36 h 46 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 36 h 46 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a physician insists that sex belongs in science, not behind a wall of silence and shame?
In The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization, Iwan Bloch examines sex through medicine, history, law, anthropology and literature. His central claim is clear: sexual life cannot be understood apart from its culture. Love, marriage and desire become subjects for open study rather than matters to hush up.
First published in 1907, this study enters debates over prostitution, disease, marriage and punishment. Bloch asks how poverty shapes prostitution, how money and rank shape unhappy unions, and why sexual variation calls for understanding. His arguments offer a window into early twentieth-century European thought, but they also carry dated views and the prejudices of their time.
What you’ll discover
- A case against silence Explore Bloch’s argument that shame keeps doctors, teachers and lawmakers from understanding sexual life.
- Morals across cultures Follow his survey of changing customs, where one age condemns what another accepts.
- Prostitution beyond moral judgment Examine the links Bloch draws between prostitution, poverty and the spread of venereal disease.
- Marriage under scrutiny Consider his criticism of unions shaped by money, social rank and ignorance of the other sex.
- Understanding rather than punishment See how Bloch approaches sexual variation, including homosexuality, as a medical rather than merely criminal question.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you like the history of ideas, early sexual science and social reform, and a physician of 1907 weaving biology, literature and law into one portrait of love.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Love begins in the body
- The mind gives desire new reach
- Equality need not erase sexual difference
- Concealment can also awaken desire
- Romance brings the individual into view
- Lasting unions need freely chosen responsibility
- Social care matters more than punishment
- Honesty supports freedom and healthier lives
- Bodily roots lead toward social reform
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The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization
by Iwan Bloch · 1907
A Berlin physician traces desire from two cells to marriage, shame, romance and law in 1907.
Challenging10–20 hours to read16 languages
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In short
How does one human feeling hold a microscopic cell and a love letter in the same story? Iwan Bloch, a physician in Berlin, sets out to answer that in The Sexual Life of Our Time, published in 1907.
The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization at a glance
- Reading time
- About 18 h 30 min14 h 40 min fast, 22 h slow
- Length
- 264,200 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1907by Iwan Bloch
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Human love begins with two cells meeting
Bloch starts at the smallest scale. He claims every later form of love traces back to one event, the union of an egg cell and a sperm cell. Ernst Haeckel called the pull between them erotic chemotropism. Bloch treats it as love in miniature.
From this scene he draws a picture of the sexes. The sperm cell moves and seeks, while the egg cell waits. He reads the cell scene as the root of deep differences of temperament.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 13 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1907
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 23 h 55 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Bloch, Iwan. The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sexual-life-of-our-time-in-its-relations-to-modern-civilization.
Bloch, I. (2026). The sexual life of our time in its relations to modern civilization. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sexual-life-of-our-time-in-its-relations-to-modern-civilization (Original work published 1907)
Bloch, Iwan. The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sexual-life-of-our-time-in-its-relations-to-modern-civilization.
@book{bloch2026sexual,
author = {Bloch, Iwan},
title = {The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sexual-life-of-our-time-in-its-relations-to-modern-civilization},
note = {First published 1907}
}
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What is The Sexual Life of Our Time about?
It follows human love from the meeting of egg and sperm through the senses, shame, romance, marriage, prostitution and disease, and ends by surveying scientific literature. Iwan Bloch wrote it in 1907 as a physician and reformer.
Who was Iwan Bloch?
Iwan Bloch was a Berlin physician who died in 1922. He worked on skin and venereal diseases, wrote on the origin of syphilis, and helped build the early scientific study of sexuality in Germany.
What does Bloch mean by fusion love and distance love?
He borrows the terms from Wilhelm Bölsche. Fusion love is the union of two reproductive cells, serving the species. Distance love is all the feeling, imagination and attraction built on it, serving the individual person.
The author
Iwan Bloch
1872–1922 · German dermatologist and sexologist
Iwan Bloch was a German dermatologist and sexologist. He was born in Delmenhorst in 1872 and died in Berlin in 1922. He worked as a physician in Berlin. His writings included The Marquis de Sade and His Time and The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization.
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