Sexual Desire
Scruton, Roger
Where, then, does Professor Himmelfarb look for the defense of civilized values? Perhaps it is not being overly presumptuous to suggest that it is to the memory of a culture that lived "on sheer...
...The personality of the beloved is there-fore described by Scruton as "the great metaphysical illusion of love...
...And in any conflict between the good of the beloved and her availability to the lover, the lover is bound, Scruton says, "to sacrifice your good, to fight against your career, your friendship, your activity, everything that gives you the chance to live happily without me...
...He speaks of an individual as a "first-person spectre" and describes our belief that we are possessed of "quintessential individuality" as a "point of view" due to our inability to "describe the world objectively from no point of view within it...
...Beyond that and above all else, love is threatened .by the intrusion of reality, especially in the shape of respect for moral considerations...
...Beyond the bedroom, the whip that maintains the bond between sexuality and morality is wielded by what Scruton calls "the state," whose institutions insure "the marshaling and directing of animal urges towards an interpersonal aim...
...Similarly, the idea that runs through all of British political practice, as well as philosophy, is that civil association is distinguished by its ability, which is in-deed its justification, to contain within itself a variety of other forms of association...
...These fancies with all their attendant pleasures are produced by the beloved's ability to stimulate the lover's imagination, much as the grit in the oyster irritates it into producing a pearl...
...Though he does not discuss Stendhal, he does say, for instance, that he has shown the way to achieving "happiness" in Aristotle's sense...
...We prefer to endow love with "the character of a decision" because it allows us to suppose that even while "being overcome by the other," we can still preserve our "inner freedom...
...And the results of this knowledge "may be catastrophic" because it turns love into "a systematic disappointment...
...Though he does not otherwise refer to religious truth, he announces that "in marriage I `undertake' an obligation that precedes my choice and which resides in the scheme of things...
...But Scruton is saying something very different, that the "human person" is an "artefact" of "collective endeavour," that is to say, not a reality resident in every human being...
...Plato's diseased soul became the hero of the romantic ideal of love, of Shirley Robin Letwin is the author of Modern Philosophies of Law, The Pursuit of Certainty, and The Gentleman in Trollope: Individuality and Moral Conduct...
...The impression of incoherence in Scruton's book is reinforced by his remarks about the relation of his doctrine to that of other philosophers...
...If the loved one, Stendhal warns, should fall into "the enormous error of killing fear by the eagerness of her transports, the illusion of love will cease...
...The illusion of a mosque's individuality re-mains even though "I know that it is a heap of stones which bears no more unity than I am able to impose upon it": but "every love stands to be jeopardized by the new knowledge that will destroy the vital belief...
...Whatever happens to me through it, expresses the body's command...
...Although Scruton mentions Stendhal just in passing, his conception of erotic love is fundamentally the same...
...Yet that regard for individuality is associated with a rejection of the belief that human beings have a divided nature, and with—what is an implication of that belief—an insistence that sexual behavior is necessarily part of moral conduct...
...RR1 Box 370 Poland Spring, Maine 04274 Or call: (207) 998-4666 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 THE WHITE HOUSE MESS Christopher Buckley/Alfred A. Knopf/$16.95 R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Just write to: Gerald Davidson, M.D...
...But this is a peculiarly uncomfortable test for individualists who are opposed to the current permissiveness...
...More intelligent readers will only note that Wadlough bled a lot, while we laughed...
...Had Scruton taken a more serious interest in religion he might have noticed that the Christian idea of love has suggested the pattern of a genuine reconciliation of sexuality with morality...
...VISA ^ Mastercard ^ American Express Asst 1 Sup f)ate Signature ASP JSE Classics THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 47...
...Though we may see a mosque "as possessing an individuality," in reality it is, Scruton teaches, only a "heap of stones," just as the animal body is the only reality behind the illusion of love...
...But in all his assertions about the sovereignty of the body in sexual desire Scruton is at one with the traditional accounts of erotic love...
...Black and white...
...True, she herself demonstrates that the Victorian attempt to make a religion of morality ultimately proved untenable...
...What then does he offer that is new...
...Scruton emphasizes throughout that "human nature is dual" and that human beings are divided between their rational and animal halves...
...Not surprisingly, therefore, marriage is a religious `sacrament.' " Furthermore, "marriage imposes on the bond of erotic love the non-contractual and pious arrangement of the home...
...Since the object of their love is a real person, not an illusion, and since this sort of lover is the maker of his love, not a victim of it, he can choose to take into account moral as well as other considerations without destroying his love...
...I prefer to charge this purchase to...
...Nevertheless, the persevering reader isleft in no doubt that Scruton considers individuality to be an illusion...
...Love is accordingly an illusion that has to be maintained by continuous stimulation to the imagination...
...another flaunts marijuana in the family home . . . a girl who always seemed well-behaved becomes outrageously promiscuous...
...We have a brochure that details how ELAN works and we'll be glad to send it to you...
...In reducing human individuality to an illusion arising out of social life and resting ultimately on the force exercised by the state, Scruton is at odds with the distinctive moral and political tradition of England...
...Indeed, to unite the animal and spiritual aspects of human nature in the manner suggested by Scruton is in-conceivable in Aristotle's terms...
...For one thing, nothing that Scruton tells us explains the virtue of the "home...
...36 minutes.injury on numerous occasions for his devotion to the commonweal and to the Tucker legend...
...And more important what is happening...
...This reference to a "desacralized world" is the only connection between Scruton's thesis and his idea of marriage...
...Scruton's lover wants to "overcome the other" so as to compel SEXUAL DESIRE: A MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE EROTIC Roger Scruton/The Free Press/$25.00 Shirley Robin Letwin THE SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 45 her to acknowledge that she is being "overwhelmed...
...This is the memoir of the unfortunate Mr...
...Here love is described as a "crystallization," which is a "collection of strange fancies which we weave round our idea of the loved one...
...As he considers chastisement to be a "moral idea," Scruton concludes that sado-masochism is "through and through saturated by a moral idea...
...Its meaning is well buried in dense prose purporting to give a professional philosophical analysis of concepts such as "intentionality," or else offering a description in titillating detail of the nature of sexual arousal...
...They are not the victims of their bodies because they necessarily choose how to interpret and respond to whatever sensations they experience...
...How far he has been successful depends on what he means by a "per-son...
...The list continues and each addition increases anguish...
...is editor-in-chief of The American Spectator...
...If you, a family member, or a person in your community is involved with an adolescent who has become self destructive ELAN may offer a solution...
...Throughout his book, he vacillates between an analytical description of sexuality and a moral prescription...
...This "well-founded illusion," and not any real person, is the object of sexual desire...
...Her essay, `Romantic Love and f?1..: wcr recently publishc, - At the same time, however, it is Professor Himmelfarb's hope that the recollection of that heroic and noble failure "may fortify us as we persist in our quest for some new synthesis that will herald some brave—or not so brave—new world...
...A teenager with a high IQ defiantly flunks simple subjects in school...
...For he is not, as he claims to be, a conservative, certainly not a conservative of the English sort...
...Of course, vows are not easily exchanged between metaphysical illusions...
...It is true that conservatives emphasize that we must draw on the re-sources of civilization in order to cultivate and appreciate individuality, and that these resources are made avail-able to us by the traditions and institutions of our communal life...
...which the classic account is Stendhal's De !'Amour...
...The pain of fear is essential to this love because pain is an important ingredient of erotic pleasure...
...A good test of how someone regards individuality is his attitude to love and sexuality...
...It follows that sexual arousal "is something suffered, not something done...
...For the pursuit of an illusion is traditionally a vice, not a virtue...
...There is no help to be had from the traditional discussions of erotic love, either for defending individuality or for resisting permissiveness...
...Unfortunately Scruton offers no coherent argument to support this virtuous conclusion...
...The essence of morality, according to Scruton, is compulsion...
...But he overlooks the metaphysical postulate of Aristotle's idea of happiness—a cosmic hierarchy of being which rises from matter to spirit...
...For the partners are concentrating not on "the body and its sufferings" but on "the moral idea of chastisement...
...The object of God's love is not any part of any man, nor the species as a whole, but each person, in all his individuality, as an independent substance...
...That tradition emphatically rejects the view that he attributes to both conservatives and Aristotle, that the polls is founded upon "a perception of the nature of domestic relations and of the erotic bond which underlies them...
...In which case, of course, the Victorian ethos will prove not to have been such an irrevocable failure, after all...
...Love is truly con-summated by unifying the souls, not the bodies, of lovers...
...We do not offer painless miracles but we do offer hope . . . hope that a child will recapture his or her self esteem and become a useful member of society...
...Running time 1 hour...
...It postulates that human beings are not, as Scruton believes, divided selves or at most spiritualized animals, but wholly unified intelligent beings whose rational experience includes a variety of kinds of perceptions...
...Ronald Reagan's most famous role...
...But in a soul ruled by passion instead of reason, the lover will crave for bodily union which is an illusory kind of wholeness...
...For conservatives, his book may serve as a test of their ability to recognize and resist siren voices...
...Wad-lough is a man who has suffered bodily R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...A philosophical exploration of this tradition would be able to show how sexuality can be reconciled with morality...
...Such a lover will be in constant turmoil, pursuing one object after another because, being an illusion, none can satisfy him...
...And they are uncomfortable about finding themselves allied with the long-faced enemies of earthly pleasures, as well as with paternalists longing to in-crease collective regulation of private lives...
...ELAN ONE CORP...
...The "intelligible moral relation" in sado-masochism consists in mutual "chastisement...
...To seek sexual enjoyment in the manner recommended by Scruton is hardly compatible with Aristotle's requirement that the different potentialities be realized in the right order, that is to say, that the animal potentialities be well subordinated to the spiritual ones...
...We treat adolescents who are `obnoxious but not crazy' with a technique and philosophy as unique as our remarkable rate of success...
...Certainly Scruton explicitly addresses himself to overcoming the divorce between sexuality and morality...
...Sexual organs are "the conduit of the body's orders, the instrument of its rule...
...In short, the reader in search of an answer to permissiveness that shows proper regard for individuality would do much better to read Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope than Roger Scruton...
...And their personalities are revealed in all their attributes, both bodily and mental...
...and the most perfect expression of love is the willingness to give up the world for it, since in death the soul becomes wholly free of the body...
...The only substantial novelty in Scruton's doctrine is his conception of morality, which is indeed surprising if not shocking...
...The one difference between the two illusions is that the lover's is more vulnerable to attack by reality...
...He relies on his glasses, thick ones, ------------------------Only $ 39.95 ORDER NOW...
...Scruton thus promises to provide an answer to permissiveness in the name of a proper regard for individuality...
...The resemblance to Stendhal is neither accidental nor superficial because both doctrines rest on the same conception of human beings...
...A lover of this sort is to be found throughout English literature, from Chaucer on...
...Readers of refined sensibility will find his suffering sycophantic and repellent...
...Scruton has no sympathy for the importance attached to human individuality in British political practice and philosophical thought...
...That is why Aquinas, having accepted those features of Aristotle's metaphysics, felt obliged to explain why God did not bid men to sin when He commanded them to multiply...
...Here Scruton adopts the fashionable aesthetic theory that the unity of an aesthetic object is not created by the artist but imposed by the observer...
...Perhaps it is not being overly presumptuous to suggest that it is to the memory of a culture that lived "on sheer nerve and will...
...He firmly rejects any suggestion that people are "quintessential individuals...
...The pattern for all these discussions was set long ago by Plato's Symposium, where Diotima tells Socrates that the proper pursuit of love consists in freeing the divinity in each lover from the adulterating human vessel...
...Nor does his eulogy of marriage take account of the exchange of vows and the idea of a contract that is central in the traditional marriage ceremonies...
...And for good measure, he includes liberalism among the enemies of erotic love, calling it "the natural philosophy of the `desacralized' world...
...Pictures: 1966 United Artists Corporation, all rights reserved...
...On the contrary, given his exaltation of the "state," it would be more reasonable for him to regard the "home" with suspicion because it can become a dangerous focus for individualism, as some recent histories have shown...
...If such objectivity were possible, Scruton assures us that "the 'self' and all its mysteries would vanish...
...they only enjoy and exploit the separateness of their bodies...
...And there is no resemblance to Scruton's recipe in Aquinas's prescription that a married couple may engage in sexual congress without sinning as long as they remain wholly uninvolved emotionally...
...Whereas Plato urges man to choose divinity, Stendhal urges him to employ his superior cunning so as to enjoy his brutishness...
...In this view, if men behave like beasts it is not because their bodies have taken over but because they have chosen to adopt the behavior of beasts...
...The love that ties God and man in the Christian picture does not rest on any unity or identity between them since God is a wholly different kind of being from man...
...In other words, the object of desire ac-quires its semblance of a person from the lover's "individuating thoughts...
...Worst of all, when Scruton informs us that sexual desire is not a "decision" under our control, he denies that sexual desire can be subject to moral judgment, thereby declaring that to reconcile sexuality and morality is impossible...
...The way to moralize sexuality, he argues, is to recognize that its proper object is a person, and that the conventional moral restraints are designed to enforce the pursuit of this object...
...Add $4 III) shipping and handling California residents add !r :"L Sales Tax JSE Classics 700 Chase Elk Grove...
...Here then is a love that is wholly a decision, and wholly real, because its object is neither a projection of the lover's imagination nor a temporarily imprisoned spirit but a distinct, unique, existing personality...
...We are not a mental hospital nor are we a prison...
...What happened...
...Everything in the beloved that conveys the impression of such submission is what arouses the lover...
...HOME VIDEO believes, it should be necessary or desirable to impose on it the marriage bond...
...But neither holds out any hope of a relationship between beings who are separate and unique and take an erotic interest in each other which embraces their personalities and is not at war with standards of civilized conduct...
...They find it difficult to answer the libertarian argument that a proper respect for individuality requires complete freedom for each individual to ex-press and fulfill himself as he wishes...
...This English view of love is minutely explored, though in different ways, by both Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope, among others...
...More-over, insofar as he is prescribing what we ought to do, he is violating traditional morality, not defending it as he claims...
...He not only denies that the object of sexual desire is a real person, but carelessly moves from saying that the illusion of a person is the object of sexual desire to the conclusion that this illusion ought to be what we seek, without taking notice of the transition from an "is" to an "ought...
...Nothing could be further from either Aristotle's polis or the British constitution...
...And he accepts the implications of this duality when he takes sexual desire to be attached to the animal part and denies that it is volun-tary...
...Name Address City State Zip Telephone Please specify: VHS Beta Check one: Payment enclosed...
...There is no escape from the body's "sovereignty...
...Scruton accepts the traditional antinomy but attaches it to a different conclusion, that "the ideal of virtue" is "one of `sexual integrity,' " where "sexuality is entirely integrated into a life of personal affection in which the self and its responsibility are centrally involved and indissolubly linked to the pleasures and possession of the body...
...elan one During the past two years 91% of our students completed the ELAN pro-gram and went on to post secondary education, many of them attending some of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the country...
...But whereas Plato describes such love as a disease, Stendhal praises it for being an illusion, thus explicitly opposing the satisfaction of desire to the requirements of morality...
...But in reality, love is a "compulsion," a "bodily imperative" due to animal "urges" and "impulses...
...C. S. Lewis remarked that this relationship, far from sanctioning marital love, bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the "cold sensuality of Tiberius in Capri...
...But no such new moral understanding, nor indeed any coherent understanding, is to be found in Scruton's book...
...He is therefore nothing like Scruton's obsessively possessive lover—Jane Austen's Mr...
...Indeed he will "rejoice in your faults since they may be the sign of your dependence...
...as ill-fated gridiron star George Gipp, whom Rockne quotes, UNCUT, in Gipp's famous farewell, "WIN JUST ONE FOR THE GIPPER" © 1940 Warner Bros...
...Knightley insists on teaching Emma to correct her faults just because he loves her...
...Wadlough is afflicted by allergies, a weak constitution (he prefers a steaming cup of hot water to strong matutinal coffees or teas), and dim vision...
...He is discussed brilliantly in John Bayley's The Characters of Love, which does not appear in Scruton's lengthy and exotic bibliography...
...Disinterested loye is therefore an impossibility...
...This conception of morality leads him to maintain that sado-masochism need not be a perversion, and should be recognized as a normal part of the canon of sexual possibilities because "an intelligible moral relation between effective equals finds embodiment in a sexual act...
...This is an extraordinary reading of Aristotle, who unmistakably defines the polls as a form of association distinct from and independent of the relationships of family and tribe...
...Scruton accordingly explains that in our efforts to satisfy sexual desire, "we are attempting to unite our bodies with a non-existent `owner' who is unable to possess the individuality for which he craves but sustains the illusion of his own existence as a reflection in the glass of another's eye...
...It is his refusal to recognize, as his predecessors have, that if sexuality and morality are connectedwith antagonistic parts of human nature, they cannot be reconciled...
...And in keeping with this enthusiastic endorsement of compulsion by the state, Scruton condemns the idea of "a spontaneous social order" as "an illusion fed upon . . . the fables of Adam Smith and Friedrich von Hayek...
...It is rather an appreciation of a distinct kind of being, which rests not on approval or admiration but on a will to love...
...The individualist looking for a more satisfactory account of erotic love might hope to find it in Roger Scruton's Sexual Desire, since the publisher claims that "the author upholds traditional morality but in terms that will prove shocking to many of his practitioners...
...This is hardly a consistent view of marriage...
...If either erotic love or private property is to survive, he warns us, "it is not sufficient to leave their future to the 'spontaneous social order' of the neo-conservatives" because "civil society is nothing without the state...
...Herbert Wadlough, accountant, factotum to the governor of the great state of Idaho, and finally deputy chief of staff to President Thomas N. Tucker, Ronald Reagan's successor (if Christopher Buckley has anything to say about it...
...Professor Scruton misleads the reader not only about sex and morality but also about politics...
...IL 60007 See the "Gipper" in Knute Rockne - All American Starring Ronald Reagan as George Gipp and Pat O'Brien as Knute Rockne...
...At best, he offers a sado-masochistic solution to the mind-body problem...
...Scruton has translated Stendhal's literary account into the technical language preferred nowadays and has embellished it with Sartrian trimmings...
...Can this spiral downward be stopped...
...Our lack of such objectivity, however, does ex-plain why the illusion of individuality is "well-founded...
...But Scruton's idea of a civil society is nothing more than an ex-tended tribe, with "the state" its chieftain issuing commands to regulate the lives of his subjects...
...Only the possessiveness that Scruton ascribes to the lover is more blatantly brutal and indifferent to the beloved's personality...
...We at ELAN believe it can because for 15 years we've helped obnoxious, out-of-control adolescents turn themselves around...
...Nor is it at all clear why, if the sexual bond is as irresistible as Scruton What do you do when a good kid goes bad...
...It is an "intellectual lapse" just like the "fallacy" that leads us to believe, wrongly, that works of art are "peculiarly unified objects": "It is erroneously supposed that the work of art possesses, as a peculiar metaphysical property, the individuality with which our attitude endows it...
...Both Stendhal and Plato regard such lovers as indifferent to each other's personality...
Vol. 19 • June 1986 • No. 6
