Concealment and Exposure: a Mostly Temperate and Courageous Afterword

"Concealment and Exposure: A Mostly Temperate and Courageous Afterword"

In Raja Halwani, ed., Sex and Ethics: Essays on Sexuality, Virtue, and the Good Life. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007, pp. 229-52.

Don't follow leaders
Watch the parkin' meters. . . .
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success.
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift. . . .
Don't wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals.
Don't wanna be a bum
You better chew gum.

Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

I. Acknowledgments

Why do most essays published in journals add at the end, with all the appearance of a grudgingly grateful afterthought, a footnote of charitable thank-yous? Books begin the right way (act) and in the right spirit (motive). So shall I. Sarah Hoffman, Patricia Marino, and Rachel E. Browne, three unusual scholars, have helped me accept the value and intemperately brutal truths of my work on controversial topics (e.g., Soble, 2002a). Studying St Augustine, Kierkegaard, Mill, Marx, Wittgenstein, and Freud has been inspiring. (Expressing gratitude to the recently deceased is common--while we are remorseful about having mistreated them--much less so to the long gone.) Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, and Calvin and Hobbes have contributed to my courageous goofiness. Philip Roth provoked me into proudly accepting the appellation "The Professor of Perversion." Nibs and 'Tata stoically softened the melancholiac trauma of Katrina. The editor of this book, Raja Halwani, who is to me as I am to Stanford historian Paul Robinson, had faith that I would be able to transmogrify myself from a philosopher of sexuality simpliciter to a fledgling philosopher of virtue. My task, in his plan, is to edify by exploring and, in the process, to insist on intellectual integrity.

What does intellectual integrity require? James Stramel ("Coming Out, Outing, and Virtue Ethics") argues, on the basis of a mix of moral considerations, that outing and coming out--which I take as metaphors for exposing anything important about a person or oneself, not only sexual lifestyle--can be both justified and virtuous. So seeking dangerous knowledge, and then spreading around that which is thought to be true, may be part of intellectual virtue. But it has disadvantages. It is a platitude that much that ought to be said is not said, and much that is said ought not to be said. Intellectual integrity, however, has us come down on the side of exposure, not concealment (thank you, Thomas Nagel, 2002). Stramel assumes that we know well enough that which ought to be revealed (our sexual interests, and those of others). But pressures often prevent us from discovering or saying what ought to be thought or said. One force, which Heather Battaly ("Intellectual Virtue and Knowing One's Sexual Orientation") calls "heteronormativity," is an obstacle, she argues, that makes it difficult for members of sexual minority groups to come out sexually, not only to others but also to themselves.1 This, too, I take as a metaphor for the general problem of knowledge of self and others. Obstacles to knowledge abound, which means that the virtue of intellectual integrity requires the virtue of intellectual humility, as advocated by Jesus (Matt. 7:3-5) and St Paul (1 Cor. 13:12).

II. Sui Generis Sexual Ethics Revisited2

Are there special moral principles that apply only to sexual acts, motives, desires, and thoughts? It is sometimes claimed that human sexuality is, or should be, governed by the same general principles that apply to any human endeavor (Alan Goldman, 1977). True, we teach courses listed in class bulletins as "business ethics," "medical ethics," and "environmental ethics," but these courses are often boring exercises in casuistry: we apply the same general and generally-accepted moral principles to their respective domains. They usually involve teaching philosophically naive students primarily Millian utilitarianism and Kant's principle of respect, pointing out how these clash and explaining why the clashes are difficult to resolve. (OK, maybe these courses are not always awesomely boring; Double Effect conundrums, like James Sterba's Obese Spelunker case, often pop up.) There is no sui generis business or medical ethics; why so for sexual ethics? One might argue, with enough ingenuity, that sexual intercourse between unmarried adults is morally wrong on consequentialist grounds, depending on details about the social context in which they occur (Ronald Atkinson, 1965), even though consequentialism ordinarily issues in sexually liberal pronouncements. Similarly, one might argue that Kantian ethics--do not merely use people or treat them as objects--places conservative restrictions on sexual activity, but many have argued that Kantian ethics--take seriously the consent of other persons as autonomous agents--is sexually liberal. In any event, we are applying standard ethical doctrines to sexual activity (which is often arduous). This remains true when we also take into account Natural Law ethics. Suppose that sexual activity between X and Y would cause no harm to anyone (else), that both X and Y consent, that neither treats the other merely as a means. We can still ask intelligibly whether the act is wrong (permissible) as being inconsistent (consistent) with the right use of organs designed for certain purposes by God, or evolution, or both.3

A sexual act might be prima facie wrong because it causes harm, because it is coercive, because it is done deceptively, because it (otherwise) exhibits a failure of respect, because it is unfair or unjust, or because it is unnatural. Whatever can go wrong in our sexual encounters seem to be the same things that can (and do) go wrong in any other area of life; there is nothing unique about sexuality and nothing unique about the ethics that bears on it. Even if sexuality is more important in our lives than tennis, and even if this importance is intrinsic to sexuality or our humanity and not a cultural contingency or artifact, and even if the dangers or risks of sex are greater than those associated with tennis, these facts would mean only that we need to be more vigilant in applying our moral principles to sexuality, not that there are special moral concepts that must exist and be invoked in fashioning a complete ethics of sexuality. I am bewildered by exaggerated claims about the significance of sexuality. According to Roger Scruton (1986, 337), "it is in the experience of sexual desire that we are most vividly conscious of the distinction between virtuous and vicious impulses, and most vividly aware that, in the choice between them, our happiness is at stake." I am bewildered, in part, because I do not know whether the assertion is a logical truth, a profound psychological fact about human nature (a "permanent feature . . . of human nature"), in principle empirically verifiable, or a statement about a particular culture or subculture (British upper-middle class society, say, or fox-hunting circles). That I can imagine that sexuality means much less, carries less baggage, in a possible alternative culture might not be evidence that Scruton's observation is culture-laden but only that I am not altogether sound psychologically (which, I dare say, is what his reply would be).

Further, I am also bewildered because what Scruton notices seems false. The "most" is problematic: what most perturbs me at one age might not be what does so at another, so perhaps Scruton's mistake is chronocentrism.4 I am also uneasy with Jonathan Jacobs's contention, "Sexuality has an unavoidably central pace in our lives" ("Sexuality and the Unity of the Virtues"). I worry about not only "central" but also "unavoidably," because they were uttered by a philosopher, who should know better, and not my cousin the accountant who has other things on his mind. The overblown solemnity here is distressing, but it allows me to guess why Jacobs asserts, without any argument in the face of a huge amount of respectable literature, that bestiality is "always morally wrong" and "displays a seriously disordered conception of what is valuable in intimate relations." A budding dogmatic Thomist of the John Finnis school lurks here.

Adding virtue theory to our ethical toolbox hardly changes the situation, for it can be argued that all the virtues that apply to human conduct and character in general also apply to sex, with no remainder and nothing missing. So the answer to Christopher Martin's (1995) question-- "Are There Virtues and Vices That Belong Specifically to the Sexual Life?"--is "no." With admirable determination Martin tries to convince us otherwise; his conclusions, though, are only programmatic: "Anything which . . . make[s] the partner's physical reality unimportant . . . is a sexual defect: a sort of specific sexual vice" (215). We can agree that Martin has discovered a defect, but not that he has unearthed a special defect, something not already covered by general moral principles. He also suggests that the fact that only sexuality is linked with procreation will help establish a specific sexual morality (219). I, the stubborn one, am not convinced. The link between human procreation and sexuality of the form "X if and only if Y," which in part would, on Martin's view, make sexuality special, is not to be had.

The argument typically goes like this: chastity is a virtue, chastity applies only to sex, so there is a virtue (and a corresponding vice) that is exhibited only in sexuality. It is course possible to argue that chastity is a virtue, and that chastity is a virtue of the sexual life, but it does not follow that what sexual chastity amounts to, when it is unpacked, applies only to the sexual life. It may well be shorthand for some other behavioral, dispositional, or attitudinal virtue(s). Is it a species of temperance? Loyalty, fidelity, faithfulness, love, justice? Or is it a purity of heart and spirit, a moral innocence, that is displayed not only sexually but more widely? A chaste woman may be a beautiful angel, but there are many ways of being beautifully angelic.

Peter Geach argues that St Thomas Aquinas was wrong to conceive of chastity as a type of temperance, on the grounds that the sexual impulse, as an appetite, is different from the other bodily appetites for which temperance is a virtue (1977, 137-38). One difference is that sexuality is "unique" due to its procreative potential, but this is a weak argument, for all the appetites are "unique" given their specific roles in human physiology. It is better to argue that sexuality is more important (in what robust sense?) than other appetites, or that it is more likely than others to cause harm to other people (Halwani, "Sexual Temperance and Intemperance"), but these claims depend on social or cultural details and they accent only matters of degree, not of kind. Hence they cannot underlie conceptual distinctions between sex and other bodily appetites. Nor will the argument work that sex is specially corrupted (Geach, 146), because all postlapsarian appetites are corrupted. Anyway, why should whether chastity is a type of temperance depend on whether sexuality is a different sort of appetite?

For Immanuel Kant, as for the Greeks ("the sexual appetite [was] structurally analogous to the appetites for eating and drinking" for Plato and Aristotle; Juha Sihvola, "Sexual Desire and Virtue in Ancient Philosophy"; see also Neera Badhwar, "Carnal Wisdom and Sexual Virtue"), and for Augustine (Confessions, bk. 10, chap. 31), the sexual urge belonged in the same category as hunger and thirst. Kant does as well as anyone in distinguishing sex from the others: "There is no [other] case where a human being would already be determined by nature to be the object of another's enjoyment" (Lectures on Ethics, 27:385, 156). But that sex is the only appetite that requires, apart from its autoerotic and masturbatory forms, another person (as its object) does not mean that qua appetite it cannot have temperate or intemperate forms. It may mean, though, that whether and when sexuality is temperate is a more pressing practical issue than whether eating is temperate. I do not know whether Halwani is right (nor do I fully grasp the idea) that if we are to analyze the temperance of sexuality, we must focus not on sexuality qua appetite but on sexuality qua sexual desire ("Sexual Temperance").

David Carr seems strongly pulled to the view that chastity is a virtue and that it is not reducible to other virtues such as temperance or fidelity ("On the Prospects of Chastity as a Contemporary Virtue"). But it is evident that to achieve chastity, on his account, one must avoid moral faults that are not sexually sui generis: if people exhibit "degrading, exploitative, abusive or criminal attitudes towards potential sexual partners," they are not chaste. And when Carr asks whether it is possible to teach chastity, he recommends that we "develop a conception of sexual self-respect and integrity that is . . . informed by values of care, concern and regard for others." In this way we could promote chastity "conceived as decent and honorable self- and other-regarding sexual association." Even if, in the face of such moralizing, we can still press the case for chastity as a special virtue, it must be admitted that here virtue theory and standard ethical philosophy interpenetrate. Note that this (renewed? resurrected?) emphasis on care and concern for the other person appears not only in moderate-conservative philosophers (e.g., Carr), but also among leftist radicals, some of whom seem only recently to have discovered this constraint on sexual interaction (e.g., Jeffrey Weeks, 1995).

III. Why We Need Virtue Ethics

Who cares whether there are special virtues and vices of the sexual life? Being dull, I am not moved by the question, nor with whether there are any sui generis sexual ethics. Dirk Baltzly attempts to "explain the unique sort of wrong that adultery is" ("The Wrongness of Adultery"). But, to my picky way of thinking, a substantial equivocation in his attempt makes it less than captivating. I mean Baltzly's going back and forth between the claims that adultery is "an assault on a person's self-conception" (which hardly makes adultery uniquely wrong) and that adultery inflicts a harm on, puts onto doubt, one's "sexual" and "erotic" self-worth(s), which is a different thing but, even so, hardly makes adultery a unique wrong. Many events and experiences confute our self-worth, sexual, erotic, or otherwise. So I cannot enthusiastically agree that Baltzly has uncovered something very interestingly wrong about adultery that is not also wrong elsewhere. Maybe Baltzly has diagnosed why adultery is considered by many people to be wrong, but from this it does not follow that "adultery hurts people in a unique way." What would establishing a sui generis ethical conclusion about adultery achieve for us? It would not entail that all adultery is wrong, nor that all adultery is vicious.

But that chastity is not a special sexual virtue and no other special sexual virtues exist does not mean we cannot evaluate sexuality as virtuous or vicious, a point that is not innovative but nonetheless worth rehearsing. N.J.H. Dent provides a suggestive nonsexual example: "One who saves a child from drowning solely to enjoy the acclaim and publicity his act would most likely bring, has done the right thing but not done it well" (1984, 7). Consider, in this light, a superficially palatable passage from David Archard's Sexual Consent:

If Harry has sex with Sue solely for the purpose of deriving sexual gratification from the encounter and with no concern for what Sue might get out of it, if Harry pursues this end single-mindedly and never allows himself to think of how it might be for Sue, then Harry treats Sue merely as a means. . . . If, by contrast, Harry derives pleasure from his sex with Sue but also strives to attend to Sue's pleasure and conducts the encounter in a way that is sensitive to her needs, then Harry does not treat Sue merely as a means. [1998, 41]

We are squarely within a Kantian framework: if X treats Y merely as a means during (or before) sexual activity, then X's behavior is morally wrong. If X is a selfish sexual partner, getting all the pleasure X can get from the encounter and not stopping or slowing down for a second in his or her rapture to do what will also bring Y enjoyment and pleasure, then X is merely using Y for X's own purposes. To avoid that moral calamity, according to Archard, X must at least "strive" to produce pleasure for Y, to "attend to . . . her needs," in which case, for Archard, X no longer treats Y merely as a means and, so, X's behavior is Kantianly, morally impeccable (see Goldman, 1977, 283).

But the judgment that all is well morally as long as X tries to please Y is false,5 for this reasoning has ignored why X sexually pleases Y (Soble, 2006, 457-58): (a) X produces pleasure for Y because X's pleasure will be increased by doing so, and (b) X produces pleasure for Y for Y's own sake. (This distinction is familiar in moral philosophy.) Only (b) appeases the Kantian. X's merely pleasing Y does not solve the moral problem, for X's sexual conduct can be morally suspicious another way, even if we do not call it selfishness: X produces pleasure for Y as a way to induce or manipulate Y into producing pleasure for X, rather than producing it for its own independent value. What is morally important about (b) is not the behavior per se. In (a) and (b) the brute behaviors may be the same; only the mental states differ. Hence we need virtue ethics, which evaluates attitudes, intentions, and moral character, if we want a comprehensive sexual ethics. As Halwani puts it, "a sexual act could be wrong even if . . . liberal criteria, such as . . . consent . . . and the lack of . . . harm to third parties . . . are satisfied, because the act could still . . . stem from vices . . . such as greed or vanity" ("Casual Sex, Promiscuity, and Temperance"; see Seiriol Morgan, 2003a). Jacobs reports that, for Rosalind Hursthouse (1991), if "women have a moral right to do as they choose with their bodies, a woman [having an abortion] can act viciously in exercising this right." Judith Jarvis Thomson made that concession twenty years earlier in "A Defense of Abortion" (1971): a rights-morally permissible abortion might still be "indecent" if done, say, merely not to have to postpone a trip to the Azores.6 But we should be more careful than this: