at the Limit of Rationality	79	(8)
3 Passion beyond Reason	87	(38)
1 Mystical and Courtly Love	87	(8)
2 Romantic Critique of Rationality	95	(9)
3 Romantic Philosophy as Religion of Love	104	(7)
4 Death, Fantasy and Indifferent Nature	111	(7)
5 Freud and the Sexual Unconscious	118	(7)
4 Perspectives on Reason and Sexuality	125	(54)
1 Holism of Human Experience	125	(7)
2 Metaphysical Unity of Body and Self	132	(6)
3 Love and Reason within History	138	(7)
4 Subjective Existence and the Sexual Self	145	(7)
5 Phenomenology of Sexual Experience	152	(7)
6 Sex and Oppression	159	(6)
7 Eros and Civilization	165	(5)
8 Politics and Anti-Politics of Sexuality	170	(9)
Afterthoughts	179	(6)
Notes	185	(28)
Bibliography	213	(12)
Index	225