The Philosophy of Viagra

What’s the Latest Development?

A Dutch scholarly press will publish the industry’s first philosophical essays on Viagra. The book, The Philosophy of Viagra: Bioethical Responses to the Viagrification of the Modern World is a serious work that stays away from the jokes often tossed into pop-cultural excursions. “The 15 essays offer smart, wide-ranging perspectives on how Viagra gives rise to classic philosophical concerns, and why it shouldn’t be allowed to ‘render masculinity as a mere problem of chemical engineering, plumbing and hydraulics.'” In addition to contemporary thinking, some essays ask how classical philosophers would have responded to the Blue Pill.

What’s the Big Idea?

What are some of the classical philosophical questions raised by society’s acceptance and men’s use of Viagra? “Does Viagra facilitate desire (the view of Pfizer’s scientists), or create it? What is ‘natural’ in sexual life? If, before the discovery of Viagra, it was nature’s course to diminish sexual power in men once their peak reproductive fitness had passed, is it ‘unnatural’ to change that aspect of senior-citizen life through drugs? Or is drug-assisted virility simply better living through chemistry—like raising life expectancy from 45 to 75?”