Chapter Overviews

Chapter 1: Ethics

The very first question we must ask, following the advice of Ayn Rand, is whether Ethics is even necessary at all and, if it is, what facts of reality give rise to it. I contend that it is our mortality, the fact that we can die, that gives rise for the need for principles to guide our actions. Yet, merely continuing to breathe is not the same as living well and if we wish for the latter, then we must identify our nature and those actions that will promote a good human life.

I argue that it is our rationality that defines us as persons and differentiates us from all other animals and, as a consequence, it is this aspect of our nature that must be developed if we are to achieve the state of lasting flourishing that we call happiness. This conception of morality is hypothetical in nature: morality is only “binding” as long as one seeks to live as a person. Further, for an action to be moral means that this action sustains or furthers one’s life as a person.

In order to achieve true and lasting happiness, there are certain conditions we must achieve. Minimally, we must secure for ourselves the freedom to act and maintain a healthy body. Once we have these minimal conditions in place, we can begin to act to perfect our character through the cultivation of the virtues.

Chapter 2: Emotions 

Emotions have historically been considered to be irreducible primaries beyond the ability of our reason to penetrate and, certainly, most people experience them this way. However, our passions, etymology aside, are not simply something we suffer. Reason and emotions have only been set up as antagonistic opposites because emotions have always been considered to be brutish and animalistic.

Yet emotions are actually responses to judgments: they are an automatic form of evaluation. Although we cannot consciously control their operation, they rely upon our judgments as their standards. Thus, if I consciously come to accept a judgment as true, and I internalize this truth, my emotions will begin to use it as a standard. This, consequently, gives us an avenue for analysis. Not only can I ask what I am feeling, I can ask why I am feeling it and be able to find an underlying judgment.

This gives us the ability to both understand our emotions in a way entirely closed to us before and gives us the opportunity to structure our emotions so that they help contribute to our lives. Our emotions, once they are properly understood, can become another avenue for us to build meaning in our lives. Furthermore, this framework gives us the basis for analyzing the roots of love, how it can be maintained, and how it can be deepened, and we can use this knowledge in our pursuit of a good lover.

Chapter 3: Relationships and Love

While there are many different kinds of relationships in life, Sexual Perfection focuses solely on two distinct kinds: friendship and love. A good friend is minimally necessary in order to have a good life; reciprocal good action and a mutual movement towards perfection characterize good friendship (cf. the Aristotelian idea of mirroring from the NE).

Although friendship can help one attain a good life, it cannot rival the ability of a good lover to do so. The level of intimacy and openness in a good relationship gives it a unique advantage as the lovers will be willing to change to improve themselves for their lover and they will drive themselves to be the best they can in order to be worthy of each other. A good relationship is, of course, no easy achievement. Yet, it is only on the basis of a good relationship that we can hope to incorporate sex in a life-affirming way into our lives.

Chapter 4: Erotic Attraction and Fantasy

Our new conception of emotions will yield a surprising result central to our concern: it gives us the framework necessary to explain sexual attraction. Historically, sexual attraction has also been understood to stand outside reason: it is merely something that strikes us, or not. Yet, just like emotions, sexual attraction operates based on our judgments. Consequently, we will no longer be forced to consider our desires as something thrust upon our “real selves” by our bodies, we will understand our desires as following from our rational judgments and therefore entirely our own doing.  

Moreover, understanding erotic attraction will enable us to see the intimate connection between it and fantasy. Indeed, fantasy has a much more important role in sexuality than is currently understood: without it, attraction would be bereft of much of its passion. This is because fantasy creates for us an idealized object of attraction and this serves as the locus for the attraction. Fantasy, however, is not limited to its role in attraction. Fantasy allows us to simulate an experience in the safe confines of our mind. This has three primary uses: to test whether we would be interested in a particular experience, to explore this experience’s possibilities, and to help us to relive past experiences. Thus fantasy is critical for both understanding our sexual limits as well as serving as fuel for erotic encounters and masturbation.

Chapter 5: Erotic Identities

Clarity and precision in concepts facilitates understanding and this is especially true of sexuality. Consequently, we need to recognize a conceptual distinction between the categories of eroticism and sexuality; the former being the genus subsuming all genital pleasure and actions that cause it, while the latter is a sub-category solely differentiated by being between members of the opposite sex. This distinction carries more than merely etymological weight; it follows from different kinds of arousal and attraction that are explored in chapter 4.

It is important to stress here that homosexual and heterosexual, which are currently understood as categories of people, are actually categories of actions. Since attraction is based on our judgments, our sexual “orientation” is a function of our ideas: it is not innate. Indeed, humans are naturally bisexual and it is not until our sexuality is shaped as we mature that we begin to take on an orientation: immature sexual arousal is amorphous and lacks any external focus. 

However, in most cultures this shaping begins very early in a child’s life, as his parents will instruct it about what is “right and natural”. Yet, if this early structuring were missing or neutral, the child would grow up without a predisposition to be attracted to one sex over the other. Indeed, there are many cases of young children examining each others genitals and engaging in “sex play,” in what would be an erotic way were they mature, without a regard for their gender as they don’t yet know that one is “right” and the other “wrong”. Thus, it is only appropriate to talk about homosexual as categories of actions or desires, but not as categories of people.

Chapter 6: Sex

We have already seen that eroticism is the genus subsuming all genital pleasure and actions that cause it, while sexuality is a sub-category differentiated by being between members of the opposite sex. Thus, sexual pleasure would be the pleasure derived from the genitals from the union of a man and a woman. However, while the genitals are the locus of sexual pleasure, they are not its focus. Sexual pleasure is as much of a spiritual, or mental, pleasure as a physical pleasure: the same physical action may or may not be pleasurable depending on our judgment of the other involved and the context (i.e. sex with our lover and being raped can be the same action, but with fundamentally different experiences). The focus of sexual pleasure is partly the physical pleasure, but in a more fundamental sense the focus is our union with our lover that we can only experience during sexual intercourse.

Sexual intercourse is different in kind both from the intercourse of other animals and other human erotic pleasures. Other mammals have sex only during heats, periods where the female is fertile and capable of receiving a male, during other periods these animals neither desire sex nor are capable of doing it. Humans, on the other hand, are capable of sexual intercourse at any time after puberty, although they are capable of erotic pleasure at almost any time during their life. Sex for humans, being unrestricted to special breeding times, is free from biological necessity. Thus, and let me emphasize this, human sexuality has no necessary connection to reproduction. Sex can be used for reproductive ends, but there is no inevitability in this. A couple could just as easily have sexual intercourse for the simple pleasure of it or because they want to enhance their connection to each other. Indeed, as we shall see in the next chapter, there is no better way to become close to someone than sexual intercourse.

Chapter 7: Sexual Perfection

Once we understand attraction and sex, we shall discover a phenomenon unique to the sexual encounter: the sexual essence. One can only understand the sexual essences in contrast to each other, just as magnetic North by itself would be incomprehensible: it is the presence of their antithesis in a sexual context that gives rise to the sexual essences. The sexual essences form a large part of our sexual identity; when we experience them, we experience ourselves as an embodied man or woman in a sexual body. The two essences are exceedingly different, yet form the perfect complement to each other. The essence of masculinity is characterized by penetration and the drive to dominate the feminine, to force her to acquiesce to his will, to make her surrender. The essence of femininity is characterized by reception and the drive to find to a man worthy of surrendering herself to, to find a hero worthy of her adoration, to find the man who can earn her submission. The combination of the sexual essences provides the basis for what I call sexual union.

The sublime union of masculinity and femininity arises only in a sexual situation, once the sexual essences have been actualized. If the lovers are truly in love and have established a good relationship, then they will be open to each other and to the possibility of their union. In sexual union, intercourse goes from being just intensely pleasurable to the experience of the totality of your values and goals as embodied by your lover, who is also your highest value. Sex becomes an act of unification: as you physically become one, you also spiritually open yourself to the importance of your lover and her irreplaceability. By accepting your lover’s pivotal role in your life, and her status as constitutive of your happiness, you internalize her ends as your own, her goals as your goals, her happiness as yours. In this way you become one in spirit as well as body, you achieve complete unity with your lover. In sexual union you meet your lover both naked in body and spirit: you open yourself up completely to your lover, without reservation, and offer to them the sum of your existence.

Sexual union is the primary impetus for sexual perfection: if one wants the best kind of lover, then one must become the best kind of person and worthy of the lover you hope to attain. This provides a drive for both of the lovers to continually push themselves for perfection in their lives: constant improvement becomes the leitmotif of the relationship. This is pivotal to becoming the best kind of person for two reasons: this kind of relationship with an excellent lover is part of happiness and the drive to perfection from it is unrivalled. Sexual perfection is the key to becoming the best kind of person possible and the path to maintaining this high level of excellence.

Chapter 8: Applications

Neither eroticism nor sexuality is necessarily life affirming. Indeed, any erotic act can be perverse: it can cause a decline in life. This can come from conscious intent or poor premises that leads one to be attracted to decadence. Alternatively, one can develop a sense of false power (fetish) from fixating on certain rote actions or artifacts. Perversion and fetish are not only symptomatic of unhealthy ideas about eroticism, but they also preclude healthy eroticism as far as they are practiced. Learning about perversion and fetish can help us ward against them in our own life and this can help us to achieve, and maintain, a life-affirming sex life.

The abortion debate has so far focused on questions of personhood concerning the status of the fetus and of a woman’s right to choose an abortion if she wishes. However, both sides habitually over-simplify the issues and, consequently, both sides have gone astray and the debate has become deadlocked. In order to answer it, we first need to understand what sorts of existents qualify as people. Having disqualified non-existent (although potential) entities from personhood, we shall turn to the question of under what conditions it is moral for a woman to choose to have an abortion and when it is not. Although qualified that abortion is not moral in all circumstances, we shall nevertheless insist that abortion should be a legal freedom and that if a woman is denied the ability to choose the course of her own body, then she is effectively denied the right to her own life.