The Sexual Condition. Sexual Tendency, Eros and Donation

Abstract

This essay examines the anthropological character of human sexuality. For this purpose there is, first, a review of the two most current ways of understanding sexuality: naturalistic and constructivist. Afterwards, the author shows how both ways reduce the anthropological significance of human sexuality, that should not be understood neither as something completely given nor as the result of a social construction or of an arbitrary choice, but as a structure composed of a plurality of elements that are to be integrated, that is, the sexual condition (condizione sessuata). In addition to the body, the psyche and the spirit, the sexual condition takes account of generation, the experience of childhood with its periods of identification and differentiation respect to parental figures, interpersonal relationships, especially with persons belonging to the ‘other sexual condition’, and the call to self-giving in marriage and in celibacy. Therefore, the sexual condition is presented here as a key that allows us to understand the different phenomena related to human sexuality (modesty, shame, idolatry, jealousy, chastity, fidelity). In order to demonstrate this thesis, the author examines in detail the sexual desire, that contains implicitly the different elements that make up the sexual condition.