WHY versus WHY NOT? Why did God place us in a world full of pleasures if we aren’t meant to pursue them all? In an imaginative dialogue, Oscar Wilde asks Jesus Christ to respond to this question about critical lifestyle choices. Their talk vividly illustrates the arguments for both sensual pleasure-seeking and moral moderation. Playwright, dramatist, poet, critic—Wilde openly defied the mores of Victorian society. His literary repartee fueled an “if it feels good, do it” humanistic philosophy that is still prevalent in the world today. SO WHAT does JESUS SAY?
Sit back, turn on the air conditioning, make sure you have an iced drink to hand, and enjoy the heat from this collection of three sizzling short and steamy page turners. The Prize Double the Doms, double the fun! When she shows up at the prestigious Vivant Club to claim her prize of one month’s free membership, Jessie Barnett doesn’t know what to expect. The two powerful Doms who are hers for the evening have no doubt at all what they require from her – complete surrender, on her knees. Will one evening’s pleasure be enough? Or is there more to be won, an even greater prize hovering just beyond her reach? Rose’s Are Red Rose has had a crush on Iain McCain for years, so when she spots her sexy ex-teacher with a whip in his hand at her favourite BDSM club she decides it’s time for a little extra-curricular activity. All grown up now, and she decides a Valentine’s Day card might earn her the spanking she craves from him. Of course, she has to deliver it personally… on her knees. A Very Private Performance After being fired from her job for her pole dancing hobby, Emily has no problem letting her two sexy bosses know how hypocritical they area. Quick to correct the mistake, the brothers vow to make it up to her… in return for a very private performance.
With audacious dexterity, David Howes weaves together topics ranging from love and beauty magic in Papua New Guinea to nasal repression in Freudian psychology and from the erasure and recovery of the senses in contemporary ethnography to the specter of the body in Marx. Through this eclectic and penetrating exploration of the relationship between sensory experience and cultural expression, Sensual Relations contests the conventional exclusion of sensuality from intellectual inquiry and reclaims sensation as a fundamental domain of social theory. David Howes is Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.
In an age which is supposedly experiencing a sexual revolution, a volume of thoughtful essays on eros is not only not out of place but perhaps is a positive contribution to the understanding of contempor ary man. It was the conviction of the editors that the scientific view of sexuality, as promoted in such valuable studies as those conducted by Masters and Johnson, needed considerable supplement and per spective. The perspective is here furnished by writers from both Europe and America, authors from various fields, such as philosophy, psychology, and even musicology, all of whom are united, in that their approach to the problem of eros is phenomenologically oriented. At first it might well seem strange that musicology would have much to say about eros. It is true, musicology has been the "science" of music, at least in intent. Yet in a larger view of the discipline, philo sophical and aesthetic problems are also important to it, and this particularly if we agree with Enzo Paci, that our very culture depends on eros. Surely musical culture, as pointed out by Kierkegaard, is the embodiment of what western civilization has known as sensuality; and Mozart's Don Giovanni is its incarnation. On the surface it is easier for us to grasp the work of the philosopher in this area; and, of course, one expects the psychologist to deal with sexuality more explicitly than anyone else.
