Sexual Ethics

Abstract

There can be no doubt that sexuality is one of the most powerful forces operative in human experience. While sex facilitates the process of reproduction, in human existence sex has developed into considerably more than this. Sex also represents one of the fundamental drives that constitute human behavior. In as far as ethics is the outcome of reflection on the rightness or wrongness and goodness or badness of all human behavior, sex has since the earliest origins of our culture been a theme of consistent moral deliberation, regulation, and even legislation. This entry firstly outlines aspects of the history of reflection on sexual matters. The approach in terms of natural law (also inspired by religious concerns) is discussed, leading up to the approaches of St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century and Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century, as well as the Victorian guilt morality that dominated the nineteenth and the earlier twentieth centuries. Following this, the liberalized understanding of and reflection on sex, mainly precipitated in the second half of the twentieth century in the aftermath of the Second World War, receive attention. In the third section of the entry, a brief conceptual clarification of the term “sexual activity” is offered in light of the conceptual difficulties that a proper understanding of this term has yielded. The final part of the entry explores the way in which the understanding and practice of, as well as the reflection on, human sexuality have changed. The differences between St. Thomas Aquinas’s and Thomas Nagel’s notions of “sexual perversion” serve as the point of departure. The entry concludes with an emphasis on the role of sex in the understanding and practice of intimate human relationships.