Sexual Outercourse

Book excerpt: Apart from a few considerations on love, marriage or sexuality, lovemaking has been the object of little philosophical interest in the past. Sexual Outercourse. Philosophy of Lovemaking guides the reader through the history of philosophy (Plato, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault, Levinas, Lacan, Derrida, Irigaray, Nancy) and wishes to offer a real contribution to the question of sexual love by developing a philosophy of lovemaking for which a new language is needed. This book studies existing theories of love and sexuality, explores the experience of intimate closeness and draws the attention to what, in a most secret way, runs its course between lovers. Rather than studying the presupposed nature of lovemaking, the accent is on how people make love and wish to make love, and on how they might choose to relate to the sexual relation.