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Cupidon (1875) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

I was getting ready to write a chapter on Schopenhauer’s views on human sexuality (based on his “The Metaphysics of Sexual Love”) in my upcoming book The Perverted Century, when I noticed that Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy already had the same information. De Botton even mentions Schopenhauer’s dictum “Illico post coitum cachinnus auditur Diaboli,” which the French call “petite mort.” However, he does not mention the “the genitals are the real focus of the will” quote.

Schopenhauer considered himself one of the first philosophers of the “sexual question”:

“So then, after what has here been called to mind, no one can doubt either the reality or the importance of the matter ; and therefore, instead of wondering that a philosophy should also for once make its own this constant theme of all poets, one ought rather to be surprised that a thing which plays throughout so important a part in human life has hitherto practically been disregarded by philosophers altogether, and lies before us as raw material.”

In deploring that love is the domain of poets and not of philosophers, he echoes Plato’s dictum “philosophy is a bitch.”