APPLIED

ETHICS:
SEXUAL ETHICS
ETHICS
PART 2
  For Immanuel Kant, sex is morally permissible within the
context of heterosexual, lifelong and monogamous
marriage. Any sexual act outside these context-
homosexuality, masturbation, adultery premarital sex- is
morally wrong.
KANT AND SEX  The reason for this thinking is complex and can be
connected to his view of Categorical Imperative where in:
act in such a way that you always trat humanity, whether in
your own person or in the person of any other, never simply
as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
 Kant, like St. Augustine and sometimes Freud, are deemed to
be sexual pessimist. Plato and many other modern
philosophers would be counted as sexual optimists.
 The broad feeling among the pessimists is that our sexual desires
and impulses, and acting upon those impulses are undignified.
The sexual part of our nature is unbefitting to how humans
should behave and threatens our proper moral life.
 For Kant, sexual desire is the only impulse in us that takes
the body of another human as the object of indulgence.
 Kant is a believer of the notion of treating others as whole
persons is the key to being moral, but for him, precisely
what is missing is sexual desires.
 That is, in sex, we are treating others as objects and not treating
them as whole persons and hence acting immorally. In the
language of his formulation of Categorical Imperative: in having
sex we are treating people merely as means to an end. Making
Kant a sexual pessimist.
 In as far as this relates to ethics, the stand it looks is like any
sexual desire or act is going to be morally wrong. But for the
act ought not be viewed as wrong is the role of marriage.
 The context of marriage and only marriage, Kant thinks
that sex and sexual desire is more than simply treating
another merely as means to an end.
 For Kant marriage is:

[Marriage] is an agreement between two persons by which

they grant each other equal reciprocal rights, each of them
undertaking to surrender the whole of their person to the other
with a complete right of disposal over it.
 So we can avoid the charge of objectifying and using a
sexual partner merely as a means to an end because in sex
within marriage you are treating each other as a whole
person and thus there is reciprocity.
 Sex within marriage is about the whole person and not simply
the genitals, sexual desire and pleasure.
  In Utilitarianism, an act is not ruled from the basis of it
being a particular act. This means, if Utilitarianism is
correct, it cannot be said that any particular sex act is always
wrong.
SEX AND  Premarital sex, or homosexual sex, or masturbation, or oral
sex can be morally acceptable. The matter is decided by
UTILITARIANIS whether or not the act brings about more pleasure overall
than not doing so.
M  Although, qualifications must be made in this view:

First, Utilitarianism is committed to the claim that the act

of having sex is always good. This leaves space for us to show
that rape and paedophilia/pedophillia are morally wrong.
 These acts does not take much to see that the overall
unhappiness, mental and physical suffering of the victim, the
distress of the relatives and love ones etc. is much more
greater than the acquired pleasure from the wrong doing.
Second, just because sex is typically pleasurable, it does
not mean Utilitarianism is committed to the claim that we have
a duty to have as much sex as possible.
 In here, the concept is that, there are things we can do that
bring about more overall happiness. Or we might suppose
having sex all the time might have detrimental effects on the
relationship and one’s mental and physical health.
 Third, for Utilitarianism, heterosexual sex within a
marriage might be morally wrong if there has been a coercion or
threats, or just general unhappiness with perfunctory sex, where
almost any other activity would bring about more happiness.
Fourth, adultery or having multiple sexual partners can be
morally acceptable.
 We can imagine a case where, for example, the overall
happiness is increased if a married couple agree to have sex
with other people to keep their own marriage fun and
interesting.
 Or we might think that someone who is generally not
interested in, or does not have time for, a long-term
relationship is happier with mutually consenting multiple
sexual partners (or prostitutes).
 Fifth, Mill gives a different answer to Bentham to
questions regarding what we ought to do when considering
various sex acts because of his distinction between higher and
lower pleasures.
 In general Mill did not value sex and he took the pleasures
that arose from it to be fleeting and of lower value. This is
because Mill thought that some pleasures are qualitatively
distinct from others and thus outweigh other, lower,
pleasures. Bentham however would not make this
distinction.
  Virtue Theorist do write about any applied ethical issues,
they typically do not write about sex. However, there are few
who do not defend traditional accounts of sexual ethics and
SEX AND THE consequently, it is unhelpful to try and work out the virtue
theory view on sexual conduct.
VIRTUE  Although, there are some things that might arise to the say of

THEORY virtue ethics to the context of sex and sexual acts.

-The virtue theorist would say that rape is always wrong
because it violates the other person’s sexual autonomy which is
the choice of when and how to have sex and with whom.
 -Paedophilia/pedophilia is also always wrong for similar
reasons.
-Adultery might be wrong because an intemperate person
would break the marriage vows because of their sexual desire.
The answer to whether a virtue theorist would think a certain
sexual activity is right or wrong will depend on whether a
virtuous agent would do that act.