PP233 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Thomas Nagel, Sara Ruddick, Jean-Paul Sartre
Document Summary
Deviations from the biological goal of procreation. Perverse acts are those which, in principle, wouldn"t be capable of resulting in procreation. This is analogous to nagel"s conception of natural or non-perverse sex. On ruddick"s view, homosexuality counts as perverse, but it can count as complete. This ties into his psychological account of perversion (instead of biological). Nagel"s conception of perversion adheres to the notion that only humans can perform perverse sexual acts. He admits that his romeo and juliet story is unusual, but he uses it because it perfectly captures his model of sexual desire. The end of sexual desire, in this model, is embodiment, where one has the experience of body and consciousness (conscious desire). In the romeo and juliet case, the two people have just met each other for the first time. It seems like this model would be more plausible in a case where the two people already know each other somewhat.
