St Augustine believed that, in the Garden of Eden, being fruitful and multiplying would have involved a form of robotic, desire-free sex. That view is often quoted as if it had passed, uncontested, from one generation of medieval theologians to the next. In fact, the schoolmen quoted Augustine respectfully whilst diverging radically from his thought. They supposed that sexual pleasure would have been experienced by Adam and Eve; for them the issue was, how much? Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, in contrast with Bonaventure, thought that such pleasure would have been more ‘intense’ than it is nowadays, in the fallen world. This debate constitutes a quite significant shift within the history of emotion. Placing physical desire in Paradise was to affirm its fundamental and foundational goodness.
Bending Augustine’s Nose, Or How to Authorize Sexual Pleasure
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Pages: pp. 1-20
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