Is Sex Morally Special

Bibliographic Data

ID8062893
AuthorsPiers Benn (corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume16
Issue3
Pages235-245
Publication date1999-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Applied Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0264-3758 • E-ISSN: 1468-5930
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-5930.00126
OpenAlexW2141019967
LanguageEN
Citations received11

This paper attempts to clarify what is, and is not, meant by claiming that special moral considerations apply to sexual behaviour that cannot apply to other areas of life. It then poses the problem by reference to virtue ethics, asking whether there are any virtues or vices specific to sex, which go beyond general considerations like justice and benevolence. This leads to a mostly sympathetic treatment of Scruton’s Aristotelian derivation of sexual morality, which stresses how some behaviour and fantasies are debarred by a stable disposition to seek erotic flourishing. However, doubts are raised about some of the supposed implications of this account, and it is suggested that a better way to understand the moral distinctness of sex is to focus on the goods, rather than the evils, that arise uniquely in the erotic sphere

Disposition · Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Flourishing · Focus (optics · Morality · Political science · Sociology · Virtue · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law · War, Ethics, and Justification · Law · Philosophy · Social Psychology

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