The nature and value of sex

Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 2007 by Mark Kim Malan

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)