What would a world in which sexuality were free be like?
We put our capacities to give sexual pleasure at the disposal of others instead of keeping them for ourselves. Why?
The answer is not obvious. Sex is no bed of roses. It is an activity that has a certain psychological, physical, and even economic cost.
It is because these costs of sex are well known that we can very well understand those who prefer to watch a football match on the television or to cut their toenails.
Evolutionists tell us that there exist instinctive causes, tied to the interests of the species, informing our tendency to engage in activities whose individual benefits are not obvious.
But we do not always follow our instincts and, in any case, the question that might come under the competence of the philosopher does not have to do with causes (the province of the biologist) but with reasons.
More precisely, it is the question of knowing whether such reasons are good and legitimate.
What then are the reasons why we put our capacities to give sexual pleasure at the disposal of others instead of keeping them for ourselves?
Sex may follow the logic of exchange, because there is something to be gained in return: love, gratitude, sexual pleasure, admiration for our beauty or our talents in bed, children, a partner for life, money, a helping hand when moving houses or redecorating our apartment, and so on.
But sex may also follow the logic of the gift, and there may therefore be no expectation of anything specific in return, not even sexual pleasure: because we love absolutely just as we can love God or a star, because we wish to give all that we possess, because we have the feeling that it is our duty, because we are completely infatuated physically or morally, and so on.
1In sum, there exist an infinity of reasons for putting our capacities for giving sexual pleasure at the disposal of others.
Is it legitimate to hierarchize them, to judge that certain reasons are good and others bad?
Aside from a few cynics, no one denies that love can be a good reason for engaging in a sexual relationship. But it is neither the only reason, nor necessarily the best one. Why sacralize it, as some do? Why accord it such a moral privilege?
Is it really tawdrier to use our sexual capacities to fund a weekend in Capri?
What would happen in a world in which sexuality was truly free?
In such a world, the reasons for putting our capacities for giving sexual pleasure at the disposal of others would no longer be hierarchized. We would cease to think that some are noble and others ignoble.
Sexual activities would escape not only penal repression (we would do what we wished with our sexual life so long as we caused no harm to others) but also moral intervention (there would no longer be any bad reasons for putting our sexual capacities to a particular use). It would be a world in which sexuality would at last be freed from moral and political paternalism.
But we could go further still and imagine a world in which there would quite simply no longer be a reason to make use of our sexual capacities. It would be a world completely liberated from sexuality.
In such a world, the obsession with sex would completely disappear. We would no more think about it than we would about God in the most secularized of societies.
Sex would no longer be of any practical interest. It would no longer be a resource in our dealings with our fellows.
There would no longer be any interest in the reproductive aspect. Recourse to medically assisted procreation in all its forms (cloning and artificial uteruses included) would become the general rule.
There would no longer be any interest in the scientific aspect. No one would any longer seek to explain conduct in terms of its sexual antecedents.
It is not hard to understand why we might like to live in a world in which sexuality was finally liberated completely from moral and political paternalism.
But it is harder to grasp why we might like to live in a world completely liberated from sexuality, unless we were really very puritanical … or very tired!
