[lit-ideas] The Gricean Guide to Sex

In an article on Borges, I wrote that he was possibly gay but would not know it.

I applied Grice.

If you like x, you utter y, then y becomes the vehicle to draw x to _bed_. Ovid 
-- a Roman influence by Grecian ideas --
knew this to the level of a 'science' (ars amatoria, tekne aphrodisiake).

Ditto, for Aristotle. I'm currenty reading his Problems (Loeb, two volumes).

These are formulated in terms of questions and answers?

E.g. Why is urine more smelly than dung as it stays in the body? Is that 
becomes dung becomes dry?

Anyway, I was interested by his account of that basic Greek word,

"kalos"

which I always understood in terms of the pleasure it provokes in me

'hedone'.

Now Aristotle goes one step further and say that if you find x kalos, then you 
want that x is in your bed. He makes a proviso, though. He writes, "Sometimes 
not".

Let me quote him in full.

"Why does a horse enjoy and desire a mare, a man a woman, and generally 
speaking related creatures desire their kin and creatures like themselves?" 

"For it is not true that every living creature is equally

BEAUTIFUL.

And desire IS FOR BEAUTY.

So the more beautiful should be the more desirable. 

But rather in fact not every beauty is pleasant. Nor is pleasure and beauty 
equally pleasant to all men. For instance, one man finds eating and drinking 
more pleasant, another sexual intercourse [f*ck, aphrodisiasai] or indulgence. 

So the question why each mates preferably with its kin and derives THE GREATEST 
PLEASURE from it is another question.

It is untrue to say that it is because its kin is most beautiful.

But we regard AS BEAUTIFUL that which pleases us for SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, 
because when we SEE it
we enjoy the feeling of desire.

Moreover, in other desires the position is similar.

For when we are thirsty we regard drink as more pleasant.,

We regard then that which is BEAUTIFUL for a particular PURPOSE for which we 
have a great DESIRE, but the position
is different with that which is BEAUTIFUL IN ITSELF.

There is proof in this [I doubt it. JLS]

"For even MEN appear to us to be BEAUTIFUL without any question of SEXUAL 
RELATIONS."

Can they be so beautiful as to give us more pleasure than those whom we regard 
from the point of view of
intercourse?

There is nothing to prevent this, if we do not happen to feel desire at the 
time.

In the same way a drink may be more beautiful; if we happen to be thirsty we 
shall regard it as more pleasant.

The next question is, "why in the case of man is the front of the body more 
hairy than the back, but in four footed beasts the back?"

Cheers,

JL

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