Can a Highbrow Fail to Draw Highbrow Conclusions? Roger Scruton and 'Sexual Desire'

You might think that an inquiry into the meaning and status of sexual desire of the kind conducted in Roger Scruton's notoriously impenetrable and philosophically technical 'Sexual Desire' would leave open questions like the relation between and the relative status of the intellect, the body and the heart. However, if a highbrow intellectual like Sir Roger addresses the subject perhaps he will arrive with a prejudice in favour of the high status of the intellect and the cerebral in this sphere of inquiry. This will inevitably, even as the inquiry begins, flavour any conclusions he might come to. Just as Plato imposed an abstract intellectual idea on the subject one who believes we exist primarily in the mind will only be able to do the same as his character is his destiny.

If, contra this, we exist much of the time equally or even more through the heart or the senses (especially the tactile one of the whole skin - look how miserable locked down people in the COVID emergency are for being unable to hug)) including the erogenous zones and that it is these things that contribute most to our fulfilment and happiness (granted they must be in harmony with our minds for good mental health) then the prejudice in favour of the intellect will make it impossible to draw correct conclusions.

Descartes at the beginning of an Enlightenment that raised the status of the intellect higher and higher attached cognition to existence itself in Cogito ergo sum. But could it not equally be avowed that Amo ergo sum with love being an inextricable nexus of heart, erogenous zones and the tactile.

Rather like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle where the observer's mere presence spoils the integrity of the results will not an inquirer leading with their intellect in an inquiry that includes assessing the relative status of the intellect prejudice the outcome? Love is available to those who are not considered to be "intellectual" and is, perhaps, more important to humans than the intellect.

This problem can be further defined as the Platonic problem. Plato seeks to make abstract ideas reached through the beauty of the homosexual beloved somehow more important than mere carnal love. This is the prioritisation of the abstract intellectual over and against the physical nature of human love. It all depends on this guessed at realm of perfect 'forms' and 'ideas' actually existing which could be considered to be quite a gamble. Are such things, ironically, no more than mere ideas or cerebral creations?

What relative status should the  mind, the heart and the body have in human affairs? Is the excessive elevation of of the mind just an unfortunate legacy of the hyper-rational Enlightenment? Didn't TS Eliot, a martyr to over-cerebral puritanism, suggest as much in his idea of the 'Dissociation of Sensibility' which he sited around the time of Descartes? Shakespeare and the Metaphysical poets were not dissociated and how he envied them the unity of their minds, emotions and bodies. The prioritisation of human mental conception which began with Descartes was a kind of hubris which led to all our woe; the woe engendered by an excessive emphasis and dependence on rationalism and its sister, science. This led to the French Revolution where the rationalists ran riot and, from there to intellectual projects like communism.

Blaise Pascal said 'The heart has reasons that the reason cannot know.' Is 'knowing' through the heart and the body more important to us than knowing through the mind; perhaps the most important epistemological question of all. It depends on what we actually are.

Personally, I think we are much more than heads in a jar.