Topics Sex

Question Prior to the mass availability of condoms, and reliable birth control it seems to me that the act of sex had a very different meaning than it does now. It seems to me that "lust" had a very logical and sane basis for it to be feared. If you had sex then babies would likely happen as a result and unless both parents were prepared to take care of that baby then that would be a bad thing. Of course there were institutions like prostitution or even sacred prostitution that I imagine involved some kind of blunt surgery to prevent child birth. I don't know really what kind of evils which were really tangible in a way that a baby is tangible, or lack of evils that that institutions provided that may have lead people to condemn prostitution as products of an evil called "lust". Anyways people tend to want a lot of sex and prostitution has a limited availability. So when people say that we live in an age where people are more "enlightened" about sex I can't help but to wander if that is the case? Isn't our so called "enlightenment" over sex really just a product of a new technological environment? Also what when we condemn "lust" these days aren't we doing it for different reasons than we have done historically? (Perhaps out of force of habit?-or perhaps excepting those who do not believe in any form of birth control- who seem to have different reasons for opposing "lust" than people who are okay with birth control)

Accepted:
January 26, 2012

Comments

Very interesting! I suspect that you are quite correct that the advent of birth control has done much to alter many people's assessment of the meaning of sex. And it may be that (depending on the kind of birth control used) some of the ethical implications of sex has changed. So, insofar as you can divorce sex and pregnancy, the ethics involving child-birth may be put to one side. But if you look at work on the philosophy of love from the medieval era (roughly from Augustine onward) to this day, there remains in place a tradition that sees what is called "lust" as a kind of degenerated passion. Someone who lusts after another may use the word "love," but in lust one largely seeks self-gratification and perhaps even a sort of possession over someone else rather than truly valuing the beloved for her or his own sake. For an excellent overview of the difference between love and lust, you might check out the book Love and Western Tradition by Denise de Rougemont.

On the ethics of prostitution, I suspect that the traditional case against the practice extends beyond matters of child birth and rests also on a philosophy or theology of the place of sex in a loving, non-commercial context, worries about when prostitution involves involuntary servitude (the sex trade), exploitation (I have a colleague who has worked hard to help families be successful in Thailand so that girls are not compelled by one or both parents to become prostitutes, and so on).