Lust and love

Philosophical idealism is inherently ungrounded in reality, so it collapses in the face of lust, which is grounded there. That is, if the two are brought into opposition.  Herein is a typical theme that I see in many Western writers, for instance in Sade’s JUSTINE and in Nietzsche, whereby it is deemed necessary to trash the ideal of the feminine, which is deemed to have been put on a pedestal due to religion (pagan in the first instance, and Christian in the latter).

The new value trying to be tested is to destroy reverence for women as such, so that the (male) writer can experience his lust. The problem with this solution is that it starts from a psychological projection — women are deemed to represent some essence of transcendence/mystery/love — and then seeks to destroy the women, via the mode of expressing lust. But it does not destroy the projection. It does not even begin to tackle the root issue of the problem, which is the conceptually-derived opposition between the mind and the body.

Misogynist solutions to sexual inhibition only destroy the container of the self-hatred that is projected “out there” -- projected as a result of being inhibited about one's sexuality. That is the Sadean solution and it is to some extent Nietzsche’s. For instance, Nietzsche thought women had been granted far too many courtesies by Christianity, and that it was time to institute a warlike, that is (in his view) realistic form of society, that would give no quarter to female pieties.

Anyway, these are male philosophers philosophizing. The construction of an absolute opposition between mind and body has not originated in women’s philosophizing, but it is a male problem and one the male philosophers have difficulty in figuring out.

What is needed is better integration of the mind and body. It’s an obvious solution, but one that has been generally avoided.