Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Sara Butler!

"I think that's more or less on target, and the implicit criticism of the way things are these days certainly appeals to my old-fashioned sensibilities. However, I'm not sure I can agree with Mrs. Morse that the natural purpose of human sexuality is all that clear. I'm far more interested in which is the most virtuous way to use human sexuality, and, in addition to not being convinced that Mrs. Morse is entirely right about the "natural" purposes of sexuality, I'm just not convinced that what is "natural" and what is virtuous coincide. On the other hand, Will doesn't seem to think there is such a thing as virtue and that scares the crap out of me.

So, what does it mean to have sex virtuously...ahhhh, well, hmmm, I think it has something to do with acting in accordance with one's nature....now, of course, part of man's nature is that he has reason and will and can decide to act in all kinds of ways that are not according to his nature, which makes figuring out how he ought to act all the more troublesome. It's a lot easier to figure out the "purpose" of "artificial" institutions like marriage because they don't really occur in nature in any form. Marriage is a human institution (well, or a divinely instituted one, I guess, the main point is that while we may naturally identify ourselves as men and women, we don't naturally identify ourselves as husbands and wives, or, as Will put it, "Hormones do not recognize marriage contracts."); thus it is a little more simple to figure out the purpose of marriage, since we instituted it for that purpose, than it is to figure out the purpose of naturally occuring things like sex."