Abstract

This article is devoted to the biological phenomenon of female sexual pleasure and aims at determining its causal role in Aristotle’s biological doctrine. In considering several passages of the De Generatione Animalium, the author suggests that female sexual pleasure is one of the phenomena that Aristotle defines as “for what is better”. The study of this phenomenon provides the opportunity to rethink the place of the final cause in Aristotle’s causal system and the nature of the so-called “derivative” teleology. In the second part of the study, the author provides an overview of the Greco-Arabic reception of Aristotle’s doctrine. The study of the debate prompted by Averroes against Galen in the xiith century AD shows the importance of the issue of female sexual pleasure in the Greco-Arabic peripatetism and clarifies in turn the doctrine of the Stagyrite.