Let's Talk About Sex (AFR)

Following the Australian release of On Getting Off, I'm in the Australian Financial Review magazine today, talking about sex and philosophy. You can read the interview here. Here's part of the conversation:

Philosophy has often chased the eternal, the perfect, the pure. Sex is seen as a burden in this quest. First, it involves violent bodily urges, which supposedly drag down the calm ethereal soul. Second, sex blurs and blends intellectual categories: me and you, inside and outside, freedom and necessity, biology and culture. So, many philosophers have treated sex as something evil or trivial; something to be avoided, or at least avoided in thought.