Sex Distinguished from Other Bodily Appetites

In its purely physiological aspect sexual experience possesses a distinctive quality totally unlike any other bodily pleasure, and the attraction exerted by the other appetites cannot be compared with the physiological attraction of sex.  The positive and negative values attaching to sex belong to a level far deeper than those which attach to the other bodily appetites.  Indeed, these sexual experiences are characterised by a specific character of mystery which, like the other essential elements of sexuality on which at present we can but briefly touch, must be reserved for fuller treatment later.  In their distinctive quality there is something which penetrates to the very root of man's physical being, and which the other bodily experiences attain only when life itself is at stake.  They have in them something extraordinary which exceeds the bounds of everyday life.  They display a depth and a gravity which  removes them altogether from the province of all other bodily experiences.  

And, as a result, it is characteristic of sex that in virtue of its very significance and nature it tends to become incorporated with experiences of a higher order, purely psychological and spiritual.  Nothing in the domain of sex is so self-contained as the other bodily experiences, e.g., eating and drinking.  The unique profundity of sex in the physical sphere is sufficiently shown by the simple fact that a man's attitude towards it is of incomparably greater moral significance than his attitude to the other bodily appetites.  Surrender to sexual desire for its own sake defiles a man in a way that gluttony, for example, can never do.  It wounds him to the core of his being, and he becomes in an absolutely different and novel fashion guilty of sin.  And even as compared with many other domains of experience which are not physical, sex occupies a central position in the personality.  It represents a factor in human nature which essentially seeks to play a decisive part in man's life.  Sex can indeed keep silence, but when it speaks it is no mere obiter dictum, but a voice from the depths, the utterance of something central and of the utmost significance.  In and with sex, man, in a special sense, gives himself.

This central position is determined by two factors.  The first is that here body and soul meet in a unique fashion, a point to which we must return later.  The second is the peculiar intimacy of sex.  In a certain sense sex is the secret of the individual, which he instinctively hides from others.  It is something which the person concerned feels to be altogether private, something which belongs to his inmost being.  Every disclosure of sex is the revelation of something intimate and personal.  It is the initiation of another into our secret.  It is for this reason that the domain of sex is also the sphere of shame in its most characteristic sense.  We are pre-eminently ashamed to unveil this secret to others.  Whether a man is modest or inmost depends first and foremost on his attitude to sex.

This intimate character is a further proof of the special depth of sex as contrasted with the other bodily functions.  But before everything else it reveals the central position of sex.  And because sex is the secret of the individual, to disclose and surrender oneself.

Dietrich von Hildebrand

In Defence of Purity