The 18th-century French philosopher Diderot exposed the folly of chastity. How did the sacred act of lovemaking, he asked, come to be associated with depravity and evil? He speculated that it had something to do with the marital contract, "because man has converted the possession of woman into a property!.... it is inconceivable that a thinking, feeling being who is free would be the owner of an other being like himself!"
Thus conjugal relations were associated with business transactions and all other carnal pleasures were denounced. Chastity came to be highly valued, and associated with freedom and purity.
