Kant on Sex. Reconsidered
This chapter argues that in order to overcome the problems haunting Kant’s own account, we simply need to do what he should have done. We need to correctly incorporate Kant’s complex account of human nature and freedom into our theory of sex, love, and gender. Kant’s writings can show us a way to rethink sexual or gender identity and sexual orientation as capturing the various ways in which we subjectively (first-personally) experience our own embodied, sexual, and affectionate forcefulness—a basic way of feeling directed toward ourselves and others as embodied, social beings—that any good development of our sexual, affectionately loving, gendered selves must be attuned to. Additionally, once we unhook Kant’s analysis of our teleological and aesthetic employment of the imagination regarding sexuality from his unjustifiable binary assumptions, we can engage the richness of human sex, love, and gender in the necessary nuanced, respectful ways.