Sex, Morality, and Modernity: Can Immanuel Kant Unite Us?

[rug]

Treating people as ends in themselves and "doing unto others..." as a bridge between traditionalists and mainstream American youth.

Conor Friedersdorf
May 20 2013, 10:26 AM ET

Before I jump back into the conversation about sexual ethics that has unfolded on the Web in recent days, inspired by Emily Witt's n+1 essay "What Do You Desire?" and featuring a fair number of my favorite writers, it's worth saying a few words about why I so value debate on this subject, and my reasons for running through some sex-life hypotheticals near the end of this article.

Until I was 17, the Catholic schools I attended focused on the teachings of the church. Then, as high school juniors, my friends and I studied general ethics under Mr. Holtkamp, a dry-humored man who coached the mock trial team, ran an X-Files fan club, and managed, within a Catholic institution, to give believers and skeptics alike the gift of thinking more clearly and expansively about morality. He'd have smiled to see us the summer after we graduated, when we'd sneak onto deserted beaches and build bonfires on the sand to light our conversations. We burned melaleuca logs, drank lukewarm Bud Ice or Mickey's, and debated our respective Catholicism, agnosticism, atheism, Buddhist flirtations, impulses toward utilitarianism, and everything else about how we ought to think and live. The particulars of the conversations are forgotten. Yet few memories are more precious to me, now that I understand why those nights are forever gone. It isn't that the people, with whom I'm still in touch, love one another any less. If we gathered tomorrow--we're scattered across the country now--we could still talk in the ways that deep friendship permits. But at 18, 19 and 20, as different as we were in our personalities and inclinations, we spoke to one another in the same vocabulary, which we'd learned from the same teachers in the same community, where many of our experiences were alike.

Today the conversations would be harder. In part, this is due to the fact that we now speak different languages. One friend, who was an atheist when we sat around the bonfire and is now an orthodox Catholic, has remained, before, after, and throughout his transformation, a person whose insights about how to live I've valued and benefited from profoundly, despite our constant disagreements. For years, as we were living in different cities, I was surrounded by NYU graduate students. He was surrounded by orthodox Catholics. We'd both done a lot of thinking about sexual morality in our respective lives, but one New Year's Eve, when we found ourselves in the same city for a night, our conversations on the subject were more difficult than they'd ever been before. As our experiences and communities had diverged, so too had our foundational assumptions about what the world is like; and as we explored increasingly complicated paths leading in different directions, we ceased to easily understand one another's field notes.

Eventually, he gave me 14 hours of lectures on Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Listening to hours of it made me understand him much better, even as parts of that worldview remain impenetrable to me. As we think and live, the investment required to understand one another increases. So do the stakes of disagreeing. 18-year-olds on the cusp of leaving home for the first time may disagree profoundly about how best to live and flourish, but the disagreements are abstract. It is easy, at 18, to express profound disagreement with, say, a friend's notions of child-rearing. To do so when he's 28, married, and raising a son or daughter is delicate, and perhaps best avoided, presuming that his notions, however absurd, aren't abusive.

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/sex-morality-and-modernity-can-immanuel-kant-unite-us/276009/

[ismnotwasm]

2. I read this, started a reply

And then thought of Heinliens character "Lazerus Long"

From wiki

The promotional copy on the back of Time Enough for Love, the second book featuring Lazarus Long, states that Lazarus was "so in love with time that he became his own ancestor," but this never happens explicitly in any of the published books, although one can speculate that the descendent(s) referred to by Heinlein were the identical twins Lapis Lazuli and Lorelei Lee that were cloned from Lazarus. In the book, Lazarus does travel back in time and is seduced by his mother; but this happens after his own birth. Heinlein did use a similar plot in the short story "—All You Zombies—", in which a character becomes both of his own parents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long

I quit reading Heinlein's Sci-Fi when I was about 30, but he had a huge influence on my sexual mores because he crossed almost all sexual boundaries, (although he was a bit homophobic) not usually with ugliness, usually with what he saw as love and/or acceptance (for his time)

(CJ Cheeryh and Octavia Butler both Sci-Fi writerswho addressed sexual mores, by human mating/sex with a literal 'other' an alien being, and what that might look like)


And then, having been exposed to a number of ideas, relationships and results of behaviors from a variety of sources, I adopted 'do as little harm as possible' as my personal code. Being female and self identified feminist, I began to look for these places of harm, both within and without, not just harm I had sustained, but harm I had caused. Harm that might be institutionalized. Harm done blithely, without a thought to consequences, because that's 'just the way it is' What I thought the nature of that harm was and why. What I identify as harmful drives my activism.

It's something I thought deeply about and think about often still, because its subjective. I think porn as it is now is almost always, but not always, harmful for the same reason I think prostitution is harmful not because there is anything inherently wrong with it, but because it is unequal and degraded. If solace could be found in the arms of a trained sex professional or either gender whether one was male or female, in clean and safe and respectful surroundings my opinion might change. If pornagraphy most often transmitted joy and sensuality as well as open eroticism instead of hurt, racism, sexism and unasked for domination I might change my mind.

Ironically The SMBD club I'm familiar with (no not as a participant) is very careful with its members; there is an entry interview for members education so there are clear understandings of safe sex and safe words. The members are often working out psychological demons, and just as often move on. That's a world where the potential for harm is great, and those involved know it. It's not that harm doesn't happen, but great physical harm--while always a possibility-- isn't as much of an issue as the psychological harm in that atmosphere.


Kant was a hell of a thinker. I have my Mother's Copy of "Critique of Pure Reason" I hope to pass it down to my grandchildren.