Photo credit: James Hammack
As teenage surfers, I recall that it seemed important to us, in our philosophical moments, to compare surfing and sex, wondering which is better, as though one has to choose between them. Three decades of surfing later, now a professional philosopher, I have returned to consider the question in my recent book,
Surfing with Sartre. I’m still comfortable with my teenage answer.
You don’t have to choose between surfing and sex, if you play your cards right. Yet, if you have to focus more of your energies on one rather than the other (because life gets complicated), surfing is worthier. If I really had to give up one, but only one, forever, I’d give up sex...