Category: Sex, Love, Lust
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Sexbots and Sublunary Arts
This just in from D. B.:Apropos of fairly recent usage of the word 'sublunary' on the MavPhil blog, and the entry on sexbots, I offer you C.S. Lewis' take on both in this paragraph from That Hideous Strength. "On this side (of the moon, facing the earth – DB), the womb is barrenand the marriages…
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The Dawn of the Sexbots
'Dawn' in the title above is curiously inapt in these times of twilight as the light goes out in the West. Indications of decline: fascination with the grotesque and the abnormal; the mainstreaming of deviant behavior; the cultural ubiquity of pornography; the loss of any sense that we are spiritual beings with a destiny that…
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Elizabeth Anscombe, “Contraception and Chastity”
An untimely meditation by a brilliant mind. A powerful antidote to the confused suggestions of the age. Excerpt: If contraceptive intercourse is permissible, then what objection could there be after all to mutual masturbation, or copulation in vase indebito, sodomy, buggery (I should perhaps remark that I am using a legal term here – not…
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Why Stop Here?
Why stop at these traffic lights? (Pun intended) We need to go further so as to include the pederasts of NAMBLA and PIE. We need lights depicting an adult hand-in-hand with a child with a little heart between them to signify the sexual love that unites them. After all, it is discriminatory to marginalize the…
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When Did Sex Begin?
In 1963. Or at least so we hear from Philip Larkin in his Annus Mirabilis. It was indeed a wonderful/remarkable year. I was but a boy in grade school, but old enough to remember all those wonderful songs and not so wonderful events such as the Profumo scandal in Britain. What ever happened to sex…
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St. Valentine’s Day’s Night at the Oldies: Love and Murder
We'll start with murder. David Dalton (Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion 2012, pp. 28-29, hyperlinks added!): Most folk songs had grim, murderous content (and subtext). In Pretty Polly a man lures a young girl from her home with the promise of marriage,and then leads the pregnant girl to…
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Feser on Sex, Part II
The phenomenal Edward Feser. How does he do it? He teaches an outrageous number of courses at a community college; he has written numerous books; he gives talks and speeches, and last time I checked he has six children. Not to mention his weblog which is bare of fluff and filler and of consistently high…
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Feser on Sex
Old Ed pulls no punches. In response to Peter Singer's claim that "sex raises no unique moral issues at all," Feser remarks, "I have long regarded this as one of the most imbecilic things any philosopher has ever said." I agree. Feser goes on to make a number of important points.
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The Part-Time Monk
The part-time monk saves his spunk for the marital bunk.
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The Dirty and the Funny
The muse of philosophy must have visited my otherwise undistinguished classmate Dolores back in the fifth grade. The topic was dirty jokes and that we should not tell them or listen to them. "But sister," Dolores piped up, "what if you laugh not because the joke is dirty but because it is funny?" It was…
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The Shrinking of the Friend Zone in a Sex-Saturated Society
Editorial commentary at the Gray Lady nowadays resembles micturition more than intelligent cogitation, but there are a couple of notable counter-instances, one being the writings of Ross Douthat. Herewith, three quotations from his recent Prisoners of Sex: The culture’s attitude is Hefnerism, basically, if less baldly chauvinistic than the original Playboy philosophy. Sexual fulfillment is…
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Sex, War, and Moral Rigorism: The Aporetics of Moral Evaluation
Fr. Robert Barron here fruitfully compares the Catholic Church's rigoristic teaching on matters sexual, with its prohibitions of masturbation, artificial contraception, and extramarital sex, with the rigorism of the Church's teaching with respect to just war. An excellent article. Although Fr. Barron doesn't say it explicitly, he implies that the two topics are on a…
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A Question About Marriage
For many years now I have been an occasional reader of your blog, and I greatly appreciate your insight on many subjects, particularly your criticism of the Left. I am, I hate to admit, an aspiring academic who is taking on enormous debt to finish a Ph.D. in sociology of religion, and am immersed in…
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Some Points on Homosexuality in the Context of the Culture War
A few days ago I was blissfully unaware of Duck Diversity Dynasty, the reality show on the Arts and Entertainment channel. I still haven't watched even one episode, nor am I particularly inclined to; the antics of rednecks are not my thing. I have gathered, however, that the series falls more on the entertainment end…
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A Cure for Infatuation
Marriage is an excellent cure for infatuation. It is also a test whether the infatuation was something more. If the marriage lasts and deepens, then it was; if not, then it wasn't. To be infatuated is to be rendered fatuous, silly. Not that infatuation is all bad. A love that doesn't begin with it is…