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Only in primitive art, with its urgent need to evoke the sources of fertility, are the phallus and the vulva emphasized, as it were innocently. By ancient Greek and Roman times there already existed the special category of the pornographic-graphic art or writing supposed, like a harlot, or pome, to sexually stimulate.1
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As REGARDS PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS of the opposition between the erotic and the pornographic, there are a number of reasonable goals one might have: to preserve as many considered intuitions about the opposition as possible; to present the opposition in a clearer light than it enjoys when casually invoked; to modestly "sharpen" the standard opposition that either accounts for our experience in this domain more fully, or allows us to organize our thinking about the domain more perspicuously. I hope in this paper to make progress toward some of those goals. Though the scope of the erotic/pornographic opposition goes beyond the visual, my focus here will be the opposition as it exists in the visual sphere, and even more narrowly, in the sphere of images. In addition to preserving and clarifying a distinction between erotic art and pornography, I hope also to make an intelligible place for erotica, as something intermediate between the other two.
Here, then, are some intuitions on the erotic and the pornographic:
(1) the erotic and the pornographic are both concerned with sexual stimulation or arousal.
(2) while the term "erotic" is neutral or even approving, the term "pornographic" is pejorative or disapproving.
(3) while "erotic art" is a familiar, if somewhat problematic, notion, "pornographic art" seems an almost oxymoronic one.
(4) whereas pornography has a paramount aim, namely, the sexual satisfaction of the viewer, erotic art, even if it also aims at sexual satisfaction on some level, includes other aims of significance.
(5) whereas we appreciate (or relish) erotic art, we consume (or use) pornography. In other words, our interactions with erotic art and pornography are fundamentally different in character, as reflected in the verbs most appropriate to the respective engagements.
In what follows I try to accommodate all of those intuitions. As I will need a distinction invoked in the first of them (between sexual stimulation and sexual arousal) let me spell that out before proceeding. By...