A Naturalistic Ontology of Human Sexuality: Critique of Erotic Exceptionalism and Argumentation for Biological Reductionism

This paper develops and defends a naturalistic-reductionist ontology of human sexuality that rejects what I call “erotic exceptionalism”—the dominant view in the philosophy of sexuality from Nagel to Scruton that sex possesses ontological properties categorially different from other biological drives. Through systematic comparative analysis, I demonstrate that sex and other biological drives (paradig- matically, hunger) have isomorphic structure, parallel patterns of socio-cultural reg- ulation, and equivalent pathologies of repression. I argue that the tension-release mechanism model developed in the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition and expanded by Reich provides a more parsimonious and empirically adequate explanation com- pared to theories that assume special metaphysical dimensions in sexuality. This paper then defends this position against standard objections from phenomenology, moral philosophy of sexuality, and contemporary gender theory, and explores its theoretical implications for sexual pathology, sexual ethics, and social critique of institutional repression