Sexual Love & Western Morality

Questions surrounding the issues of sex and love are fundamental to an understanding of human affairs and have been crucial in the development of Western morality. Typically, sex is discussed in medical, social scientific, or psychoanalytic terms. Little attention has been given to sex as a philosophic and ethical problem. The sexual act can be seen both as the constant procreative feature of human existence and as a basic form of love. Considered as a form of love, sex is clearly involved in the total set of ethical relationships that exists between persons and is therefore ethically significant.
This volume contains a classical, intellectually sound set of philosophical selections on sexuality and sexual love. It is historically ordered using selections from the major figures in Western thought from Plato to the present in order to show the derivation of our current Western attitudes toward this topic. In the thought of these philosophers lie the origins our contemporary views of sex. This book presents a broad picture of some of what has been thought about and sexual morality over the ages. Consideration of the issues and ideas raised in this book is necessary to an understanding of contemporary arguments that assume much of this history, and often assume it quite selectively. The power of this collection of writings is in its simplicity and its imagination - the fundamental thoughts against which any view of sexual love must be formed are obtained in this book.