The nature and value of sex.

Sex: A Philosophical Primer, Expanded Edition by Irving Singer. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004, 135 pp. Paper, $18.95.

Bertrand Russell noted that every scientific advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some of its former problems. In the past century, sexology has burgled from philosophy many of its most prized sexual conundrums. Still, the more we learn about sex, the more we discover that sex is not just one thing. There are a variety of sexualities that open new avenues of research that keep us asking the perennial question: What exactly is the nature, or the many natures, of the phenomena we call sex?

In 2001, Irving Singer, a professor of philosophy at MIT, proffered a new conception of the nature of sex that may prove to be a theoretical catalyst for sex research. In his first edition of Sex: A Philosophical Primer, Singer argued that significant mistakes were made by past philosophers because they had relegated sex, love, and compassion into separate compartments. Singer believes these theorists failed to recognize that human affective dispositions can only be fully understood by examining the interaction among these phenomena. He suggests that sex should be located within a spectrum that includes love and compassion and views this framework as an improvement upon the work of past theorists.

Singer addresses his book to both a general and a scholarly audience. The arguments are logically laid out and, though sometimes complex, accessible. He states his book qualifies as a philosophical primer in two respects. First, it examines elemental principles in the study of sex, and second, it addresses readers not trained as philosophers.

In 2004, a newly expanded edition appeared. Essentially it embodies the same text, except it features an additional timely essay on the philosophy of marriage that focuses specifically on the current debate over same-sex marriage. Added as an additional preface to the expanded edition, it begins by briefly reviewing the essential Western philosophical concepts of marriage from Plato and the early Church to the more modern concepts of Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, and others. In short, Singer uses this history to argue how he believes the present controversy over marriage originated and why he believes that "Western civilization has been grossly homophobic" (p. xiii). He says that for advocates of same-sex marriages there are two principles at stake in the marriage debate: social acceptance through legitimization and equal access to material benefits.

It is the focus on the sexual acts in same-sex relationships that Singer identifies as the major social barrier to legalizing same-sex marriage. He also recognizes a further complication: "In polemical statements by politicians and others who oppose same-sex union, the definitions of marriage and of family are often conflated" (p. xxi). Singer suggests that a solution may be found by clarifying the distinction between "family" and "marriage" and that the social and legal emphasis should be placed in favoring and protecting families rather than marriage.

The key, he says, is that the legal system must no longer reward marriage but instead place maximum concern on the family. It must also grant civil unions exactly the same rights and exactly the same responsibilities as marriages.

Following his marriage essay, the remainder of the text focuses on elements of constructing a philosophy of sex. Singer notes that questions about the nature of love were a staple in Western philosophy from the time of Plato, but only recently have philosophers begun to examine the nature of sexuality and are finding that the complexity of sex makes constructing a general philosophical theory problematic.

   ... [W]e are faced with the fact that human beings are so
   different, and their sex acts so variable among themselves, that
   the causal ties between love and sexuality may well involve
   too many unknowns for us to reach any justifiable conclusions.
   (p. 86)

In this light, Singer admits that all his philosophical discussions in this book should be taken as "exploratory in nature" and "often inconclusive."

Despite this caution, he dives deeply into considerations he believes may lead toward a general theory. Singer does this by deconstructing sex into his theoretical view of some of its component and related parts and examining the possibilities of their relative meanings.

Chapter 1, "Sex, Love, Compassion," reviews a history of how philosophers have variously defined these terms in the past and have argued their relative value. For example:

   ... romanticism reinforced idealistic claims that sex is an animal
   impulse in search of love that rises above the merely natural.
   Though the history of philosophy embroidered that belief
   with ideas Plato would not have recognized, the view
   originates with him. Sex was to be reduced to love, not vice
   versa as materialists like Freud would later assert. But
   materialists, and naturalists in general, could also agree that
   beyond it mechanistic apparatus sexuality is able to manifest a
   striving for a truly meaningful relationship. If, however, we
   think of love as the satisfaction of this quest, we no longer
   have to reduce either love to sex or sex to love. The two can
   be seen as intrinsically interwoven. (p. 7)

Singer views compassion as a type of love that creates a very special bond that bestows a unique value on its object. He emphasizes that it is a potentiality within the sexual experience, and that "its kind of love reveals how faulty most philosophies of sex have been. Although compassion, sex, and love that is sexual are not identical, neither are they totally separate ..." (p. 15).

In the chapter 2, the author distinguishes between "the sensuous" (bodily sensations) and "the passionate" (powerful emotionality) as components in sexual experience that can belong to an attitude of love. He speculates about the possibility of their various harmonious or hostile combinations. The sensuous, he says, endows sexuality with goodness, and passion bestows meaning. To some degree each can survive without the other, but how they may be harmonized, and whether they should be is "one of the major problems for philosophy as well as sexology" (p. 33).

In chapter 3, Singer discusses "appetite" (biological drive) and "interpersonal drive" (social drive) as crucial for understanding the value of and constitution of sex acts. He believes that those theorists in the past who have constrained sexuality within either drive to the detriment of the other have caused philosophical confusion. Appetite and interpersonal drive, he says," ... serve as limiting conditions that jointly define human sexuality. To find the criteria that we might plausibly invoke for the evaluation of sex acts, we have to go beyond either of these two coordinates" (p. 63).

In going beyond, Singer proposes a number of "criteria for the evaluation of sex" in the subsequent chapters that he believes may clarify ways sexuality can constitute "goodness" in human experience. These criteria include specific philosophical definitions of pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction, completeness, reciprocity, love, embodiment, absorption, the natural and unnatural. Singer views these criteria as forms of intrinsic rather than ethical goodness and asks questions about the esthetic phenomena of sex. He argues that, although sex is also an "esthetic pursuit, it is closer to our biological being" (p. 112). He also suggests that philosophical theories of sex that consider it moral or immoral in itself, as Kant theorized, are erroneous.

In his conclusion, Singer argues that acceptable theories of sex must recognize its inherent goodness and that the potential morality of sexuality is guaranteed by its relationship with love and compassion, but he does not attempt to wholly construct a modern comprehensive theory. Singer realizes that he faces the formidable task of attempting to reduce the complexity and diversity of sex to elements that may be argued philosophically. He further states: "... an extended theorization of sex is still needed to elucidate the mutually interwoven roles of the libidinal, the erotic, and the romantic in the affective life of human beings" (p. 121). Singer admits:

   I have also grappled with the need to find a more complete
   understanding of the nature of imagination than philosophy
   has been able to attain as yet ... the fascinating relationship
   between sex and imagination demand far more analysis than
   anyone has taken thus far. (p. 122)

Reading Singer is rewarding. I appreciated that he requires the reader to consider sexuality from a more comprehensive perspective than have past philosophers, but I was also disappointed that he did not expand his historical discussion to include the wealth of philosophical resources of the East. Although Singer focuses on the work of Shopenhauer, which mirrors general concepts of Eastern philosophy and indirectly approaches Orientalism, a direct consideration of the arguments of Eastern philosophy is missing.

Singer only touches upon Oriental attitudes during his discussion of the sensuous and passionate. There, he briefly characterizes sensuous love within "the sexual yoga of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism" as a philosophical ideal that is a "spiritually passionless experience of sensuous love" (p. 40). Such over simplification neglects the richly varied and diverse philosophical attitudes toward sensuality described in the body of Eastern philosophy. Historical orientalia, such as the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra text (c.3000 BC), have generated a diversity of philosophical commentary on sexuality. I would have enjoyed hearing Singer's analysis of some of its philosophical commentaries or his reaction to contemporary discussions of it, such as those as found in The Book of Secrets (Osbo, 1974), in which, for example, some sexual acts are viewed as neither moral or immoral but rather amoral. Other orientalist viewpoints that take a wider philosophical view of sexuality are easily assessable in works such as Lust for Enlightenment: Buddhism and Sex (Stevens, 1990).

Generally, Singer does a remarkable job of dancing with sexual complexity, but some arguments suffer from over simplification by the occasional use of dichotomous assumptions (such as male and female) that do not consider sexuality on a more scientifically accurate and plausible sexual continuum. Considering Singer's elements of sex within a more humanly diverse context may lead to a greater number of possible theoretical outcomes.

Despite such oversights, sexual scientists will find that the questions Singer raises and his insightfully argued conclusions can stimulate valuable dialog, as well as challenge traditional philosophical thinking. With this revised volume, Singer makes a valuable contribution to our current discussion of the nature and value of sex.

References

Osho. (1974). The book of secrets. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. Stevens, J. (1990). Lust for enlightenment: Buddhism and sex. Boston: Shambhala.

Reviewed by Mark Kim Malan, The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, San Francisco, CA 94109. E-mail: [e-mail]