Episode 5 - Sex and Morality
What is the correlation between Sex, Morality, and Religion? Why societies approach the role of sex in human culture from different perspectives? We know that sexual instinct is the most animalistic of human instincts, so it's the most natural. In nature, there is only one instinct that equates in intensity with the sexual, that of the need for food. Restrictions on sexual freedom through strict legislation have led many peoples to make prostitution a sacred practice. As a safety valve against the imposition of ethical rules on sexual instinct. The geographer Strabo (64 or 63 BC – c. AD 24) mentions that in Corinth at that time (of the emperor Augustus) 10,000 women practised the profession of a prostitute. From the poet Sappho from Lesvos, to imperial Rome sexual freedom was being expressed publicly and embraced by the upper social classes. This open embracement was erotism was characterized by Christianity as a moral degeneration and the sexual life of the people, as a carefree joy of life, came into focus. With Christianity, the glorification of virginity, and the moral austerity culminating in the Middle Ages.