Abstract
Kant’s comments on sexuality are commonly found to be at best perplexing and at worst extraordinarily unenlightened and morally offensive. Varden starts by reconstructing what seems to be Kant’s view on sexuality as well as providing an overview of the main, existing Kantian philosophical responses and alternative proposals to this account. In the last part of the chapter, she outlines a new Kantian approach to sexuality that overcomes the shortcomings of both Kant’s own and the existing Kantian accounts.
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Notes
- 1.
Barbara Herman, “Could It Be Worth Thinking about Kant on Sex and Marriage?” in A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, ed. Louise M. Antony and Charlotte E. Witt (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1993): 53–72.
- 2.
I have been developing this approach in the following recent pieces: “The Terrorist Attacks in Norway, July 22nd 2011 – Some Kantian Reflections,” Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift/Norwegian Journal of Philosophy 49, nos. 3–4 (2014): 236–59; “Kant and Women,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, electronic publication, Oct. 24, 2015; “Kant and Moral Responsibility for Animals,” in Kant on Animals, ed. Lucy Allais and John Callanan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); “Kant on Sex. Reconsidered” (under review); and A Kantian Theory of Sexuality (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). This chapter, for obvious reasons, draws especially heavily on “Kant and Women,” “Kant on Sex. Reconsidered,” and A Kantian Theory of Sexuality.
- 3.
See Christine M. Korsgaard, “Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations,” in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 6: Ethics, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero, Cal.: Ridgeview, 1992), 305–32; Pauline Kleingeld, “The Problematic Status of Gender-Neutral Language in the History of Philosophy: The Case of Kant,” Philosophical Forum 25, no. 2 (Winter 1993): 134–50; Onora O’Neill, “Women’s Rights: Whose Obligations?” in Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 97–113; Lara Denis, “From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63, no. 1 (July 2001): 1–28; Allen W. Wood, “Sex,” in Kantian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 224–39; Rae Langton, Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Linda Papadaki, “Kantian Marriage and Beyond: Why It Is Worth Thinking about Kant and Marriage,” Hypatia 25, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 276–94; Matthew C. Altman, “Same-Sex Marriage as a Means to Mutual Respect,” in Kant and Applied Ethics: The Uses and Limits of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 139–64; Mari Mikkola, “Kant on Moral Agency and Women’s Nature,” Kantian Review 16, no. 1 (March 2011): 89–111; and Carol Hay, Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
I have also written on a number of these issues in the aforementioned “Kant and Women,” as well as in both “A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations: Sex, (Gay) Marriage, and Prostitution,” Social Philosophy Today 22 (2007): 199–218; and “A Kantian Critique of the Care Tradition: Family Law and Systemic Justice,” Kantian Review 17, no. 2 (July 2012): 327–56.
- 4.
For example, see David Sussman, “Kantian Forgiveness,” Kant-Studien 96, no. 1 (March 2005): 85–107; Lucy Allais, “Wiping the Slate Clean: The Heart of Forgiveness,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 36, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 33–68; Lucy Allais, “Forgiveness and Mercy,” South African Journal of Philosophy 27, no. 1 (2008): 1–9; Lucy Allais, “Elective Forgiveness,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21, no. 5 (2013): 1–17; and Ingrid Albrecht, “How We Hurt the Ones We Love,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, electronic publication, Oct. 24, 2015.
- 5.
For Kant’s account of “the original predisposition to good in human nature,” see Rel 6:26–28. Here, I merely summarize core, relevant features of his account. For more details, see my “Kant and Women” and “Kant and Moral Responsibility for Animals.”
- 6.
By “self-reflexive” consciousness I mean an awareness internal to any thinking or doing something, whereas by “self-reflective” consciousness I mean a thinking about what one is thinking or doing. Self-reflective consciousness can be seen as a second-order awareness of what I am already self-reflexively conscious of. I return to these concepts in more detail shortly.
- 7.
I explore the differences between human and nonhuman animals in much more detail in my “Kant and Moral Responsibility for Animals.”
- 8.
Whether or not higher cognitively functioning nonhuman animals, such as chimps and elephants, who are able, for example, to pass the mirror test (have a sense of self), can do some of this is a question I cannot explore here.
- 9.
For example, in the Groundwork, Kant writes: “A maxim is the subjective principle of acting, and must be distinguished from the objective principle, namely the practical law. The former contains the practical rule determined by reason conformably with the conditions of the subject (often his ignorance or also his inclinations), and is therefore the principle in accordance with which the subject acts; but the law is the objective principle valid for every rational being, and the principle in accordance with which he ought to act, i.e., an imperative” (G 4:421n).
- 10.
This way of interpreting Kant is controversial. For more, including further relevant textual references, see my “Kant and Women.”
- 11.
Much has been written on privilege in recent years in relation to so-called “implicit bias.” See especially the pioneering philosophical work by Jennifer Saul, “Skepticism and Implicit Bias,” Disputatio, 5, no. 37 (Nov. 2013): 243–63; and “Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat, and Women in Philosophy,” in Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change? ed. Katrina Hutchison and Fiona Jenkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 39–60.
- 12.
Oscar Wilde, Children in Prison and Other Cruelties of Prison Life (London: Murdoch, 1898), 15.
- 13.
Ann P. Haas, Philip L. Rogers, and Jody L. Herman, Suicide Attempts among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults: Findings of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (New York and Los Angeles: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute, Jan. 2014), williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf.
- 14.
For one relatively recent newspaper article on this – with links to related scientific research – see Peter Tatchell, “The Latest ‘Gay Gene’ Study Gives No Comfort to Homophobes,” Telegraph (Oct. 9, 2015), www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11922975/The-latest-gay-gene-study-gives-no-comfort-to-homophobes.html.
- 15.
Of course, I am not denying that we might find common, associated clusters of features. The claim is simply that we will not find the kind of strict necessity needed to meet what Kant thought science delivers, namely necessary and universal laws.
- 16.
What is entailed is that exploring sexual aspects of ourselves is an individual enterprise, even though the theory I have proposed is one suggestion for how to proceed exploring one’s sexuality. I explore these and other issues much more thoroughly in “Kant on Sex. Reconsidered” and A Kantian Theory of Sexuality.
- 17.
For a more in-depth analysis, see my “Kant and Women,” “Kant on Sex. Reconsidered” and A Kantian Theory of Sexuality.
- 18.
For more on the nature of this relation in Kant, see my “A Feminist, Kantian Conception of the Right to Bodily Integrity: The Cases of Abortion and Homosexuality,” in Out from the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, ed. Sharon L. Crasnow and Anita M. Superson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 33–57.
- 19.
See the sources listed in note 3 for various recent ways of bringing out this point.
- 20.
For overviews of this secondary literature, see Kyla Ebels-Duggan, “Kant’s Political Philosophy,” Philosophy Compass 7, no. 12 (Dec. 2012): 896–909; as well as my “Immanuel Kant – Justice as Freedom,” in Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey, vol. 12: Philosophy of Justice, ed. Guttorm Fløistad (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015): 213–37.
- 21.
How to interpret Kant on this issue is of course controversial in the secondary literature. For a criticism of the line of interpretation presented here, see Pauline Kleingeld, Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). For an exchange between Kleingeld and myself on these issues, see my “Patriotism, Poverty, and Global Justice: A Kantian Engagement with Pauline Kleingeld’s Kant and Cosmopolitanism,” and Pauline Kleingeld, “Patriotism, Peace and Poverty: Reply to Bernstein and Varden,” Kantian Review 19, no. 2 (July 2014): 251–84.
- 22.
Thanks to Lucy Allais, Sarah Broadie, Rachel Bryant, Ann Cahill, Andrew Cutrofello, Chad Flanders, Jonathan Garthoff, Carol Hay, Barbara Herman, Sari Kisilevsky, Patricia Marino, Eric J. Miller, Sasha Newton, Jonathan Peterson, Massimo Renzo, Barbara Sattler, Laurie Shrage, David Sussman, Nicolaus Tideman, Shelley E. Weinberg, Allen W. Wood, Ekow N. Yankah, Lorenzo Zucca, and Rachel Zuckert for invaluable feedback on ideas along the way. And a special, big thanks to Krupa Patel and Shelley Weinberg for helping me rid this paper of many presentational infelicities. All the mistakes that have survived despite these people’s efforts obviously remain mine.
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Varden, H. (2017). Kant and Sexuality. In: Altman, M. (eds) The Palgrave Kant Handbook. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54656-2_15
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