Overview

This book explores elemental principles in the study of sex while addressing readers who are not trained philosophers as well as those who are. Singer locates sex within a spectrum that also includes love and compassion. He claims that fundamental mistakes have persistently occurred because numerous theorists relegate sex, love, and compassion to separate and distinct compartments. His emphasis upon the internal linkage between sexuality and the varieties of love is further elaborated in later portions of the book: in relation to a distinction that Singer makes between 'the sensuous' and 'the passionate, ' followed by consecutive ideas about the nature and valuation of sex. Discussing sex as both an appetite and an interpersonal drive, Singer argues that much philosophical confusion has resulted from the doctrines of those who constrain sexuality within either of these to the detriment of the other. What is sexual for human beings is normally, and perhaps always in some degree, a composite of the appetitive and the interpersonal. In us sex is generically a function of each. This conception of appetitive and interpersonal strands as unified in our sexuality then becomes the basis for his remarks about the relative value of individual sex acts as well as their place within the aesthetic and moral dimension of human nature

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9780585381879

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Reviews

Irving Singer offers us his mature reflections on the nature and evaluation of human sexuality in this important new study--a welcome addition to his earlier pathbreaking writings on the philosophy of love. He is, as always, illuminating, insightful, andpersuasive. I recommend it without reservation to all who are interested in broad philosophical questions of love and sex....--Robert M. Stewart, California State University at Chico This book demonstrates the scholarly rigor and lucid writing that we have come to expect from Singer.....--Robert C. Solomon, Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas, Aust

Author Information

Irving Singer is professor of philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Feeling and Imagination and Explorations in Love and Sex.

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