Understanding Sexual Morality: Balancing Desire, Commitment, and Freedom

1. Sexual Behavior

2. Possible Sexual Moralities • No sex without— • Marriage and desire to procreate • Marriage • Marriage or engagement • Long-term commitment • Love • Considerable affection • Affection beyond the physical • Attraction • Respect • Consent

3. Utilitarian Arguments

4. Russell’s Utilitarianism • “The question whether a code is good or bad is the same as the question whether or not it promotes human happiness.”

5. Crude Utilitarian Argument • Sex produces pleasure • The more pleasure a situation includes, the better it is • So, the more sex, the better

6. Complications • But things are not so simple • There are also negative effects of sexual activity

7. Central Problem • Conflict between • impulse to jealousy and • impulse to polygamy

8. Traditional Morality • Traditional morality gives priority to jealousy • But social conditions promoting that are changing: • greater mobility • decline in superstition and religion • greater privacy • higher education levels, postponing marriage • greater equality between men and women

9. Nature vs. Nurture • Impulses to jealousy and polygamy have instinctual and conventional features. • Russell's assumptions: • impulse to polygamy is largely instinctual • impulse to jealousy is largely conventional • Polygamy: nature • Jealousy: nurture

10. Implicit argument • Pleasures from sexual variety are part of biological heritage and do not change • Pains from jealousy can largely be eliminated • Russell’s conclusion: impulse to polygamy should have priority

11. Russell’s assumptions • Nature —> Polygamy • Nurture —> Jealousy • What is natural can’t be changed • What comes from nurture can be changed • But are these right? Compare the IQ debate: • Even if IQ is mostly inherited, it can be stunted or developed • Even if IQ is mostly environment-shaped, we may not be able to affect it

12. What does Russell want? • Women should not have children before age 20 • Young people should have sexual freedom • At least a decade of sexual maturity before marriage-- can't expect celibacy over such a long period • Better to have relations with people of same class than resort to prostitutes • Sexual experience needed to distinguish love from lust

13. What does Russell want? • No fault divorce: without children, by consent of one partner; with, by mutual consent • Sexual relations should be free of economic taint; women should work ("An idle wife is no more intrinsically worthy of respect than a gigolo.")

14. Family • Russell: the obligations of fathers are chiefly financial • As economic equality between the sexes increases, these will be less important • Consequence: The patriarchal family will disappear; marriage will be for the rich and the religious.

15. Sexual Morality? • Is there a distinctively sexual morality? • No • No uniquely sexual virtues • No uniquely sexual principles • Just the ordinary rules about honesty, kindness, justice, etc.

16. Utilitarian Arguments for Traditional Morality • Callahan: Promotes women's sexual flourishing • It promotes monogamy, self-control, love, commitment • This protects women at every stage of life: • protects young women from rape and seduction • secures adult women male support in child-rearing • protects older women from abandonment

17. Negative consequences • Epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases • Epidemic of infertility • Widespread abortion • Pornography • Sexual abuse • Adolescent pregnancy • Divorce • Family breakdown • Crime • Displaced older women (First Wives' Club)

18. Kantian Arguments

19. Respecting Autonomy • Categorical Imperative • Respect people • Treat people as ends-in-themselves • Don’t use people

20. Using people • Objection: We use people all the time • Examples: trade, employment

21. Autonomy • Respecting people --> respecting autonomy • Mappes: Don’t use others without their voluntary, informed consent

22. Agency • An agent of an act is • Free • Competent • Informed • Using someone is denying them agency • So, using a competent adult is • Denying freedom: coercion • Denying information: deception

23. Coercion: Threats • If you don’t do what I want, I’ll bring about an unpleasant consequence for you • Attempt to coerce consent • Makes target worse off on noncompliance • Examples?

24. Threats: problems • Form: If you don’t _______, I’ll ________ • Noncompliance --> unpleasant consequence • Noncompliance --> worse off • But note: these aren’t the same • Unpleasant, but better off? • Pleasant, but worse off?

25. Offers • If you do what I want, I’ll bring about a pleasant consequence for you • Attempt to induce consent • The target is no worse off on noncompliance • Examples?

26. Offers: problems • If you ______, I’ll ______ • Compliance --> pleasant consequence • Noncompliance --> no worse off • But can’t an offer leave you worse off, even if you don’t comply?

27. Mappes’s Kantianism • Offers are OK • Threats are not

28. Problems • Beneficial threats • Bad offers • Attempts to coerce attention? • Whining? Pestering? • Alcohol or drugs? • Weakening of will? • Offer + power --> implicit threat

29. Deception • Lying • Withholding information • Problems • Feigning interest • Not correcting false assumptions • Exaggerations

30. Mappes’s morality • Sexual relations OK if • There is no deception • There is no coercion • Not needed: • Marriage • Love • Commitment • Affection • Attraction

31. Prostitution? • Mappes: prostitution OK if no coercion, deception • But prostitution seems like a paradigm of using someone • Categorical imperative: don’t use people! • Kant himself disapproves • “I used her, she used me, neither one cared….”

32. Exploitation • Kant opposes paternalism • Respect for people --> respect for autonomy • So, no coercion or deception • But respect also requires more • You can use people by exploiting them • So, no exploitation

33. What is exploitation? • Transactions require appropriate concern • Exploitation is interaction without the required level of concern • Exploitation is not caring about the person as a person (not just as a moral agent) • Respectful desire is wanting someone for who he/she is

34. Aristotelian Arguments

35. Scruton's Aristotelian Account • Love has incomparable value • Part of what it is to live well is to love and be loved. • Freud: psychic health: "to love and to work"

36. Love as a virtue • Capacity for love is a virtue. • Sexual desire is not morally neutral • It is fulfilled in love

37. Habits • We must form correct habits • To channel sexual desire • To promote the capacity for love rather than stunt it

38. Traditional sexual morality • Traditional sexual morality develops the right habits for sexual virtue • It encourages • Chastity • Fidelity • Union of sex and love

39. Jealousy and fidelity • Both desire and modesty are natural • Jealousy is catastrophic and inevitable • Fidelity is natural and normal • No society or common sense morality promotes promiscuity or infidelity

40. Sexual Desire • Sexual maturity involves incorporating sexual desire into one's personality

41. Mean between extremes • Sexual virtue is a mean: • Too little Frigidity • Virtue Sexual integrity • Too much Lustful promiscuity

42. Sexual virtue • Sexual virtue is desiring the right person, at the right time, in the right circumstances, for the right reasons • It may manifest itself as chastity, fidelity, or passionate desire, depending on circumstances.

43. Sexual virtue • How to develop sexual virtue? • Chastity: • confines lust to intimate relations • impedes impulse until it can lead to fulfillment in love • encourages respectful desire, wanting person not merely for body but for person who is this body • unites personal and sexual, self and body, desire and affection

44. Flaws • Destructive of sexual virtue: • Perversion (improper object) • Fantasy • Pornography • Lust (desire without regard for object) • All these alienate a person from his/her body

45. Capacity for love • Love is a good • Love is a crucial part of happiness • Giving in to certain desires makes one less capable of loving • That is a grave harm