Edward Feser said...
Christopher wrote:
When does sexual arousal due to distinctive physical traits become lust?
First of all, for uninitiated readers, let's note that "lust" in the context of moral theology doesn't mean "strong sexual arousal" or the like. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. "Lust" is used in a technical sense to refer to sexual desire that is in some way disordered.
Now, since the natural ends of sexual arousal are procreative and unitive, the short answer is that such arousal becomes disordered when it in some way frustrates those ends. Now I imagine that what you're interested in is the case where the desire is disordered even though the procreative end is not being frustrated, the two people are married, etc., so let's consider that.
Obviously one way in which it might be disordered is if someone starts fantasizing about someone other than his or her spouse. That would obviously frustrate the unitive end, since the spouse with the adulterous fantasies would thereby be preventing the act from tending to bond him or her emotionally with the other spouse, specifically. Or suppose someone was not having adulterous fantasies but was positively indifferent to the fact that he or she was married to this person in particular. Suppose, for example, a man thought "I won't think about anyone else, but I really couldn't care less about the fact that I'm married to this particular woman. I'll just focus on what I like about her body, because I just want to have sex right now." In that case too the unitive end would be frustrated, because the arousal is being prevented from bonding him to this particular woman specifically. He's basically just using her as a sex toy. (This is a good example of "objectification," but notice that what makes it objectionable is the frustration of the unitive end. I would say that it is that teleological point that is really doing the moral work here, and not the Kantian stuff about making people "objects" or "things" per se.)
But suppose Harry is married to Sally and he thinks "Boy oh boy, Sally is so gorgeous, I want her right now." His desire is directed toward Sally, specifically, even though what is at the forefront of his mind is her physical beauty and he's just feeling the normal sort of affection toward her, specifically, that any husband might feel for his wife. Suppose he isn't having any high falutin' thoughts about how he wants to affirm her dignity as a fellow human person, or how their relationship is like that of Christ to the Church, etc. (Suppose they're uneducated people unfamiliar with fancy books on the theology of sex, and suppose they are not Christians but happen to live in accordance with what is in principle knowable to anyone as part of the natural law.)
In that case I would say that there is nothing at all "lustful" or morally deficient in the situation. Of course there might be a mindset that is better or more ennobling that the case I described, but my point is that there is no positive defect (as opposed to the absence of some higher motivation) in the scenario in question.
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