Patricia Marino, "Philosophy of Sex and Love" (Routledge, 2019)
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What motivated Patricia Marino to write a book on the philosophy of sex and love?
Hello, thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books and Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co host the program with Carrie Figder, Alexis McLeod, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Patricia Marino. Patricia is professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her research spans ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of economics. But in addition, Patricia also works on the philosophy of sex and love. Her new book is titled Philosophy of Sex and Love An Opinionated Introduction. It's just been published by Routledge. Now, for those who think that philosophy must speak to everyday experience and ordinary life, it would seem that philosophical questions occasioned by love and sex should take center stage.
Moral, epistemic, metaphysical, and political issues surrounding sex and love pervade our culture. Where would pop music, television, and even fine art be without the dilemmas at the intersection of love and sex? And yet there are some less familiar philosophical issues lurking there as well. In her book, Philosophy of Sex and Love, Patricia Marino not only introduces a wide range of philosophical i issues pertaining to love and sex. She also develops original and compelling positions on these questions. There's a lot to talk about. But why don't we begin where we usually do, which is with our guest. Hello, Patricia. Hello. How are you today? I'm fine. How are you? I'm doing great. Um why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Okay. Um I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, uh, but moved around a lot as a young child, which I think probably has influenced the way I think about philosophy. Uh mostly I moved around different parts of the United States, lived in Connecticut, New Orleans, Buffalo, Southern California, and the Bay Area. Finally, in two thousand and four, I got this job at the University of Waterloo and I moved to Canada. And so I now live in Toronto. And and one thing that's very interesting to me is that um, you know, Canada and the United States are very similar in certain superficial ways, but they're also very different in other ways. And so it's it was a big adjustment, uh especially teaching in Canada to kind of learn and get up to speed on the social and political differences here to sort of be able to connect with the students.
So I had a lot of work to do when I first started teaching here. Yeah. what the Canadian landscape is as opposed to the US landscape. I also had an unusual path to studying philosophy. So when I was young, I was interested in mathematics. I actually did an undergraduate degree majoring in mathematics and didn't take any philosophy courses. Well, I took one philosophy course that I didn't really know how to choose which course to take. So I just selected, it was like a history from Descartes to Hume course. Um, and for various reasons that subject didn't interest me. And so I thought, oh, I don't like philosophy. So I majored, I actually double majored in math and dance. Um, some of my studies in dance actually prepared me quite well for
philosophy because we read things like Foucault and sort of um his philosophy of art kind of topics, which was great. Um I then thought I was going to do graduate school. I thought I was gonna be a mathematician. So I went to graduate school first at Tulane. I did a master's degree focusing on topology. Uh and then I wanted to work in set theory. So I went to SUNY Buffalo and began a PhD program there. And it was when I was in the PhD program at SUNY Buffalo that I was working with someone who uh whose research had to do with the existence of um cardinal numbers that whose whose existence is independent of the axioms of set theory. So it's questions that can't be decided one way or another from the basic axioms.
And that seemed to me such an interesting philosophical question and I began to read some of the philosophy that's been written on that question. Uh questions about mathematical truth, about the nature of proof and so on.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What motivated Patricia Marino to write a book on the philosophy of sex and love?
0:07–7:16
2
How did Marino’s unconventional academic path shape her interest in philosophy of sex?
7:16–15:20
3
What are the main philosophical issues surrounding sexual objectification discussed in the book?
15:20–23:17
4
How does the book connect love and sex with bioethics and family decision‑making?
23:17–31:50
5
What is the relationship between economics and love in Marino’s analysis?
31:50–39:26
6
How does Marino critique traditional ‘union’ and ‘caring‑concern’ theories of love?
39:26–47:23
7
What ethical arguments does the book present for non‑monogamy and polyamory?
47:23–54:48
8
What future research projects does Patricia Marino plan after this book?
54:48–1:01:37
Speakers
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