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Sex and Sexuality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Sex has received little attention in the history of western philosophy, and what it did receive was not good: Plato denigrated it, arguing that it should lead to something higher or better (Phaedrus, Symposium), Aristotle barely mentioned it, and Christian philosophers condemned it: Augustine argued that its pleasures are dangerous in mastering us, and allowed sex only for procreation (City of God, bk 14; On Marriage and Concupiscence), while Aquinas confined its permissibility to conjugal, procreative acts (Summa contra gentiles III.2; Summa theologica IIa–IIae). Immanuel Kant (Lectures on Ethics) considered it the only inclination that cannot satisfy the Categorical Imperative, and Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that sexual desire aims to capture the other’s freedom (1943: pt. III, ch. 3]). The Marquis de Sade (a philosopher of sorts) went to the opposite extreme, celebrating all types of sexual acts, including rape (1785; 1791; 1795). Only during contemporary times do philosophers, beginn

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