LAUSR

Sucked–Out Lemons Few sexual metaphors are so striking as Immanuel Kant’s use of a lemon in the Lectures on Ethics. In the paragraph “Of Duties to the Body in Regard to the Sexual Impulse,” Kant critically opposes the sexual inclination (Geschlechterneigung) to the higher love of the human (Menschenliebe) and criticizes those who merely have sexual inclination: “In loving from sexual inclination, they make the person into an object of their appetite. As soon as the person is possessed, and the appetite sated, they are thrown away, as one throws away a lemon after sucking the juice from it.”When comparing sex to sucking out a lemon, Kant appears to be using the word Zitrone as a metalepsis of the English lemon, for in Renaissance England lemons, lemans, or lemmans all figure promiscuous lovers, derivative of the Middle English leofmon or leofman—literally “man-dear” or dear to a man.Hence, we find