Kant, political liberalism, and the ethics of same-sex relations

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 446-462

  Schaff, Kory ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248072344     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0047-2786.00106     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 111.
2. See her Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
3. In addition, Butler has tackled the theoretical and practical complexities of hate crimes legislation in a recent work, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997).
4. Barbara Herman, "Leaving Deontology Behind", in The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
5. References to Kant's works will be internally cited using the following abbreviations: A Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974).
6. CPR Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp-Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965).
7. CPrR Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1993).
8. CJ Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987).
9. G Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Ethical Philosophy, trans. James Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983).
10. LE Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1963).
11. MDR Metaphysical Principles of the Doctrine of Right, Part I of The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
12. MDV Metaphysical Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue, Part II of The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
13. TP On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
14. Robin Schott, "Kant's Treatment of Sensibility", in New Essays on Kant, ed. Bernard den Ouden and Marcia Moen (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), spp. 213-26;
15. also see Schott, Cognition and Eros (Boston: Beacon, 1988).
16. see Mark Packer, "Kant on Desire and Moral Pleasure", Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (July-September 1989).
17. An interesting psychoanalytic reading of Kant's "discipline of reason" in relation to the body can be found in Andrew Cutrofello, Discipline and Critique: Kant, Poststructuralism, and the Problem of Resistance (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), chap. 3.
18. For Hegel's critique of Kant, see Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), ¶¶161-69. For a discussion of Hegel's overall critique of Kant's "empty formalism"
19. see Karl Ameriks, "The Hegelian Critique of Kantian Morality", in New Essays on Kant, ed. Bernard den Ouden and Marcia Moen (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), pp. 179-212.
20. Finally, the feminist critique of the contract can be found in the exemplary work of Carol Pateman, "Hegel, Marriage, and the Standpoint of Contract", in Feminist Interpretations of G. W. F. Hegel, ed. Patricia Mills (University Park: Penn State Press, 1996), pp. 209-23;
21. also see Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).
22. see John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), especially his discussion of various Christian debates about "nature", pp. 303-32.
23. see Thomas Nagel, "Sexual Perversion", in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 39-52. For an extension of that critique using the metaphor of sex as "language"
24. see Robert Solomon, "Sex and Perversion", in From Hegel to Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 122-36.
25. Solomon has also recently defended sexuality as important to an ethics of virtue in "The Virtues of a Passionate Life: Erotic Love and the 'Will to Power, '" Social Philosophy and Policy 15(Winter 1998):91-118.
26. see Vincent Cooke, "Kant, Teleology, and Sexual Ethics", International Philosophical Quarterly 31(March 1991):3-13.
27. Raja Halwani, "Are One Night Stands Morally Problematic?" International Journal of Applied Ethics 10 (Summer-Fall 1995).
28. see Onora O'Neill, "Between Consenting Adults", Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3(Summer 1985):252-77;
29. the essay also appears as chapter 6 in her Constructions of Reason: Explorations in Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
30. See Simon Le Vay, The Sexual Brain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), chap. 6.
31. For a different treatment of Kant's arguments against "unnatural sex", see Laura Denis, "Kant on the Wrongness of 'Unnatural' Sex", History of Philosophy Quarterly 16, no. 2(April 1999):225-48. This essay came to my attention after the completion and acceptance of the present article for publication.
32. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 4.
33. John Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", University of Chicago Law Review 64, no. 3(Summer 1997):766. It is interesting that Rawls devotes a great deal of space to the role of the family as part of the basic structure in order to answer feminist critics of political liberalism, but he does not mention the democratic controversy of excluding nontraditional families, such as same-sex relations, from publicly accepted versions of the family (787-94).
34. See Mark Strasser, Legally Wed: Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
35. cf. Political Liberalism, pp. 190-95.
36. See Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, trans. Tom McCarthy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), pp. 22-42;
37. also see his "A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality", The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, trans. C. Cronin and P. De Greiff (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 43-44.
38. Mills, The Racial Contract, pp. 96-98.