McKeever, N (2016) Love: What's Sex Got To Do With It? International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 30 (2). pp. 201-218. ISSN 0739-098X
Abstract
It is usually taken for granted that romantic relationships will be sexual, but it seems that there is no necessary reason for this, as it is possible for romantic relationships to not include sex. Indeed, sometimes sex is a part of a romantic relationship for only a relatively short period of it. Furthermore, scientific explanations of the link between sex and love don’t seem fully satisfying because they tell us only about the mechanics of sex, rather than its meaning or phenomenology. Therefore, the question of why it is that the archetypal romantic relationship includes sex, calls for philosophical analysis, yet it has been under-explored in philosophy. In this paper, I attempt to remedy this. I argue that sex is important to romantic love because it partly constitutes, builds, and expresses four of the central goods of a romantic relationship: 1) pleasure, 2) union, 3) intimacy, and 4) vulnerability and care. Thus, sex can be, and often is, an important vehicle for romantic love, though it is not essential for it.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 International Journal of Applied Philosophy. This is an author produced version of a paper published in International Journal of Applied Philosophy. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | sex; love; romantic; relationship |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Sep 2017 11:46 |
Last Modified: | 03 Nov 2017 02:23 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Philosophy Documentation Center |
Identification Number: | 10.5840/ijap201711069 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:121429 |