Chapter 5 looks at the three most prominent forms of contemporary Virtue Ethics, namely the theories of Michael Slote, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Christine Swanton. Although virtue ethics is held together by what might be dubbed a ‘virtue first’ account of moral analysis, there are surprisingly few additional unifying theses. All the same, when it comes to the bedroom, these three forms of virtue ethics have overlapping counterintuitive implications. Slote’s ethics of care is so broad that it can justify almost anything, at least when done from the right motive; for very similar reasons, a dedication to sexual philanthropy—say, in sexually pleasuring so-called ‘incels’—appears highly praiseworthy. Hursthouse’s formulation of ‘v-rules’ allows for similar liberty, particularly in how she formulates rules of temperance regarding sexual pleasure. Even sex with animals, by Hursthouse’s lights, can be enjoyed temperately and thus virtuously. Swanton’s non-eudaimonistic virtue ethics, grounded in factors like a life’s narrative structure, implies that a lifelong commitment to sexual perversity could in fact be a model of virtue.

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Sex and the Virtues

  • Brian Besong

摘要

Chapter 5 looks at the three most prominent forms of contemporary Virtue Ethics, namely the theories of Michael Slote, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Christine Swanton. Although virtue ethics is held together by what might be dubbed a ‘virtue first’ account of moral analysis, there are surprisingly few additional unifying theses. All the same, when it comes to the bedroom, these three forms of virtue ethics have overlapping counterintuitive implications. Slote’s ethics of care is so broad that it can justify almost anything, at least when done from the right motive; for very similar reasons, a dedication to sexual philanthropy—say, in sexually pleasuring so-called ‘incels’—appears highly praiseworthy. Hursthouse’s formulation of ‘v-rules’ allows for similar liberty, particularly in how she formulates rules of temperance regarding sexual pleasure. Even sex with animals, by Hursthouse’s lights, can be enjoyed temperately and thus virtuously. Swanton’s non-eudaimonistic virtue ethics, grounded in factors like a life’s narrative structure, implies that a lifelong commitment to sexual perversity could in fact be a model of virtue.