The Fable of the Snails or the Phenomenology of Sex

Staff Writer


Table of Contents

Mythical inquiry into the phenomenology of sex is an attempt to delve into the glamorized or idealized conceptions surrounding sex in this age of technology, self-esteem, and contentment. It is about sex; not sex in the form of gender definitions: masculinity or femininity; nor behaviour that lends credence towards sexual activity or some definitions marked by reproductive characteristics. What is a phenomenology of sex? To answer this question, the poem The Fable of the Snails may give some insights into its meaning.

The Fable of the Snails

Their slimy tongues traversed thorny earth.

Weighty shell, on hard earth, rolled.

Going miles! Slow but efficient and exact.

Quiet snuggling and snogging! Everything is on its path.

Seamless and methodical; sensitive and sentient.

 

Chameleon stung; consciousness rose.

Hermes and Mercury slip away while Venus and Aphrodite elope.

Rump freedom in equity rumbles.

Conservatism appeals, but liberty rules.

Licensed! A new consciousness reigns.

 

The economy of nature and the State of Neuter conspire,

glamour and posterity embrace.

The union between I and I signalled.

Us, we, and they declared.

Yesterday’s unspoken love: today’s love endures!

The Possibility of the Phenomenology of Sex

The Fable of the Snails asks the question: What is the possibility of the phenomenology of sex in a seemingly impossible phenomenon? We cannot only see with our eyes but also perceive the preternatural evolution of sex. For example, among contemporary people, there is a common saying: 'To have a crush on someone,' which could mean to develop a strong liking for a person. A young person can have a crush on an adult; in like manner, an adult can have a crush on a young person. Even people of the same sex can have a crush on themselves.

The phenomenology of sex emphasizes the strong desire to be with another person who can be either a man or a woman. The statement is dependent upon the strength and force of the phenomenal drives of the person in question. The fable of the snails is about a sexual revolution that calls for both the ‘unspoken’ and ‘spoken’ sexes to co-exist. A 'crush' can develop into a liking, fondness, or even love. It can grow if the individual wants it to become something else. There is a possibility of sexual phenomenality. Why the arguments about the fable of the snails?

Duels over Sex

For many centuries, or the moment it became popular, what the poem describes as the "unspoken sex" was a perfunctory phenomenon that was rare compared to the normative and conventional sexual practices between a man and a woman. Call it ignorance or intuition, it gradually became a grand sublimation that shaped human consciousness. There was no complaint, no marginality, and no fuss. There was progress and unity amidst diversity. Then, catastrophe struck when the chameleon stung the snail. From intuition came fighting every type of sexual phenomenality. Every one of them wants to establish itself: sex then becomes a recovery of intuition and a redemption of intention.

The fable of the snails is about the verbal duels between the traditionalists and the liberalists, the religious and the secular, and the electorates and their legislative representatives. The political world is learning as well as adapting to the affectivity of different sexual orientations and gender definitions. Does this mean that there is a possibility of the phenomenology of sex? Is the phenomenology of sex possible as an intuitive development of a universal correlation with the normative "spoken" sex?

Phenomenology and Possibility

French phenomenologists are widely cited in this article. The famous French Debate puts into perspective the different arguments suggesting the possibility of a phenomenology of religion as a philosophical and not a theological project. Can one conjecture the possibility of a phenomenology of sex as a philosophical and not a social scientific project? If philosophy is understood as the underlying principles of a particular range of knowledge, can it properly describe the phenomenology of sex as an evolution or as a repositioned narrative as a result of mass psychology? The fable of the snails acknowledges the phenomenology of sex. Since phenomenology seeks “mediation in the correlation between appearing and that which appears” as Edmund Husserl would think, the question now becomes: Is the phenomenology of sex, in the light of, glamour or intuition, that which is appearing or that which appears as such?

Jean-Francois Courtine, succinctly observed as he reflected upon Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit: "Higher than actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology only by seizing upon it as a possibility."  Considering the aim, style, and method of phenomenology, Courtine asked two questions: First, "Can phenomenology, in a specific way, that is to say, at the apex of its possibility - if it is still an issue of its possibility - treat religion?" Religion is considered a "unique modality of appearing or a determinate type of givenness (the "sacred," "God," the "god," whether they be considered dead or in flight)." The second question is: "To what degree does the philosophy of religion when it appears historically ... repeat an old and influential undertaking: namely, natural theology ...." 

The whole idea is to find out how phenomenology, when seen from the perspective of its possibility can profit from the philosophy of religion if oriented toward absolute idealism. Phenomenology arguably can describe a structure of call and response, in the modality of feelings and dispositions. According to Paul Ricoeur, there can be a phenomenology of feelings and dispositions that can be qualified as religious by the disproportion within the relation between call and response," which is "not merely descriptive but critical...." Ricoeur adduced that "religion is like language itself, which is realized only in different tongues."

With this, he drew some consequences; firstly, "we must renounce the idea of creating a phenomenology of the religious phenomenon taken in its indivisible universality..." Secondly, "the internal hermeneutic of a particular religion can approach equality with a universal phenomenology of the religious phenomenon..." and thirdly, "if, in opposition to the claims of a rootless comprehension, the only option is an analogizing transfer proceeding step by step, the idea of a phenomenology of religion as such, the Religion, remains just an idea - by which one is to understand a regulative ideal projected on the horizon of our investigations."  This is the fire pyre of scrutinizing the affectivity of the phenomenology of religion through philosophical processes.

Glamour, Intuition, and Intentionality

Can we find an "internal hermeneutic" in each sexual orientation with strong correlations to the universal phenomenology of sex? Is there a single language for all sexual phenomena: Heterosexual, homosexual, Bisexual, Transsexual, and so on? Can the "internal hermeneutic" of each of the following sexual orientations claim for itself "equality with a universal phenomenology" of the sexual phenomenon? With sex, the world changes and can remain unchanged. It is not evil. The Creator of the world himself loves sex, that's why he created them male and female (Genesis 1:27) - each with a different and special genital for a definitive purpose - "be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth...." (Genesis 1:28).  Sex, as given of divine intention (teleological), leads to increase or reproduction of kinds. Such phenomenality is considered visible and can lead to the possibility of the phenomenology of sex. Various forms of sexual orientation are derivative of intuition and intention. Nevertheless, does it imply that some sexual orientations should remain "unspoken” while heterosexuality remains “spoken?” Are other forms of sexual orientation visible like heterosexuals? Borrowing a few lines from the writings of Jean-Luc Marion is the argument that:

The question concerning the possibility of the phenomenon implies the question of the phenomenon of possibility. Or better, when the rational scope of philosophy is measured according to the extent of what it renders possible, that scope will be measured also according to the extent of what it renders visible - according to the possibility of phenomenality in it.  

Other sexual orientations are more than appendices of the possibility of phenomenality, hence, the verbal duels between the proponents and opponents. Defining possibility, Marion lends credence to Kant's metaphysical definition of possibility: "that which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible.” Therefore, the formal condition of knowledge is very intuitive. When a child, born male at the age of seven says to his parents that he wants to be a female because he thinks he is a female, there is an interaction between concept and intuition - the concept of sex (gender), and the power of knowing (orientation). Does he really know or is he appealing to the mass psychology of sexual phenomena? For Marion, intuition and concept are prerequisites to the possibility of any phenomenon:

Intuition and the concept determine in advance the possibility of appearing for any phenomenon. The possibility - and therefore also and especially the impossibility - of a phenomenon is ordered to the measure of the "power of knowing," that is, concretely, the measure of the play of intuition and of the concept within a finite mind.

The language of sex denoting male and female is an indivisible universal phenomenon. The concept and possibility are knowable according to the receiver. The internal hermeneutic of unionized male and female sexes is not analogous to other forms of sexual orientations. However, the possibility of the existence of other forms of sexual orientation is difficult to deny. Though, some critics have viewed them as new-fangled and modeled in a cliché of neighbourhood equality and modal romanticism. Social sciences seek redress in interpersonal relationships, mode of living, freedom, and liberty of which psychology focuses on human intuition and cognition of sex to determine its phenomenality.

Conclusion

In the fable of the snails, sexual orientations are forms of mutations, like a chameleon adapting to the colours of its surroundings, the sex, and sexes have evolved and are compared with the normative and conventional sexual practices. That is, those in a same-sex relationship can have and share love like those in a heterosexual relationship. By this token, sexual glamour is a possibility and a right. It is love that endures.   

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