Comparing Morgan's Goldman And Nagel

2. Sexual bodies between nature and culture: a dualistic conception

Morgan’s account filter out and problematize what he considers the most radical aspects of the analysis of Goldman and Nagel. Respectively regarding their approaches, in Morgan’s account sexual desire is not reduced to the unmediated bodily pleasure neither its is over-intellectualized by complex intentional and communicative inter-relation of the partners’ experiences. I argue that even if Morgan clearly gives more credit to the ‘intentionalist’ account rather that to the hedonistic or ‘reductionist’ one, he seems to conceive his approach firstly as a mediation among them, a demonstration of the complementarity of their most important arguments, given the critics of their
His account strings together Aristotle positive consideration of bodily appetites as innate dispositions of human nature with the kantian account on passions as specific inclinations of human beings, rooted in our freedom. However this paradigm is used to assign a power as strongest as possible to individual reason conceived as able to rule the conflictual dichotomy between body and mind, repressing with inner logical instruments all the dark desires that - he admits - can be seen as culturally and socially
This may be especially true in the case of the eroticised passions. (...) There are numerous factors that might prevent the evolution of such attitudes or combat them once they appear, most centrally the ability of women to elicit and foster affection and love, and to command esteem. (...) those men whose attitudes have been shaped by sexism can easily find themselves unable to sustain them in the face of their growing genuine affection for particular sexual partners, so that even if they once conceived of intercourse as conquest and experienced it accordingly, they will cease to do so.” (Morgan, S. , 2003: