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.

Kant and Women

This chapter provides an interpretation of Kant’s own account of the traditional genders (man and woman) with particular attention to the historically oppressed gender (woman). I explain how Kant’s full account of human nature, including his teleological arguments, in combination with how we use the imagination aesthetically when being sexual, loving, or gendered inform his account of the traditional gender ideals of the man and the woman: the man associated with the idea of the sublime; the woman with that of the beautiful. The chapter concludes by arguing that although Kant himself failed to solve the puzzle of genders, sexual or gendered identities, and sexual orientations—including how they do not fit neatly into the two traditionally dominant categories of man and woman—his general suggestions that understanding sex, love, and gender requires appeals to embodied, social human nature, teleological judgments, and an aesthetic use of the imagination are worth exploring further.

Kant on Sexual Violence and Oppression

This chapter links Kant’s account of human nature to unruly sexual activity and to the consequences of sexual or gendered violence and oppression. I use the account to explore the temptation of engaging in sexual violence and oppression, the damage sexual wrongdoing can do, why and how we can heal from sexual violence, why there are historical patterns to sexual violence and oppression, and why, despite the fact that our sexually loving selves are unruly and have as possible corollaries the strongest of human emotions (passions), we are morally (ethically and legally) responsible for them. This chapter also shows how sexualized wrongdoing can be used as part of violent oppression and atrocities. Additionally, Kant’s accounts of barbarism and of formal and material wrongdoing enable us to describe how human beings can face conditions or situations in which there is no morally good way out, without abandoning Kant’s idea of absolute moral prohibitions.

Introduction

Many philosophers—Kantians or not—consider formulating an applied theory of sex, love, and gender to be an undertaking that is neither particularly difficult nor particularly important. In addition, that there has not yet been a comprehensive Kantian philosophical account of sex, love, and gender is perhaps not terribly surprising. After all, Kant views sexual activity as inherently morally problematic, and ethically permissible only as heterosexual procreative sexual activity within the legal confines of marriage. And in presenting these views, he makes many sexist and heterosexist assertions. For non-Kantian scholars working within feminist philosophy or the philosophy of sex and love, Kant’s philosophy consequently has not stood out as a particularly interesting or useful resource for understanding human diversity when it comes to sex, love, and gender. Also, Kant’s statements about sex, love, and gender are dispersed throughout his practical and aesthetic-teleological works. For a long time, no Kant (or any other) scholar found it philosophically worthwhile to engage these aspects of Kant’s writings, let alone to take up the somewhat daunting task of gathering together and theorizing as a whole Kant’s complex, yet not explicitly spelled-out, ideas on sex, love, and gender before reconstructing a philosophically more persuasive theory....

Concluding Part II

In his marginalia in his copy of Achenwall, Kant says, The great difficulty in the problem of establishing a civil constitution is: that the human being is an animal that demands rights and yet does not willingly concede his right to anyone else, who thus has a need of a master who in turn can always only be a human being. From such crooked timber no Mercury can be cut....

Public Right

This chapter engages complexities concerning systemic justice in relation to sex, love, and gender. It shows how philosophical ideas in Kant’s account of public right in combination with his full account of human nature, yields a position that can take on systemic issues of dependency (including the state’s right and duty to fight poverty) and oppression (including through public laws protecting sexual or gendered minorities). In addition, I show how Kant’s account of different kinds of external forces people may find themselves subjected to—“barbaric,” “anarchic,” “despotic,” and “republican”—help us capture the moral complexity facing oppressed and vulnerable populations in different legal-political circumstances. Finally, I argue that the ultimate aim for states is to establish a legal-political whole characterized by the citizens governing themselves wisely through active participation in public debate and public institutions.

Private Right

This chapter provides a Kantian account of private right in relation to marriage and trade in sexual services. I argue that in addition to various non-ideal reasons and reasons based on equality that make same-sex couples want to have a right to marry, there are ideal reasons why they want such a right. I also extend this argument to defend the right to marry for non-binary, symmetrical polyamorous partners. Regarding trade in sexual services, I maintain that Kant’s account of bodily rights can explain why one never gets an enforceable right to have sex with another person even if one has a right to get some of the money back if a contract is broken. Importantly, these arguments hold regardless of what someone may think from the point of view of virtue or religion.

Introduction to Part I

When critiquing the conditions characteristic of everyday experiences of women and sexual or gendered minorities, capturing the nature of human embodiment and dependency relations is a principal interest. Analyses of embodiment and dependency relations are, for example, naturally at the center of critiques of abortion, domestic violence, systemic injustice, and oppression. Analyzing institutions such as marriage, prostitution, and pornography, and understanding phenomena involving sexual and affectionate love, sexual or gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual objectification, and sexual or gendered violence appear similarly impossible without involving concerns of embodiment and dependency. Explorations of embodiment and dependency also do important philosophical work in good analyses of relations involving caregivers and care receivers, especially in light of the asymmetry of these relations and of how the unpaid, physically and emotionally exhausting work of care has, historically, so often been deemed “women’s work.”...

Sexual and Affectionate Love

This chapter presents a Kant-based account of the challenges involved in realizing affectionately loving, sexual, and gendered lives in ways that are emotionally healthy and morally responsible. To this end, I introduce and make use of Kant’s accounts of the predisposition to good, the propensity to evil, the faculty of desire, truthfulness as our sacred moral duty, the highest good, vital forces, perfect and imperfect duties, characters (temperaments), and friendship. If we are genuinely committed to truthfulness, I argue, our faculty of desire—through its abstract conceptual, associative, and aesthetic-teleological powers—can enable us to develop our sexual, loving, gendered selves such that they are consistent with striving for the highest good understood as a union between happiness and morality, and between our natural and moral vital forces.

The Innate Right to Freedom

This chapter presents a Kantian account of innate right in relation to the issues of abortion, sodomy, and obscenity laws. At first blush, Kant does not appear to have much to offer as we seek plausible philosophical accounts of the legal permissibility of abortion, authorizing consent for sexual activities, and the use of erotica. I demonstrate that, despite appearances, Kant’s legal-political writings do provide the philosophical resources required. Indeed, Kant’s philosophical ideas can help us capture the seriousness of the wrongdoing involved in outlawing abortion, non-procreative and non-binary sexual activities, and erotica for any rational social, embodied beings as well as the heinousness involved in enforcing them against rational embodied, social human beings. I argue that Kant’s account of human nature and evil can explain why we consider violations of bodily integrity—whether de facto legally permitted or not—particularly serious and heinous legal failings.