Philosophy of sex is the part of applied philosophy studying sex and love. It includes both ethics of phenomena such as prostitution, rape, sexual harassment, sexual identity, the age of consent, and homosexuality, and conceptual analysis of concepts such as "what is sex"? It also includes questions of sexuality and sexual identity and the ontological status of gender. Leading contemporary philosophers of sex include Alan Soble and Judith Butler.

Contemporary philosophy of sex is sometimes informed by Western feminism. Issues raised by feminists regarding gender differences, sexual politics, and the nature of sexual identity are important questions in the philosophy of sex.

• What is the function of sex?
• What is romantic love?
• Is there an essential characteristic that makes an act sexual?
• Are some sexual acts good and others bad? According to what criteria? Alternatively, can consensual sexual acts be immoral, or are they outside the realm of ethics?
• What is the relationship between sex and biological reproduction? Can one exist without the other?
• Are sexual identities rooted in some fundamental ontological difference (such as biology)?
• Is sexuality a function of gender or biological sex?

History of the philosophy of sex[link]

Throughout much of the history of Western philosophy, questions of sex and sexuality have been relegated to ethics. There have, however, been deviations from this pattern out of which emerge a tradition of speaking of sexual issues in their own right.

The Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love [1] is a professional group within the membership of the American Philosophical Association.

Sexual desire[link]

Moral evaluations of sexual activity are determined by judgments on the nature of the sexual impulse. In this light, philosophies fall into two camps^[1]:

A negative understanding of sexuality, such as from Immanuel Kant, believes that sexuality undermines values, and challenges our moral treatment of other persons. Sex, says Kant, "makes of the loved person an Object of appetite"^[2] In this understanding, sex is often advised only for the purpose of procreation. Sometimes Sexual celibacy is considered to lead to the best, or most moral life. ^[3]

A positive understanding of sexuality, (such as from Russell Vannoy, Irving Singer) understand sexual activity as pleasing the self and the other at the same time.

Putative perversions[link]

Thomas Nagel proposes that only sexual interactions with mutual sexual arousal are natural to human sexuality. Perverted sexual encounters or events would be those in which this reciprocal arousal is absent, and in which a person remains fully a subject of the sexual experience or fully an object.^[4]

Consent[link]

See also[link]

• Sex positivism

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Cambridge, Eng.: Blackfriars, 1964-76.
• Augustine, St. (Aurelius). On Marriage and Concupiscence, in The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, vol. 12, ed. Marcus Dods. Edinburgh, Scot.: T. & T. Clark, 1874.
• Baker, Robert, Kathleen Wininger, and Frederick Elliston, eds. Philosophy and Sex, 3rd edition. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1998.
• Baumrin, Bernard. "Sexual Immorality Delineated," in Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston, eds., Philosophy and Sex, 2nd edition. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1984, pp. 300-11.
• Bloom, Allan. Love and Friendship. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
• Buckley Jr., William F., Camille Paglia, Betty Friedan, Arianna Huffington, Michael Kinsley, et al., "Has the Women's Movement Been Disastrous?: A Firing Line Debate," in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996).
• Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90043-3. 
• Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90365-3. 
• Christensen, F. M., "A Defense of Pornography," in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996).
• Christina, Greta. "Are We Having Sex Now or What?" in Alan Soble, ed., The Philosophy of Sex, 3rd edition. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997, pp. 3-8.
• Finnis, John. "Law, Morality, and 'Sexual Orientation'," Notre Dame Law Review 69:5 (1994), pp. 1049-76.
• Finnis, John and Martha Nussbaum. "Is Homosexual Conduct Wrong? A Philosophical Exchange," in Alan Soble, ed., The Philosophy of Sex, 3rd edition. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997, pp. 89-94.
• Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vols. 1-3. New York: Vintage, 1990. (Original French publications of the three volumes in 1978, 1984, and 1984, respectively)
• Gray, Robert. "Sex and Sexual Perversion," in Alan Soble, ed., The Philosophy of Sex, 3rd edition. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997, pp. 57-66.
• Grisez, Germain. The Way of the Lord Jesus. Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1993.
• Gudorf, Christine. Body, Sex, and Pleasure: Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1994.
• Hampton, Jean. "Defining Wrong and Defining Rape," in Keith Burgess-Jackson, ed., A Most Detestable Crime: New Philosophical Essays on Rape. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 118-56.
• Held, Virginia. "Coercion and Coercive Offers," in J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds., Coercion: Nomos VIX. Chicago, Ill.: Aldine, 1972, pp. 49-62.
• Jung, Patricia, and Ralph Smith. Heterosexism: An Ethical Challenge. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993.
• Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Louis Infield. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
• Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals . Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• C. S. Lewis The Four Loves. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960.
• MacKinnon, Catherine A., "The Money of Playboy Magazine," in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996).
• Mappes, Thomas. "Sexual Morality and the Concept of Using Another Person," in Thomas Mappes and Jane Zembaty, eds., Social Ethics, 4th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992, pp. 203-26.
• Mayo, David. "An Obligation to Warn of HIV Infection?" in Alan Soble, ed., Sex, Love and Friendship. Amsterdam. Hol.: Editions Rodopi, 1997, pp. 447-53.
• Muehlenhard, Charlene, and Jennifer Schrag. "Nonviolent Sexual Coercion," in A. Parrot and L. Bechhofer, eds, Acquaintance Rape. The Hidden Crime. New York: John Wiley, 1991, pp. 115-28.
• Murphy, Jeffrie. "Some Ruminations on Women, Violence, and the Criminal Law," in Jules Coleman and Allen Buchanan, eds., In Harm's Way: Essays in Honor of Joel Feinberg. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 209-30.
• Nagel, Thomas. "Sexual Perversion," in Alan Soble, ed., The Philosophy of Sex, 3rd edition. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997, pp. 9-20.
• Nielson-Jones, Oliver. "Sex, Escaping The Rat Race" In G.Bennett and A.Robinson, eds., Sexual Philosophy, 2006, pp. 7-29
• O'Neill, Onora. "Between Consenting Adults," Philosophy and Public Affairs 14:3 (1985), pp. 252-77.
• Mario Perniola. The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, Continuum, New York-London (2004), ISBN 0-8264-6245-6.
• Plato. Symposium. Translated by Michael Joyce, in E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961, pp. 526-74.
• Posner, Richard. Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
• Primoratz, Igor. Ethics and Sex. London ; New York : Routledge, 1999.
• Sanders, Stephanie, and June Reinisch. "Would You Say You 'Had Sex' If . . . ?" Journal of the American Medical Association 281:3 (January 20, 1999), pp. 275-77.
• Scheer, Robert, "Bigger Breasts: The Great Implant Lie," in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996).
• Roger Scruton. Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic. New York: Free Press, 1986.
• Singer, Irving. The Nature of Love, vol. 2: Courtly and Romantic. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
• Soble, Alan. "Antioch's 'Sexual Offense Policy': A Philosophical Exploration," Journal of Social Philosophy 28:1 (1997), pp. 22-36.
• Soble, Alan. The Philosophy of Sex and Love: An Introduction. St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, 1998. Second revised, expanded edition, 2008.
• Soble, Alan. Sexual Investigations. New York: New York University Press,1996.
• Soble, Alan, ed. Eros, Agape and Philia. New York: Paragon House, 1989. Corrected reprint, 1999.
• Soble, Alan, ed. The Philosophy of Sex, 4th edition. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002; revised 5th edition, 2008 (excellent bibliography covering the whole area phil sex).
• Soble, Alan, ed. Sex, Love, and Friendship. Amsterdam, Hol.: Editions Rodopi, 1996.
• Solomon, Robert, and Kathleen Higgins, eds. The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love. Lawrence. Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1991.
• Stewart, Robert M., ed. Philosophical Perspectives on Sex and Love. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Vannoy, Russell. Sex Without Love: A Philosophical Exploration. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1980.
• Verene, Donald, ed. Sexual Love and Western Morality, 2nd edition. Boston, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett, 1995.
• Wertheimer, Alan. "Consent and Sexual Relations," Legal Theory 2:2 (1996), pp. 89-112.
• Pope John Paul II. Love and Responsibility. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.

External links[link]

• Internet encyclopedia of philosophy: philosophy of sex (also by Soble)
• Bibliography: Traditions in the Cultural Representation of Love, Sex, Gender, and the Body: c.100 BC - 1500 AD

Dawn Eden (full name Dawn Eden Goldstein, born September 3, 1968) is an American author and journalist who was formerly a rock historian and tabloid-newspaper headline writer. Her books are The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On (W Publishing Group/Thomas Nelson, 2006, ISBN 0-8499-1311-X) and My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints (Ave Maria Press, ISBN 978-1-59471-290-6). The Thrill of the Chaste has been translated into Spanish,^[1] Polish,^[2] and Chinese.^[3]

Biography[link]

Eden was born into a Reform Jewish household. She began writing about independent-label rock music under the abbreviated name Dawn Eden in 1985 for rock fanzines, eventually becoming a popular-music historian, writing for Mojo, Salon, New York Press, and Billboard, among others. From 1990 through the early 2000s, she penned liner notes for eighty CD reissues. Artists she interviewed include Harry Nilsson (his last interview),^[4] Brian Wilson, Del Shannon, and Lesley Gore.

In October 1999, Eden, by then an agnostic, had what she describes in The Thrill of the Chaste as a “born-again experience." Transformed into a “committed Christian," she gradually left the world of rock journalism. Her last music-business job was handling PR for the World Trade Center’s oldies concert series in the summer of 2001.^[5]

She worked as a copy editor at the New York Post from early 2002 to January 2005. In April 2004, she wrote a headline about a toilet-bowl collapse that would win first place in the "Brightest Headline" category of the New York State Associated Press Awards: "HURT IN LINE OF DOODY."^[6][7] She was forced to leave the Post after edits she made to a story about in vitro fertilization revealed her pro-life sympathies. The firing led the New York Observer to publish a front-page profile of her by George Gurley, "Eden in Exile."^[8] Eden has asserted that, prior to her firing, her supervisor warned her against identifying herself as a New York Post employee when giving interviews in which she discussed her Christian faith.^[9]

Eden was hired in April 2005 by the New York Daily News as associate news editor of its newly relaunched National Edition. She later became deputy news editor for the newspaper's new weekly regional editions, wrote its first column on blogs, and edited its regular feature "Big Town, Big Heart." She was received into the Catholic Church in 2006,^[10] and her book The Thrill of the Chaste was published that December.

Since the publication of The Thrill of the Chaste, Eden has spoken to college students and young adults in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Poland, and at World Youth Day Sydney.^[11] She has also appeared on EWTN and on NBC's Today Show.^[12]

Eden left the Daily News in 2007 to move to Washington, D.C., where, in 2008, she was successfully treated for thyroid cancer.^[13] In May 2010, she received an M.A. in theology from Dominican House of Studies after defending her master's thesis, a critique of Christopher West's presentation of Pope John Paul II's theology of the body. Three months later, after Alice von Hildebrand cited Eden's research in her own critique of West,^[14] Catholic News Agency made the thesis available as a free download.^[15]

Her second book, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, was published in April 2012 by Ave Maria Press.^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Dawn Eden's official Web site
• Ave Maria Press's official My Peace I Give You page
• Dawn Eden column archive on HeadlineBistro.com

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, portrayed by Marlon Brando, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Colonel Kurtz is based on the character of a 19th century ivory trader, also called Kurtz, from the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Biography[link]

Walter Kurtz was a regular army officer in the United States Army; he had risen through the ranks and was seen to be destined for a top post within the Pentagon. In his first tour of Vietnam in 1964, he was sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to compile a report on the failings of the current military policies. His report was not what was expected and was immediately restricted for the joint chiefs and President Lyndon B. Johnson only.

Not long after, Kurtz applied for the 5th Special Forces Group, which was denied to him out of hand because of his advanced age of 38 for the basic training. Kurtz continued with his ambition and even threatened to quit the armed forces, when finally his wish was granted and he was allowed to take the airborne course. Kurtz graduated in a class where he was nearly twice the age of the other trainees, and was accepted into the 5th Special Forces Group.

Kurtz returned to Vietnam in 1966 with the "Green Berets" and was part of the hearts and minds campaign which also included fortifying hamlets. On his next tour, Kurtz was assigned to the Gamma Project, in which he was to raise an army of Montagnards in and around the Vietnamese–Cambodian border to strike at the Viet Cong and N.V.A. Kurtz located his army, including their wives and children, at a remote abandoned Cambodian temple which they fortified. From their base, Kurtz led attacks on the local V.C. and the regular N.V.A. in the region.

Kurtz employed barbaric methods not only to defeat his enemy but also to send fear. At first MACV didn't object to Kurtz's tactics, especially as they proved successful, but this soon changed when Kurtz allowed photographs of his atrocities to be released to the world. In late 1968, when Kurtz failed to respond to MACV's repeated orders to return to Da Nang and resign his command after he ordered the summary execution of four South Vietnamese intelligence agents whom he suspected of being double agents for the Viet Cong, the MACV sent a "Green Beret" Captain named Richard Colby to bring Kurtz back from Cambodia. Colby joined up with Kurtz instead of bringing him back to Da Nang, either because he was brainwashed or because he felt a sympathy to Kurtz's cause.

With Colby's failure, MACV then selected Captain Benjamin L. Willard, a former paratrooper and now a CIA assassin, to journey up the Nung river and kill Kurtz. Willard succeeds with his mission only because Kurtz, himself broken mentally by the savage war he wages, wants Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering. Before Willard kills him, Kurtz asks Willard to find Kurtz's wife and son and explain truthfully what he'd done in the war.

Inspiration[link]

Colonel Kurtz is based on the character of a 19th century ivory trader, also called Kurtz, from the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. However, the character is widely believed to have been modeled after Tony Poe, a highly-decorated and highly unorthodox Vietnam-era Paramilitary Officer from the CIA's Special Activities Division^[1]. Poe was known to drop severed heads into enemy-controlled villages as a form of psychological warfare and to use human ears to record the number of enemies his indigenous troops had killed. He would send these ears back to his superiors as proof of his efforts deep inside Laos^[2][3]. Coppola, however, denies that Poe was a primary influence and instead says the character was loosely based on Special Forces Colonel Robert B. Rheault, whose 1969 arrest over the murder of a suspected double agent generated substantial news coverage.^[4]

Portrayal[link]

When Brando arrived for filming in the Philippines in September 1976, he claimed he was dissatisfied with the script; Brando didn't understand why Kurtz was meant to be very thin and bald, or why the character's name was Kurtz and not something like Leighley. He claimed, "American generals don't have those kinds of names. They have flowery names, from the South. I want to be 'Colonel Leighley'." And so, for a time the name was changed under his demand. When Brando showed up for filming he had put on about 40 lbs and forced Coppola to shoot him from the waist up, making it appear that Kurtz was a 6-foot 6-inch giant. Many of Brando's speeches were ad-libbed and performed off the cuff, with Coppola filming hours of footage of these monologues and then cutting them down to the most interesting parts.

Filming was put on a week-long filming hiatus so that Brando and Coppola could resolve their creative disputes. It is claimed that someone left Conrad's source text, which Coppola had repeatedly referred to him but which he had never read, in the houseboat where Brando was staying in at the time. He returned to filming with his head shaved, wanting to be 'Kurtz' once again; claiming it was all clear to him now that he had read Conrad's novella.^[5]

Still photographs of Brando in character as Major Penderton, in the 1967 film Reflections in a Golden Eye, were used later by the producers of Apocalypse Now, who needed photos of a younger Brando to appear in the service record of the younger Colonel Walter Kurtz.

Trivia[link]

• Brando was paid a fee of $3 million for his work on the film, plus $70,000 for an extra day's filming.

References[link]