ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by taking up the existentialist objections to the 'social collective' and also the insistence in existentialism and philosophical anthropology, that in its rationalist idealism 'enlightenment' has failed to reject the 'homunculism' of 'objective' approaches to man. The importance of Rollo May's book is in its capacity to show from an existentialist position how 'enlightenment' has come to deny biological and emotional differences between men and women, out of an unconscious fear of human nature and its differences. The chapter shows that the 'enlightened' view essentially fails to find the true sources of sexual equality and freedom, in terms of mature individuals solving the problems of mutual independence and dependence. 'Enlightenment' fails because it fails to make the proper diagnoses of the problems of the sexual life. If one turns to marriage and family life, rather than the behaviour of promiscuous single persons or perverts, the intractability of sexual problems becomes evident.
