ABSTRACT
This chapter is an essay on moral philosophy, political/economic philosophy, and psychoanalysis, three grand theories of morality—of right and wrong, free will, responsibility, good and evil—that are also three competing general psychologies. It is built up from two books, Scruton’s Sexual Desire (1986) and Soble’s Pornography (1986). These books give me access to disciplines—theology, Marxism (proto and neo), sexism, and feminism—outside my native haunts. This piece is not, however, a review of the books, which, in themselves, are essays on many books and ideas that fill the areas staked out by the two authors. Rather, it continues our search for the dynamics of erotic life and the consequences, public and private, of commentaries on erotic life. It is also a comparison of two ways to measure human nature: the intellectual, that is, philosophy; and the clinical, that is, psychoanalysis.
