Sex Without Love

It may reasonably be asked just what a philosopher, supposedly committed to rationality in all things, could have to say about something seemingly so non-rational as sex or love. How could one, for example, be expected to construct a philosophical system around something so elementary as an "itch in the groin," as sexual desire has so often been described? How can one hope to find the philosophical essence of love, when everyone knows that love comes in so many varieties, ranging from the passionate to the merely affectionate? How can one hope to define the ideal sex act, when it can be argued reasonably that no one sex act is ideal for everybody?

Yet anyone with any acquaintance at all with twentieth-century philosophy knows that it is no longer concerned primarily with reducing all things to a coherent, rational philosophical system, that it is not necessarily committed to searching for the one true ideal of anything, be it the good life, love, sex, or whatever. And it is certainly not clear why something that is seemingly as non-rational as love or sex cannot be discussed in a rational way. Sociologists and psychiatrists certainly feel that they have something rational to say about such subjects. Why should not philosophers have the same opportunity to focus their own distinctive rational approach on love and sex?

Here, in a break from traditional philosophical views of sex and love, Russell Vannoy presents a radical defense of sexual enjoyment without love. Vannoy argues that truly humanistic and fulfilling sex is found only when it is enjoyed for its own sake and it is divorced from traditional forms of love. The book contains insightful analyses of the philosophies of Sartre, Freud, Schopenhauer, Reich, Nagel, deSade, and others.

Russell C. Vannoy Jr., associate professor emeritus of philosophy, joined the Buffalo State faculty in 1960. He developed the college’s first advanced philosophy course, Aesthetics, and in 1971, he offered one of the first courses of its kind in the nation, Philosophy of Love and Sex. Vannoy’s research was widely cited, and he served as chairman of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love. He retired in 1994.