Philosophical Arguments for Post-Gender Ontological Ethics

Abstract

In Chapter 3 I outlined the limits to the dominant, liberal ethico-political paradigm. Its formulations of the nature of being, and its congruent solutions for the problems of sex/gender are insufficient for analysing the realities of sex/gender and for overcoming its effects. This chapter seeks a more effective ‘ontological ethical’ (Stanley 1996) theory to constitute the key philosophical argument and justification for post-gender ethics. It uses metaphysical and ethical reasoning to argue that getting rid of sex/gender is both possible and desirable, and to propose more positive ways of being in the world. I will draw on the ethical philosophy of ‘philosopher manqué’ (Stanley 2001) Simone de Beauvoir, alongside some of the ideas of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, to present an ‘ontological ethics’ that can account for the problems from which this book departs and underpin an argument for a more enabling mode of being. Beauvoir’s ontological ethics can be used as a foundation for arguing that freedom is the purposive enactment of existence, that sexual difference prevents this, and given that our subjectivity is fundamentally situated, that purposive existence can only be enacted in wilful concert with others.