The Maneless Lions

There is an important difference between being average and being normal. A normal lion has a mane. But suppose a plague hit lion-dom and all the lions lost their manes. The average lion would then be maneless, but the normal lion would still have a mane. All existing lions, unhappily, would be abnormal. The normal lion is the one that typifies leonine nature, the one that lives, flourishes, and declines in accordance with the laws of its kind. Having a mane is the right thing, the way lions ought to be, the way lions really are when they are truly themselves.

The above illustration is from Roger Scruton’s recent and remarkable book, Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic (Free Press). Scruton is trying to establish the basis on which it is possible to speak of sexual perversion. Are bestiality, pedophilia, sadomasochism, fetishism, necrophilia, and homosexuality perversions? The answer is that they are only if you can first determine what is normal. The emancipatory intellectual mindset of the age is at war with the idea of “normal” because it implies the normative. One can point out that the sexual emancipator’s argument is parasitical, since it depends upon the idea of the normative: Without the normal and normative there is nothing to be emancipated or liberated from. That is a nice debater’s point, but it does not get us out of the cultural dilemma in which, for example, parents and schools feel stymied in transmitting to our children any oughts regarding sexual behavior.

RJ

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Richard John Neuhaus

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There is an important difference between being average and being normal. A normal lion has a mane. But suppose a plague hit lion-dom and all the lions lost their manes. The average lion would then be maneless, but the normal lion would still have a mane. All existing lions, unhappily, would be abnormal. The normal lion is the one that typifies leonine nature, the one that lives, flourishes, and declines in accordance with the laws of its kind. Having a mane is the right thing, the way lions ought to be, the way lions really are when they are truly themselves.

The above illustration is from Roger Scruton’s recent and remarkable book, Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic (Free Press). Scruton is trying to establish the basis on which it is possible to speak of sexual perversion. Are bestiality, pedophilia, sadomasochism, fetishism, necrophilia, and homosexuality perversions? The answer is that they are only if you can first determine what is normal. The emancipatory intellectual mindset of the age is at war with the idea of “normal” because it implies the normative. One can point out that the sexual emancipator’s argument is parasitical, since it depends upon the idea of the normative: Without the normal and normative there is nothing to be emancipated or liberated from. That is a nice debater’s point, but it does not get us out of the cultural dilemma in which, for example, parents and schools feel stymied in transmitting to our children any oughts regarding sexual behavior.