What’s the deal with sex? Part II

In a previous post I identified three aspects of sex which manifestly give it a special moral significance: It is the means by which new human beings are made; it is the means by which we are physiologically and psychologically completed qua men and women; and it is that area of human life in which the animal side of our nature most relentlessly fights against the rational side of our nature.  When natural law theorists and moral theologians talk about the procreative and unitive functions of sex, what they have in mind are the first two of these aspects.  The basic idea of traditional natural law theory where sex is concerned is that since the good for us is determined by the natural ends of our faculties, it cannot be good for us to use our sexual faculties in a way that positively frustrates its procreative and unitive ends.  The third morally significant aspect of sex, which is that the unique intensity of sexual pleasure can lead us to act irrationally, is perhaps less often discussed these days.  So let’s talk about that.

Aquinas provides illuminating guidance on our subject in his discussion in the Summa Theologiae of the eight “daughters” or effects of lust.  Keep in mind that “lust,” when used pejoratively by Aquinas and other natural law theorists and moral theologians, does not mean “sexual arousal.”  There is nothing wrong with sexual arousal, even intense sexual arousal, in itself.  Rather, “lust” is used in natural law theory and moral theology as a technical term for sexual desire that is in some way disordered.  In what sense might it be “disordered”?  Aquinas writes:

A sin, in human acts, is that which is against the order of reason.  Now the order of reason consists in its ordering everything to its end in a fitting manner.  (Summa Theologiae II-II.153.2)

So, reasonable or well-ordered sexual desire is sexual desire that is “order[ed]… to its end” and “in a fitting manner.”  Thus, sexual desire is unreasonable or disordered if it is indulged in a way that frustrates its natural ends, or if it is indulged in an unfitting manner.

Disorder of the kind that involves frustration of the natural ends of sexual desire would in Aquinas’s view exist when, for example, such desire is directed at something other than a human being of the opposite sex, or when the sexual act is prevented from reaching its natural climax in insemination.  An example of sexual desire that is disordered in its manner would be adulterous sexual desire.  Suppose you find some person of the opposite sex other than your spouse attractive.  So far there is no sin.  Suppose that sexual thoughts and images about this person enter unbidden into your consciousness.  So far, still no sin.  But now suppose that instead of pushing these thoughts and images out of your mind and turning your attention to something else, you willingly and actively entertain them.  Now there is a sin of lust.  Finding this other person attractive is of itself perfectly natural, and in the right circumstances (being married to the person) there would be nothing wrong with letting this attraction draw you into sexual fantasy and intense arousal.  But because you are not married to the person and are married to someone else, circumstances make such fantasy and arousal disordered and sinful. 

For present purposes, though, I will put to one side questions about what sorts of desire and behavior, specifically, count as lustful or disordered.  Controversies over the natural law position on extra-marital sex, homosexuality, contraception, etc. are not to the present point.  (I have addressed those matters in other places, such as here.)  For our topic here is primarily not lust itself but rather the “daughters” or effects of lust -- the way in which sexual desire that is disordered tends to bring further moral disorders in its wake.

One more preliminary note: To say that some further moral disorder is an effect of lust is not to say that it invariably and fully follows from lust.  We are talking here about tendencies.  The longer and more thoroughly someone’s sexual desires are disordered, the more likely he is to fall into the other moral disorders Aquinas speaks of.  But if sexual desire is less thoroughly disordered, or if the disorder is counteracted by efforts to correct it, then naturally the secondary disorders are less likely to follow, or will not be as great as they otherwise would be.

The daughters of lust

Of the eight “daughters of lust,” the first four concern the intellect and the last four the will.  The first “daughter” or effect is what Aquinas calls “blindness of mind,” whereby the “simple [act of] understanding, which apprehends some end as good… is hindered by lust.”  What Aquinas has in mind here can be understood as follows.  The intellect has as its natural end or final cause the grasp of truth.  Truth, however, is a “transcendental,” as is goodness, and the transcendentals are convertible with one another.  That is to say, truth and goodness are really the same thing looked at from different points of view.  Hence the intellect is no less naturally directed toward the grasp of the good as it is toward the grasp of truth.  (See pp. 31-36 of Aquinas for discussion of the transcendentals.) 

Now, when, for whatever reason, we take pleasure in some thing or activity, we are strongly inclined to want to think that it is good, even if it is not good; and when, for whatever reason, we find some idea attractive, we are strongly inclined to want to think that it is true and reasonable, even if it is neither.  Everyone knows this; you don’t have to be a Thomist to see that much.  The habitual binge drinker or cocaine snorter takes such pleasure in his vice that he refuses to listen to those who warn him that he is setting himself up for serious trouble.  The ideologue is so in love with a pet idea that he will search out any evidence that seems to confirm it while refusing to consider all the glaring evidence against it.  The talentless would-be actor or writer is so enamored of the prospect of wealth and fame that he refuses to see that he’d be better advised to pursue some other career.  And so forth.  That taking pleasure in what is in fact bad or false can impair the intellect’s capacity to see what is good and true is a familiar fact of everyday life.

Now, there is no reason whatsoever why things should be any different where sex is concerned.  Indeed -- and this is part of Aquinas’s point -- precisely because sexual pleasure is unusually intense, it is even more likely than other pleasures are to impair our ability to perceive what is true and good when what we take pleasure in is something that is in fact bad.  In particular, habitually indulging one’s desire to carry out sexual acts that are disordered will tend to make it harder and harder for one to see that they are disordered.  For one thing, the pleasure a person repeatedly takes in those acts will give the acts the false appearance of goodness; for another, the person will be inclined to look for reasons to regard the acts as good or at least harmless, and disinclined to look for, or give a dispassionate hearing to, reasons to think them bad.  Hence indulgence in disordered sexual behavior has a tendency to impair one’s ability to perceive the true and the good, particularly in matters of sexual morality.  In short, sexual vice makes you stupid.

Even here you don’t need to be a Thomist to see that much.  Everyone knows that overindulgence in sexual pleasure can blind someone to the likely bad effects of such indulgence.  In particular, everyone is familiar with examples like that of the lecherous boss or teacher who sexually pursues subordinates or students despite the risks to his family or career, the woman who deludes herself into thinking that the married man she is having an affair with will leave his wife and marry her, the pornography user who refuses to admit that he is addicted, and so on. 

Of course, there are lots of things the Thomist regards as sexually disordered which many people these days do not regard as disordered.  In part this is, from a Thomist point of view, a consequence of widespread intellectual error.  For when the general metaphysical framework underlying traditional natural law theory -- essentialism, teleological realism, and so forth -- is properly understood, it is pretty obvious that the general natural law approach to sexual morality is perfectly reasonable, and indeed pretty hard to avoid, given that metaphysical framework.  Moreover, the framework itself is not only perfectly defensible, but also (as I have argued at length) pretty hard to avoid when properly understood.  The trouble is that in contemporary intellectual life most people know nothing of, or at best know only crude caricatures of, that metaphysics and of the traditional natural law theory that rests on it.  Hence they fail to understand the rational foundations of traditional sexual morality.

But the Thomist is bound to judge that mere intellectual error is not the only problem.  For it’s not just that people in contemporary Western society commonly disagree, at an intellectual level, with the natural law theorist’s judgments about what is disordered.  It’s that they commonly act in ways that natural law theory says are disordered.  And if such behavior has a tendency to impair one’s capacity to perceive what is true and good, especially where sex is concerned, then it follows that widespread rejection of traditional sexual morality is bound to have as much to do with the sort of cognitive corruption that Aquinas calls “blindness of mind” as it does with the making of honest intellectual mistakes.  That people who don’t behave in accordance with traditional sexual moral norms also don’t believe that these norms have any solid intellectual foundation is thus in no way surprising.  On the contrary, that’s exactly what natural law theory itself predicts will happen.

It is in light of this fact that we need to evaluate the refusal of some contemporary academic philosophers even to consider arguments in defense of traditional sexual morality.  Those who take this attitude claim that such arguments need not be taken seriously because they are mere expressions of “bigotry.”  Now, one problem with this position is that it is manifestly fallacious.  It either begs the question, since whether traditional sexual morality really is “bigoted” rather than rationally justifiable is precisely what is at issue; or it is a fallacious ad hominem, an attempt to dismiss the arguments on the basis of the purportedly disreputable motivations of those who put them forward. 

Another problem, though, is that this strategy of dismissing the arguments for traditional sexual morality as mere rationalizations of “bigotry” can be stalemated by the counter-accusation that those who reject traditional sexual morality suffer from what Aquinas calls “blindness of mind.”  The traditional moralist might respond: “Of course you would dismiss the arguments as mere bigotry!  That’s because your intellect has been so clouded by sexual vice that you cannot even see what is good and true where sex is concerned, and don’t even want to try to see it!”

Of course, if the Thomist left it at that and merely accused the other side of blindness of mind, he too would be guilty of begging the question or of a fallacious ad hominem.  What that shows, though, is that there is simply no rational way to avoid engaging in debate with those with whom you disagree on the subject of sexual morality.  If the defender of traditional sexual morality is to avoid resorting to a mere question-begging ad hominem, then he has to give arguments for his position and to answer the arguments of the other side.  And if the critic of traditional sexual morality is to avoid resorting to a mere question-begging ad hominem, then he too has to give arguments for his position and to answer the arguments of the other side.  It is the side that merely flings abuse at its opponents and refuses to engage in debate that is the truly bigoted side. 

But I digress.  The other three “daughters of lust” that concern the intellect follow straightforwardly from blindness of mind.  The second is what Aquinas calls “rashness,” which concerns the way disordered sexual desire hinders “counsel about what is to be done for the sake of the end.”  What Aquinas means here is that just as pleasure in what is disordered can blind us to the true ends of our sexual faculties, so too can it blind us to the means to achieving those ends. 

The third daughter of lust is what Aquinas calls “thoughtlessness,” and what he appears to have in mind is a failure of the intellect even to attend to ends and means in the first place.  In other words, whereas “blindness of mind” involves the intellect’s attending to the question of the ends of sex but getting them wrong, and “rashness” involves the intellect’s attending to the question of the means of achieving those ends and getting those wrong too, “thoughtlessness” involves the intellect’s not even bothering with the question of what ends and means are proper.  The “thoughtless” man simply pursues the disordered pleasures to which he has become addicted in something like a sub-rational way, “mindlessly” as it were.  His intellectual activity vis-à-vis sex no longer rises even to the level of rationalization.

The fourth daughter of lust is “inconstancy.”  Here the idea seems to be that even when the lustful person is not utterly sunk in “blindness of mind,” “rashness,” and “thoughtlessness” and thus still has some grasp of the proper ends and means vis-à-vis sex, that grasp is nevertheless tenuous.  The pleasure of disordered sexual behavior constantly diverts the intellect’s attention, so that what is truly good is not consistently perceived or pursued.

Now, for Aquinas, will follows upon intellect, and thus, unsurprisingly, the daughters of lust include four disorders of the will in addition to the four disorders of the intellect.  Aquinas describes the fifth and sixth daughters of lust as follows:

One is the desire for the end, to which we refer "self-love," which regards the pleasure which a man desires inordinately, while on the other hand there is "hatred of God," by reason of His forbidding the desired pleasure.

“Self-love,” it seems to me, can be understood as follows.  The “thoughtless” person is entirely sunk in his disordered sexual pleasures.  The person manifesting “blindness of mind” and “rashness” is also sunk in disordered sexual pleasure, but has managed to cobble together a network of rationalizations for his pursuit of these disordered pleasures.   Either way, though, the lustful person’s focus has turned inward, on the self and its own pleasures and intellectual constructions, rather than outward, toward what is actually good and true.  The mind corrupted by lust wants to make reality conform to itself, rather than to make itself conform to reality.  Hence the very idea that there is such a thing as a natural, objective moral order, especially where sex is concerned, becomes unbearable to the lustful person. 

The sequel, naturally, is what Aquinas calls “hatred of God.”  For God is Being Itself, and since being, like truth and goodness, is a transcendental, it follows that God is also Truth Itself and Goodness Itself.  These are all just different ways of conceptualizing the same one divine reality.  Thus, to hate what is in fact true and good is ipso facto to hate what is in fact God.  Of course, the person lost in disordered sexual desire might claim to love God.  If such a person knows he is lost in disordered desire and seeks to be freed from it, this love is sincere.  He still has some perception of what is truly good and wants to strengthen his grasp of it and his ability to pursue it.  But suppose the person loves his disordered desires, hates those who would call him away from indulging those desires, and refuses to take seriously the suggestion that such indulgence is contrary to the divine will.  Then his purported love of God is bogus.  It is not really God that he loves at all, but rather an idol of his own construction. 

The last two daughters of lust are what Aquinas calls “love of this world” and “despair of a future world.”  Now, for Aquinas a human being qua rational animal has both corporeal powers (namely our animal powers of nutrition, growth, reproduction, sensation, appetite, and locomotion) and the incorporeal powers of intellect and will.  It is the latter, higher powers that make our souls immortal and destined for a life beyond the present one.  Since our animal powers, and the pleasure associated with their exercise, are natural to us, there is nothing wrong with our loving these things.  But by “love of this world” what Aquinas has in mind is an excessive love of these things.  Disordered sexual pleasure, by virtue of its intensity, has a tendency to turn us away from the goods of the intellect.  In part this is because such pleasure blinds us to what the intellect would otherwise see to be true and good, but also in part because even where the lustful person can still perceive truth and goodness, its pursuit is difficult since the pleasure he might take in it is so much less intense than the disordered sexual pleasure to which he is in thrall.

Naturally, then, the lustful person is bound to be uninterested in the next life, and disinclined to do what is needed to secure his future well-being within it.  It will seem cold, abstract, and dull compared to what he has set his heart on in this life.  And thus it is no surprise that Christian theologians have traditionally emphasized the dangers sexual sins pose to one’s immortal soul.  This is not because such sins are the worst sins -- they are not -- but rather because the pleasure associated with them makes them very easy to fall into and, if they become habitual, very difficult to get out of.  (Churchmen who want to downplay the significance of sexual sins in the name of compassion are thus acting in a way that is in fact anything but compassionate.)

The opposite extreme

So far we have been talking about sins of excess where sexual pleasure is concerned.  But it is very important to keep in mind that here as in other areas of human life, there are disorders of deficiency as well as disorders of excess.  Speaking of pleasure in general, Aquinas writes:

Whatever is contrary to the natural order is vicious.  Now nature has introduced pleasure into the operations that are necessary for man's life.  Wherefore the natural order requires that man should make use of these pleasures, in so far as they are necessary for man's well-being, as regards the preservation either of the individual or of the species.  Accordingly, if anyone were to reject pleasure to the extent of omitting things that are necessary for nature's preservation, he would sin, as acting counter to the order of nature.  And this pertains to the vice of insensibility. (Summa Theologiae II-II.142.1)

Aquinas immediately goes on to note that it is possible to forsake pleasure in a way that is not vicious, as when one chooses celibacy for the sake of the priesthood or religious life.  There are also unusual cases where even spouses might agree to abstain from sex for spiritual reasons.  But these are not (or should not be) cases where sexual pleasure is rejected as bad, but rather cases where it is regarded it as good but nevertheless forsaken for the sake of something even better.  And the normal course of human affairs is for people to marry, and when they marry to have sexual relations.  That means that sexual pleasure is simply a normal part of ordinary human life.  That is inevitable given that we are, by nature, as much corporeal and animal creatures as rational ones. 

A “vice of insensibility” vis-à-vis sexual pleasure would, accordingly, plausibly be manifest in a marriage where one spouse refuses to make love, or does so only grudgingly, or does so willingly but with complete lack of interest, the way one might without protest agree to do the dishes or take out the trash.  (Of course, spouses are sometimes ill, or tired, or stressed out, or otherwise just not in the mood and thus would rather not have sex.  There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.  The problem is when one spouse exhibits a habitual aversion to or disinterest in sex.) 

Just as the will might be insufficiently drawn toward sexual pleasure, so too can the intellect take too negative a view of it.  For example, some Christian theologians of earlier centuries were suspicious of sexual pleasure, and erroneously regarded it as something that attends sexual intercourse only as a result of original sin.  Aquinas rejected this view, and in the centuries since his time, natural law theorists, moral theologians, and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church took an increasingly more positive view of sexual pleasure as nature’s way of facilitating the procreative and unitive ends of sex.

So just what is the deal with sex, anyway?  Why are we so prone to extremes where it is concerned?  The reason, I would say, has to do with our highly unusual place in the order of things.  Angels are incorporeal and asexual, creatures of pure intellect.  Non-human animals are entirely bodily, never rising above sensation and appetite, and our closest animal relatives reproduce sexually.  Human beings, as rational animals, straddle this divide, having as it were one foot in the angelic realm and the other in the animal realm.  And that is, metaphysically, simply a very odd position to be in.  It is just barely stable, and sex makes it especially difficult to maintain.  The unique intensity of sexual pleasure and desire, and our bodily incompleteness qua men and women, continually remind us of our corporeal and animal nature, pulling us “downward” as it were.  Meanwhile our rationality continually seeks to assert its control and pull us back “upward,” and naturally resents the unruliness of such intense desire.  This conflict is so exhausting that we tend to try to get out of it by jumping either to one side of the divide or the other.  But this is an impossible task and the result is that we are continually frustrated.  And the supernatural divine assistance that would have remedied this weakness in our nature and allowed us to maintain an easy harmony between rationality and animality was lost in original sin. 

So, behaviorally, we have a tendency to fall either into prudery or into sexual excess.  And intellectually, we have a tendency to fall either into the error of Platonism -- treating man as essentially incorporeal, a soul trapped in the prison of the body -- or into the opposite error of materialism, treating human nature as entirely reducible to the corporeal.  The dominance of Platonism in early Christian thought is perhaps the main reason for its sometimes excessively negative attitude toward sexual pleasure, and the dominance of materialism in modern times is one reason for its excessive laxity in matters of sex.  The right balance is, of course, the Aristotelian-Thomistic position -- specifically, Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology, which affirms that man is a single substance with both corporeal and incorporeal activities; and Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law theory, which upholds traditional sexual morality while affirming the essential goodness of sex and sexual pleasure.