As a philosopher and psychotherapist, I have a unique access to people’s psyches and often spot philosophic problems creating psychological problems. One poignant example of this is the goal that many people have to be “a good person.” On its face, no one would think to argue with this goal. Yet, if you push someone about it just a bit, you often find that what they mean by “a good person” is that they want to be “better than” so-and-so. This is deeply philosophically problematic and causes significant psychological issues. In order to see why, we need to unpack several important philosophic points and, through doing this, we shall see exactly why this premise is philosophically mistaken. If you retain nothing else from this essay aside from its title (“Good is Not Comparative”), then I will have done an adequate job. But, if you remember the reasons why, then I assure you that it will improve your life and happiness.

Of course, you might be wondering what it means that “good is not comparative” and it’s an excellent question. It’ll take us the rest of the essay to really plumb its depths, but we can start with start with its simplest form. The judgement that something is “good” is radically different than the judgement that something is “better than.” For example, to say that pencil A is “good” is to say that it writes well (that is, it fulfills its function), but it is a completely different kind of judgement than to say that pencil A is “better than” pencil B (that is, there is at least some respect in which A is superior to B). Indeed, it’s compatible that A is better than B and yet neither is a good pencil. Or, to use a different example, that a person is a good person is a different judgement from one person is better than another: for example, both C and D might be moral monsters and while C is a better person than D, neither is a good person; or, vice versa, both person E and F might be moral exemplars and while E is a better person than F, neither is a bad person. To be briefer, the best Nazi is a probably still not a good person and the worst among a group of moral saints is still good. Goodness has nothing at all to do with comparisons to others: that is, good is not comparative.

All comparisons are judgmental in nature as they are comparing two things. This judgment is a kind of what we call teleology. Teleology is the study of ends (telos is Greek for “end”). To say that comparison is teleological is just to point out that when we compare A to B, there must be some end for which we are comparing them. For example, when we said that A is a better pencil than B, the end is writing and this is given by the function of the pencil (since pencils are artifacts created to write with). To say that A is better than B is to merely say that for the sake of some end, A is better at achieving this than B.

From a psychological perspective, many of the people I treat who hold this view were only praised for achievement (by their parents, teachers, etc.) and in a culture that values competition highly, this means the only praise they got, and the only time they were told they were good, was when they were better than others. And this conflation stuck for them because it was one of the themes of their childhood which they internalized into their core beliefs. That is, they were taught that good was the same as better than and then never challenged this view as they matured.

To equate “good” to “better than” is to fundamentally misunderstand ethics. The goal of a proper ethics is not to compare one person to another, it is to help us understand how to live the best lives open to each of us. This misunderstanding arises from what I call “judgemental ethics.” This is a system of pseudo-ethics that is based in rules that are imposed by force from an authority figure: anything from a political authority to a mystical god. In these systems, the judge sits in moral judgement of individuals and judges the better ones from the worse ones. The then rewards the former and punishes the latter. But, there’s an inherent problem here: this is no system of morality. If there’s no real morality that the judge uses, then he’s just the biggest bully. If there is a system of morality behind the judge, he’s unnecessary. All religions make this mistake; indeed, for this reason, there can be no such thing as religious morality.

So, what then does proper morality look like? The goal of a real moral system is the flourishing of the individual in question in a rich sense that includes both internal goods like moral and intellectual virtue as well as external goods like lovers, families, money, and a good society. We call this kind of system “Eudaimonism” from the Greek tradition stemming from Aristotle that put an individual’s flourishing as the central moral aim. Because there is a goal here, this kind of morality is teleological. However, just because it is teleological does not mean that morality is comparative. The principle moral question is whether the individual is living well. What benefit would it be to that enterprise to add comparison to others? Indeed, comparison is not a useful moral tool and since it leads so many astray, we should reject the very idea of moral comparison entirely.

But, we can say much more about Eudaimonism and we must to really understand why good is not comparative, especially because it is not a common moral framework today. As we have just said, the goal of eudaimonism is the flourishing, in a rich sense, of an individual. This means that something is “good” to the extent that it contributes to a person’s living well and “evil” to the extent that it hinders or harms this. This kind of ethics is not imposed on us by outside. Rather, the only force it has over us comes from our choice to live (whether we make this choice explicitly or implicitly). This makes Eudaimonism what philosophy calls a “hypothetical” system of ethics. All this means is that the only binding power it has over us is conditional on our choice to live.

Since we are humans and the lives we live are human lives (i.e., not dog lives or tree lives), our human nature (and the nature of reality) will set constraints on what it means to live a flourishing life. That is, what it means to flourish will have to take into account the reality of physical and psychological nature, the means of our survival as humans (that is, reason), and the nature of the world in which we live. This will set the general constraints on what it means for a human in general to flourish. Of course, we are all more than “humans in general” and so ethics will need to be also be sensitive to our unique constitutions and values. This is a radically different conception of ethics than what most people think of when they hear “ethics” and think of religious prohibitions against this or that.

The goal of eudaimonism is to flourish and live a good human life, not to be “better than” others. For a eudaimonist, what it means to be a “good person” is to have a good character, including having cultivated the virtues, so that we tend to make the right choices and so we cultivate flourishing lives. But judgemental ethics has snuck in a different conception of “good person” that we must briefly dispel. The philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe argues[1] that in judgmental ethics (especially based in the mysticism of a “god”), the judge as a moral lawgiver gives rise to the idea of an in toto judgement of a person; that is, of a completely good person or completely bad person. In this judgmental, being a “good person” is an absolute verdict (like being “innocent” in court). But in real life, no humans are totally good or totally bad. Rather, some of us are living well and some of us are living poorly, but no one is living well without mistake or so poorly as to have no good qualities. This makes the very phrases “good person” and “bad person” worse than useless: they not only don’t match reality, they obscure it. In contrast, in eudaimonism, we talk about a person as living well or not in general and of being honest or dishonest, for example, with respect to the particular virtues. For this reason, we should discard the very idea of “good person” or “bad person” as illegitimate arising from a false conception of ethics.

Now, of course, you might reasonably say that we are social animals and that hierarchy is something natural for us. It is true that we are social animals, but the argument that something is good for us just because it’s natural is called the “naturalistic fallacy.” And this is easy to see: arsenic is natural and deadly. Or, some people argue that rape may be a natural strategy to propagate genes far and wide with no paternal costs, but most of us can clearly see that even if this is true and rape is natural, it wouldn’t make it good. Vice-versa: air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and medications are not natural but they are good. So, just because we naturally engage in this hierarchical judgement doesn’t mean it’ll help us live good lives. Indeed, it takes us off the very path to living a flourishing life.

So, where do we go from here? We must abandon these morally comparative judgments if we want to live well as not only psychologically damaging, but philosophically empty and morally destructive. Instead, if we want to live well, we must aim at living a good and flourishing life. A life of virtue, of connections with certain others of our kind, and that aims to maximize our values and bring about a joyful existence.

[1] In “Modern Moral Philosophy”, originally published in the journal Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 124.

I was recently interviewed about my book Eros & Ethos: A New Theory of Sexual Ethics by Michael Liebowitz on The Rational Egoist podcast. We talked about sexual ethics, attachment. relationships, the value of social connections, and many other topics. You can check it out below.

I was recently invited back on the “Philosophy for Flourishing” podcast to talk about my view of sexual ethics and why I think my more nuanced view (including re-particularizing sexual ethics via a robust account of constitutions) is critical for flourishing. The conversation ranged across the whole of my book Eros and Ethos: A New Theory of Sexual Ethics, including even some material on constitutions from the unreleased second volume (sneak peak!). 

You can access the video version via youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuidouIO_9A) or the audio-only version via (https://objectivestandard.org/podcasts/philosophy-for-flourishing).

A big thank you to Jon Hersey for a great interview!

I’m very pleased to announce that the Spanish edition of Eros & Ethos, Eros y Ethos: Una nueva teoría de la ética sexual, is now available for sale (https://amzn.to/38mprcd). I want to thank Gilberto Méndez Valdez for his translation and editorial work as well as Jhonatan Mejía-Hurtado for his careful editing of the penultimate draft.

UNA NEUVA TEORÍA DE LA ÉTICA SEXUAL

Históricamente, la ética sexual ha sido un panorama desolador de tres alternativas falsas: resistirse, abstenerse o complacerse indiscriminadamente. En Eros y Ethos, el filósofo Jason Stotts presenta una radical y nueva alternativa en la que el sexo es una parte éticamente importante de una rica vida humana. Muestra cómo el sexo es una expresión significativa de nuestro carácter, porque el sexo surge de las partes más profundas y fundamentales de quienes somos. En su relato, la virtud radica en alinear orgullosamente el deseo con nuestro florecimiento para que podamos crear vidas ricas y con significado.

I was recently invited on the “Philosophy for Flourishing” podcast to talk about my view of the sentiments (including emotions) and how understanding these can contribute to our flourishing. This was largely about Chapter 2 of my book Eros and Ethos: A New Theory of Sexual Ethics, where I elaborate my theory of sentiments and show how powerful this understanding can be for living a good life. Later in the book, I show how we can use this framework to even understand such things as sexual attraction and sexual arousal.

You can access the video version via youtube (https://youtu.be/Dsxar1yvzH8) or the audio-only version via a podcast app (https://objectivestandard.org/podcasts/philosophy-for-flourishing).

A big thank you to Jon Hersey for a great interview!

Ari Armstrong recently invited me onto his “Self in Society” podcast to talk about my book Eros and Ethos. It was a wide-ranging conversation that hit a lot of different areas. I had a really good time doing it and I hope that you’ll have a good time watching it.

Ari has more details, including timestamps of the topics of our conversation and an audio-only version, on his website at: https://ariarmstrong.com/2021/02/jason-stotts-on-erotic-love/

If you just want the YouTube video, you can find it here:

Aporia (ἀπορɛία): an impasse, puzzlement, doubt, or confusion; a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it.

I’m working on revising chapters from Volume 2 to get it ready for publication and one helpful criticism I got on an early version of my chapter on sex work was to start the chapter with an overview. This aporia is an attempt to do just that. As with my other aporia, this is an early work in progress and includes all the bits that would usually be stripped away from a piece prior to publication. It’s really more of a thinking-on-paper to prepare to write the chapter than anything else, but I thought it might be interesting to at least some people to see how the sausage is made.

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Before we look at some of the core types of sex work, let’s start by looking at this issue more broadly. This is important as sex work exists on a spectrum and while we can conceptually break things apart to look at them, this does not mean that they are always so cleanly cut in the real world. Moreover, we hardly have the space to detail the myriad ways that sex work could manifest and so a broad look will help to better understand the landscape.

Broadly, we can think of “sex work” as any activity related to sex and sexuality for which a person is paid. We can split it into three kinds: direct, indirect, and blended sex work. Direct sex work is when one person directly interacts with another person sexually for money (e.g., prostitutes, erotic masseurs, cam girls doing a private show, strippers, phone sex operators). Indirect sex work is when one person indirectly interacts with another person sexually for money (e.g., actors in pornography, women who sell used panties, cam girls putting on a general performance).[1] Blended sex work involves elements of both direct and indirect sex work: for example, a stripper who remains on stage for her entire performance without directly interacting with anyone is engaging in indirect sex work, but if she also comes off stage and gives a lap dance, then this is blended sex work. In the real world the spectrum of sex work is often not clear cut and a person could engage in multiple types of sex work, or in different kinds at different times, some of which are direct and some of which are indirect.

It seems to me that the key to something being “sex work” is that there has to be a transactional nature to the sex. A woman putting up a sexy video of herself and her partner because she is an exhibitionist and finds it thrilling is not engaged in sex work. If the same woman also charges for the video, then she is engaged in sex work. A woman who likes to exploit men financially is not engaged in sex work, unless its “financial domination” and the man is sexually aroused by being financially exploited. A man who likes to have sex with other men for his own pleasure is not a sex worker, unless he starts to charges these other men for the sex.

As some feminists (ref) have pointed out, this can get a little messy as in cases where a woman goes on a date with a man expecting to get a gift and a meal and have sex with him in return. Is this sex work? I think it’s sex work if, and only if, the only (or primary?) motivation of the woman is the financial compensation and the sex is what she is trading for this. If the woman instead really enjoys sex and is having sex as much for her sake as for his, then I don’t think it would count as sex work. It can obviously be sex work if the woman enjoys the sex, the question is about her motivation: if its only (primarily?) monetary, then its sex work.

Although I think that some feminists (ref) go too far with this in declaring that consensual marriage where the two partners decide that the best course of action is to have one partner stay at home to take care of the house and family is just another form of sex work. This is not so, unless the only reason that one person marries the other is because of money and without any genuine desire for, or emotional connection with, the other person.

But what about more complicated cases? What about a woman who has a very high sex drive and would want to have sex either way, but who has also chosen to charge for this to increase her earnings or to support her family? Or the couple whose primary motivation in posting their amateur videos is exhibitionistic excitement, but who also charge for the video?

Is it helpful to compare it to “traditional” work? For example, my primary motivation in practicing psychotherapy is to be paid, but I certainly also find the work meaningful and interesting and would choose to do something else if I didn’t. I think it’s clear that no one would deny that I was doing “psychotherapy work.” And likely no one would deny this no matter what my motivation was: anyone practicing psychotherapy professionally is doing psychotherapy work, no matter their motivation. Indeed, even if I took on a pro bono case and received no financial compensation, this would still be psychotherapy work.

Is motivation irrelevant to the question of what qualifies as sex work then? Perhaps it is, but it seems like there’s a difference between the prostitute (using this as a morally neutral term) who is genuinely attracted to her client and the one who is not. They are both doing sex work, but the latter seems to be a more clear-cut case. The couple posting the amateur video out of themselves because they find it exciting and charging for this also seem to be doing sex work, even if this is only somewhat tangentially true.

It seems that, strictly speaking, a person’s motivations are irrelevant to the question of whether they’re engaged in sex work: if they receive money for an activity related to sex, then it is sex work. But, that’s not a great definition as it would debatably include writing erotica and I don’t think that should qualify as sex work as no one is sexually interacting with the writer of erotica. What about this: “sex work is when one person sexually interacts with at least one other person, either directly or indirectly, for the sake of financial gain.” This seems better as it would preclude the erotica writer and leaves aside the motivation of the sex worker, which seem to be irrelevant. It also transposes to other areas well: “[psychotherapy] work is when one person [psychotherapeutically] interacts with at least one other person, either directly or indirectly, for the sake of financial gain.” Not a perfect transposition, but pretty good for a statement that’s not directly related to the field.

The rub might hinge, though, on the “for the sake of” part. The couple posting the amateur porn is directly interacting with each other for the sake of their own pleasure (presumably). They are only indirectly interacting with others by allowing them to masturbate to video of them and to be paid for this privilege. A good definition was probably a lot easier to arrive at prior to the internet when amateur porn was more or less non-existent (besides polaroids which probably[?] weren’t shared much).

Perhaps we could change the definition to: “sex work is when one person sexually interacts with at least one other person, either directly or indirectly, with the expectation of financial gain.” This better leaves aside motivations, which I thought we had with our last definition, and also still includes sex work for which a person (immorally) refuses to pay. It also doesn’t seem to have a prima facie issues or cause any immediate contradictions.

Perhaps it would be instructive at this point to look up some other definitions. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work) lists the definition as “the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation”. Interestingly whoever wrote that also drew a distinction between direct and indirect interactions, which seems right. I’m not sure it’s a better definition, though, as it says “for material gain.” This would exclude instances where a person performs what would otherwise be sex work but doesn’t get paid, so then suddenly it’s no longer sex work. That can’t be right. The Apple Dictionary lists the definition of sex work as “a person who engages in prostitution, appears in pornography, or takes part in similar activities for payment.” That’s an even worse definition than the Wikipedia one. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as “a person whose work involves sexually explicit behavior.” This is also a pretty poor definition as it’s not going to include things that seem like they should be included, like women who sell used panties. With this brief review of dictionarial endoxa, we have sufficient reason to think our definition pretty adequate at this stage.

It strikes me now that perhaps it’d be more instructive to try to define “work” more generally and just treat sex work as a species of work. The Apple dictionary lists one possible definition of work as “mental or physical activity as a means of earning income.” This seems like a good definition of the broad field of work. Sex work then would be something like “mental or physical activity related to sex and sexuality as a means of earning income.” It would work for psychotherapy work as well: “mental or physical activity related to the practice of psychotherapy as a means of earning income.” Fundamentally, all work is transactional: if you’re not getting paid, it’s not “work” in the relevant sense.

Of course, sometimes sex is transactional and probably shouldn’t count as sex work per se. For example, many romantic relationships become merely transactional over time if the intimacy dies, such as the married couple who no longer love each other, but one pays the rent and the other fucks them sometimes. In this case, I wouldn’t want to call this sex work as it’s the remnants of a previous relationship and this previous relationship better explains the interaction than calling it sex work (although I know there are some people who would want to call it sex work).

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[1]  Someone might reasonably wonder where something like writing erotica would fall into this classification. I would say that it does not as no one is having a sexual interaction with the writer of the erotica, but with a work that is distinct from the author (as opposed to, for example, a pornographic video in which viewer is masturbating to an actor or actress through the medium of film).

Aporia (ἀπορɛία): an impasse, puzzlement, doubt, or confusion; a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it.

When thinking about the details of what it would mean to live a good sexual life, a thought occurred to me: shouldn’t there be something like an “erotic character” or perhaps a dimension of a person’s character with respect to sex and sexuality? If sex and sexuality are truly an important part of a good life for most people, which I think they are, then we need to cultivate certain attitudes and dispositions with respect to them and to internalize these; that is, we need something like an erotic character. Or, perhaps, is it rather that we need to cultivate a good general character and this will be enough to handle sexual situations? This inquiry into erotic character additionally raised the question for me about whether there were specifically sexual virtues that we need to cultivate or whether it was simply a matter of applying the general virtues to sexual situations via phronesis. Let us, then, inquire into these questions and see if the ideas of “erotic character” and “sexual virtues” make sense and, if so, if they would provide a useful addition to how we think about sex and sexuality and our orientation to these things.

Erotic Character

As a eudaimonist, I believe that one of the most critical tasks a person must undertake, if they want to live a good life, is the cultivation of a good character. I don’t think that morality is about the evaluation of one-off actions in isolation, but about shaping yourself into the kind of person who will be capable of living a good life; including being able to enjoy the good times and weather the bad. Consequently, I devoted a large section of Chapter 1 of the first volume of Eros and Ethos to the question of character and how to develop it. There, we explored issues such as the cultivation of virtue (including the connection between the universal values and virtue), the difference between virtue and self-restraint, and how character orients our sentimental life towards our ends so we feel good about living well. The goal was to help a person understand how to create a self that would have the best chance of thriving and flourishing.

When we consider the idea of “erotic character,” several questions immediately come to mind, such as: Do we have “multiple characters”? Or is it simply different aspects of our character as applied to different contexts? Can our erotic character, if it exists, ever conflict with our broader character?

Let us start by recalling what we mean by “character.” In Eros and Ethos, we said that “Character is the source of moral actions that we do without deliberation and it is the result of the choices, beliefs, and values that we have internalized as right and as our own.  That is, character is our habituated dispositional nature. It is the summation of the principles by which we live and the moral choices we have made; in this sense, our character is our created moral self.” (E&E, 50). So, our character is our “habituated dispositional nature” and these dispositions are related to our moral actions as stemming from our values and beliefs. Moreover, our character is also related to our dispositional sentimental nature:

“A good character is not only about doing the right things, but, more importantly, it is about wanting to do the right thing and feeling good about doing the right thing. Moreover, character is also about wanting to not do the wrong thing and feeling bad about it if one does. It is for this reason that Aristotle says: “Excellence of character is concerned with emotions and acts.”  This is because character is a cultivation, not just of our dispositions to action, but of our desires. We do this by having the right kinds of values and beliefs and integrating them into our hierarchy of values. By having well-formed values and beliefs (rationality) and by integrating them with our conscious goals (integrity), we come to desire to live by (authenticity) the values we have chosen for ourselves (independence) and then actually take the actions in the world to achieve these values (integrity). This integration gives us the desire to live well and to feel good about living well. Moreover, because we are living by our values, we will experience the meaningfulness of our lives. It is for these reasons that character is perhaps the most important component of happiness, because it ties together our values, our emotions, and our decision to live into a cohesive package that helps us to achieve these things and feel good about it. A good character is the most important key to living well and being happy about it.” (E&E, 52-53)

Character is the integration of our moral selves, including our moral actions, our desires, our sentiments, our virtues, the way we live, how we relate to others—all of it. So, if that is the case, then clearly our character should cover sexuality. And, indeed, there’s clearly a sense in which it does. The problem is that our general moral character doesn’t specifically address sex and sexuality and, if it truly is necessary for most of us to live a good life, then we need to make sure that we’re cultivating the right dispositions towards these things. This is what leads us to consider whether it’s worthwhile to develop the idea of a “erotic character.”

So, the next question is this: would an “erotic character” simply be an element of our broader character or would it be a separate character? If it were the latter, it would seem to create a whole host of problems, such as: How are the two characters related? Can they come in conflict? How would we adjudicate the conflict? Et cetera. These problems will prove to be intractable. So, if it’s not a separate character, and there’s no obvious middle position, then it must be some element of our broader character.

I think it makes sense to discuss the idea of domain-specific characters; or, perhaps it would be more accurate to consider them our character as regards certain specific domains. For example, as a psychotherapist, I not only have my general character that I’ve cultivated to live well, I have a specifically psychotherapeutic character that I’ve developed to try to help my clients back to mental health. This psychotherapeutic character involves such things as active listening, knowledge of psychological disorders and how to treat them, willingness to engage people in some of the deepest problems (which I may not do outside of the psychotherapeutic context), clinical detachment to maintain objectivity, etc. While there is some overlap with my general character, there are some domain-specific values here that may lead to different sorts of actions being more beneficial than others. For example, while I may always strive for honesty in my general life, this is not always beneficial in the psychotherapeutic context. This is not to say that I lie in this context, but that I often deflect questions to push a client to arrive at insight on their own so that it has more of an impact on them and does more to help them unravel their quandaries. If I were to directly answer some questions, it may actually be counterproductive for treatment. I don’t consider this to be dishonesty or a violation of my general character, but it something that I utilize only in a specific context and I do not (usually) use it outside of that context.

The point I’m driving at is that specific areas may have their own nuances that are worth being cognizant of and of responding to in the right ways and these responses may be unique to these contexts and require a different sort of habituated response than may be required in our broader lives. This fact, I think, warrants there being domain-specific elements of our character to address nuances so that we respond in the right ways. For the sake of simplicity, we can say that we have a domain-specific character or, in this case, something like a “psychotherapeutic character.” This domain-specific character does not conflict with our general character, but may be targeted to address specific problems or nuances in an area that requires more than our general character.

I think that sex and sexuality broadly constitute a domain in which our general character is not fully sufficient, because there are special consideration to this domain. Of course, this is less clear than in the case of the psychotherapeutic domain as in that case, I am playing a very particular role to a certain end in a limited domain. Whereas, in the case of sex and sexuality, these are an important part of my broader life and happiness. On the other hand, my productive work is also an important part of my broader life and happiness, so perhaps they are not so different. Let us, at least for the moment, suppose that sex and sexuality represent a unique domain for which we need a domain-specific character. If so, this implies that we would also need domain-specific virtues to be excellent in this domain. Let us, then, assume this to be true and inquire into these domain-specific virtues and see if they really do provide a unique value that is not covered by our general character, including the virtues of which it is partly comprised. If so, then this will be a compelling argument for the necessity of the domain-specific framework. If not, then we should abandon the approach.

Domain-Specific Virtues

Let us start by defining what we mean by “virtue” generally. We don’t mean a strict etymological reading by which they would mean “manliness.” Rather, as we said in Eros and Ethos, by “virtue” we mean the “cultivated dispositions of character for achieving a good life by means of realizing the universal values.” (E&E, 34). This already presents something of a problem, as the values around sex and sexuality are constitutional values and not universal values. So, we cannot simply use this definition for the sexual virtues. We need to make at least two changes to the definition to make it work: A) we need to change the index values to constitutional values & B) we may need to change the end it is seeking to achieve from “a good life” to something else. Of course, these two changes raise several problems:

First (1), here’s a question: are all domain-specific virtues indexed to constitutional values? I’m not sure that being a psychotherapist is a constitutional value for me, but I do think that I could do it virtuously or not. Of course, being productive and creating values is actually a universal value, so maybe this is a bad example. What about being an excellent billiard-player? I would think that for nearly anyone, playing billiards would not be part of their constitution, but merely a personal value. Does there need to be a set of personal-value-specific virtues? Or, maybe it’s the case that not all excellences are virtues? This seems better, we don’t need to call everything that we do well a virtue. In fact, I would not call the excellent billiard play virtuous on this alone, nor would this factor into any consideration of whether he was virtuous. We seem to have become stuck in a quagmire. Let us take a step back and remind ourselves what we mean by a “constitutional value.”

We said in Eros and Ethos that there were three different kinds of values: “there are some values, the universal values, which are necessary for happiness for anyone, constitutional values, which are necessary for a person’s happiness, but depend on their constitution, and others like personal values, which give richness to happiness.” (E&E, 27). We also saw that there were two different types of values, depending on whether a person’s identity depended on the value or not: “The first and most important type of values is ‘core values,’ which define a person’s identity (and which also includes their central purpose in life). The second type of values is ‘peripheral values,’ values that enrich a person’s life, but which do not define them.” (E&E, 27). We created these distinctions as a way of gaining further insight into the nature of values and the roles that they play in our lives; for example, we all need to achieve the universal values (which are common to all humans) to achieve happiness and so we should hold these as core values, but we all also have unique constitutions which also have values whose achievement is necessary for happiness (e.g., having a family, sexuality, etc.).

To turn our attention back to constitutional values, in Eros and Ethos we defined these as those values “which are necessary for a particular person’s happiness based on their unique constitution” (E&E, 27). In Volume 2 (forthcoming), we will delve into this issue of constitutions and show how a person’s constitution is made up of four major elements: physical, psychological, moral, and social. This constitution starts with our innate temperament, with which we are born, and develops as we grow and mature. While parts of our constitution are changeable, some may be do deeply ingrained and intractable as to be effectively fixed, or at least unchangeable without a lot of effort and/or professional help (e.g., a person with an anxiety disorder has this as part of their psychological constitution and they would likely need professional help to change this). Our constitutions arise out of these four major areas and our constitutions entail certain values if we want to achieve happiness with this constitution (of course, sometimes our constitutions will be bad and will need to be changed, but we’ll address that issue in Volume 2). These are what we call the “constitutional values” and this explains what we mean by “necessary for a particular person’s happiness based on their unique constitution.” We went on to elaborate that “certain things might be necessary for an individual’s happiness due to their particular nature, but without being common to all humans like universal values because of variations in individual constitutions. For example, having children is a constitutional value for some people, because happiness would not be possible to these people without having children. At the same time, other people may be differently constituted such that they may deliberate about the choice or choose not to have children at all and are still able to achieve happiness. Sex, too, may be a constitutional value: most of us would consider sex so important that we would not want a life devoid of it, but some people can live happy lives without it. This highlights the fact that not everyone is exactly the same and differences in our individual constitutions can lead to variations in what is necessary for us to achieve happiness.” (E&E, 29).

Now that we have this in mind, let us return to our original question: “are all domain-specific virtues indexed to constitutional values?” It would seem that the answer is no. Since the constitutional values are necessary for happiness for that particular person, we should call the habituated dispositions of character necessary to achieve them “virtues.” Of course, this also entails that there can only be domain-specific virtues in contexts that are aimed at constitutional values. In any other domain, we would simply say that the person was excellent with respect to the end they wished to realize (e.g., being a good billiard player), but we would not call this a virtue.

Second (2), if, in our formulation of domain-specific virtues, we change the end from a good life to something like “being excellent in that domain,” then haven’t we opened the door to “virtues” that may interfere with living well generally? The answer is yes, we would create that paradox with that move and so we must resist it. Thankfully, we have just addressed this problem through our detour into constitutional values and so it is no longer a problem: in domains that are indexed to constitutional values, then there are virtues, and in domains that are not indexed to constitutional values, then there are simply excellences with respect to those ends.

Now that we have adequately addressed these problems, let us define both domain-specific virtues and sexual virtues. Recall that we defined virtue as “cultivated dispositions of character for achieving a good life by means of realizing the universal values.” Accordingly, we will define domain-specific virtues as the “cultivated dispositions of character for achieving a good life in a certain domain by means of realizing the constitutional values associated with this domain.” With the specific domain of sex and sexuality, we can define sexual virtue as the “cultivated dispositions of character for achieving a good life with respect to sex and sexuality by means of realizing the constitutional values associated with this domain.” Of course, since it is indexed to constitutional values, it means that some people (whose constitutions are such that sex and sexuality are not a value to them) will not participate in these virtues, in the same way and for the same reasons that people who do not hold constitutional values around having children will not participate in parental virtues.

In some ways the idea of “sexual virtues” is new, but in others, it is a very old idea indeed. Consider that many religious and cultural traditions consider “chastity” (abstaining from sex), pre-marital virginity, and monogamy to be sexual virtues. These same traditions also often hold that many sexual ideas are “beyond the pale” and are “taboo” and forbidden to speak of.  Yet, for those people who have constitutions such that sex and sexuality are a value to them (and this is most of us), we must think and talk about these issues—including doing more to elaborate the idea of the sexual virtues and exploring more particularly what they might be.

Before we do this, though, we must answer one final question: can domain specific virtues (such as the sexual virtues) ever conflict with the more general virtues? Thankfully, this answer is clear: no. Given that no person can live well without achieving the general virtues, and thereby achieving the universal values, there can be no conflict. The domain-specific virtues can never conflict, override, or in general detract from, the general virtues if we want to live well. In fact, they exist in a mutually reinforcing alignment where a person who has a good general character will be more likely to have a good domain-specific character and vice versa. For the same reason, a person who has a bad domain-specific character will be more likely to have a bad general character and vice versa. Let us now, having answered these questions and laid the foundation, look to the issue of the sexual virtues and explore what these might be and what values they will seek to achieve.

Sexual Virtues

The overall goal of the general virtues is to live a good life (or flourishing across life) and this is done through the achievement of the universal values. Similarly, the overall goal of the sexual virtues is to live a good sex life or sexual flourishing (and to integrate that into our broader project of living a rich and happy life) and this is done through the achievement of the constitutional values around sex and sexuality. For this reason, we defined the sexual virtues as the “cultivated dispositions of character for achieving a good life with respect to sex and sexuality by means of realizing the constitutional values associated with this domain.” Still, while broadly instructive, there’s much more to be said if we want it to have much meaning.

So, if a person holds sex and sexuality as constitutional values, what sorts of habits, skills, and attitudes (that is, what sorts of cultivated dispositions) does that person need to hold to be successful at having a good sex life and of integrating this into their broader project of living well?

1) General sexual knowledge. As in all things, knowledge about the subject is critical to success. We wouldn’t expect someone who did not know anything of basketball (such as the rules, how to dribble, how to pass, etc.) to be able to play basketball well and we would not be surprised when they failed to really even play the game. So, too, with sex, which is an even more complicated activity. A person needs to understand sexual pleasure and how to cause, contraception, reproduction, sexual anatomy and morphology, cultural norms, kinks, etc. Knowledge and then understanding (that is, knowledge that has been applied and integrated through experience) are the foundations of virtue, their precondition.

2) Sexual self-knowledge. Before we can successfully interact with others sexually, we need to know our own bodies, our sexual likes, and our sexual dislikes. The first we can obviously do alone and we can learn a lot about ourselves through masturbation. Of course, we’ll need to have sex with others if we want to understand our preferences for partnered sex. The same is true for our sexual likes and dislikes: there is a lot we can learn before interacting with others sexually and a lot more to learn once we do. Indeed, sometimes our fantasies are best as fantasies and the reality of them ends up to their detriment.

3) Sexual skills and techniques. To engage in sex and sexuality well, a person must develop certain skills and techniques. This is no different than any other activity: if you want to do an activity well (such as having sex, playing the flute, or sword-fighting), you must develop the skills and techniques it requires. Sadly, thinking about sex this way is taboo for many people. Yet, their irrationality doesn’t change the reality that the activities of sex can be done well or poorly and the difference between these is largely, but obviously not entirely, about the skills of the participants. Anyone who hopes to just be naturally good at sex is likely to be a bad lover and we can assume anyone who thinks they’re good at it, without putting any thought into the skills involved, is not. Of course, a person can develop skills through experience and learning what works with their partners; but, even here, the person is reflective about their experiences will become more skilled than the person who is not.

4) Compersion. For sex to be the most enjoyable (at all levels) for its participants, there is a key skill that needs to be developed. This is often, unfortunately, called compersion. I say unfortunately because “compersion” is an etymological nightmare-chimera.[1] Regardless, compersion involves two distinct dispositions that come together: 1) feeling pleasure that our partner is experiencing pleasure and 2) feeling our partner’s pleasure. The first is easy enough to understand we feel pleased that our partner is experiencing pleasure (whether we are the source of this, they are pleasuring themselves, or we are watching another pleasure them). The point is that the pleasure is ours and a result of us knowing they are experiencing pleasure. The second is somewhat different and it is attempting to feel our partner’s pleasure with them (which we might call erotic empathy). In this case, we are trying to share in their feeling with them and experience it as they experience it. These two things come together in compersion, when we cultivate the disposition to be pleased at and with our partner’s pleasure.

5) Respect. The word respect is often misused as a synonym for “obey,” as with police officers and parents. The word truly means two different, but related things. The fundamental sense of respect is to treat another as a person in their own right, with hopes, dreams, desires, values, etc. In addition to this, we also say that we respect someone when we admire them for their achievements. In this context, we are primarily going to focus on the first sense. So, what does this mean here then? Well, if we are to treat a sexual partner as a person in their own right, then we need get their consent to sexually interact with them, we need to be aware of their desires and how we can come to mutually beneficial arrangements, not assume an attitude of entitlement to their sexual lives (even if this is a long-term partner), and so no. Fundamentally, we must treat our sex partners as full people and not merely as living sex-toys (unless, of course, this is negotiated beforehand and everyone wants it—in which case we are respecting them, even in their degradation).

6) Willingness to explore. There is a real danger of rationalism around sex and sexuality where people can a priori convince themselves that they wouldn’t like some sexual thing, even though they have no experience of it or insufficient relevant experience (which we might call the “problem of Green Eggs and Ham”). This is not to say that a person must try everything, but that a person should be willing to experiment at least in broad areas and test their boundaries from time to time. This is especially true when our partner has specific interests that we may not have much experience with, we should be willing to keep an open mind and experiment with them (assuming, of course, the activities are non-harmful).

7) Non-judgemental attitude about non-harmful preferences and kinks. In connection with the previous point, we should generally adopt a non-judgemental attitude about non-harmful preferences and kinks (NJA). While it’s a bit of a mouthful, this NJA is important because as long as people aren’t harming each other, they should be free to engage in sex and sexuality however they choose. Of course, this is all going to hinge on the word “harm” which we don’t have space for here (but which we deal with at length in Eros and Ethos, Volume 2). We should point out that harm can also be psychological and not simply physical; for example, there are no moral concerns with a person who has a fantasy that would be otherwise harmful in real life, unless they begin to blur the line between fantasy and reality and attempt to engage in the fantasy in real life.

8) Sexual independence. In addition to sexual self-knowledge, we must be able to meet our sexual needs at a basic level by ourselves, without being dependent on others. We might have called this the value of “sexual non-desperation” as the goal is to have our sexual needs met sufficiently so that we do not become desperate or overly needy to have a partner or, if we already have a partner, too needy and insistent on them (at the very extreme would be the desperation of the “involuntary celibate” or “incel” community). This is not to say that we can’t prefer partnered sex and find it more exciting and enjoyable, but only that we should be able to meet our needs well enough that another person is not necessary.

Now that we have this list, a question arises: are these the sexual virtues or are these simply that underlie the sexual virtues? Surely most of us can agree that they’re all good, but are they virtues? Clearly the first two, having to deal with knowledge are not virtues as knowledge is not a virtue. But what about the others? If they are sexual virtues, then they should have corresponding sexual values. We should also see if we can’t find any other sexual values to see if we’re missing any of the virtues (since they exist in a one-to-one correspondence).

We need to better elaborate the values around sex and sexuality to see if we’re hitting the virtues. So far, here is the list we’ve generated:

• Value: your partner’s pleasure/ virtue: compersion
• Value: respect for yourself / virtue: respect for others
• Value: sexual exploration / virtue: willingness to explore or open-mindedness
• Value: sexual variety / virtue: non-judgmental attitude about non-harmful preferences and kinks
• Value: ??? / virtue: sexual independence

Our list has some obvious problems already. For example, not everyone may value sexual variety, but the NJA is still good to have for other people’s sexuality. Also, we have not really identified a value that corresponds with sexual independence.

At this point, there are several moves we could make. We could say that a person who wants to engage in sex and sexuality should attempt to internalize these values if they want to have a happy and successful sex life. While this has some appeal, it doesn’t seem justified in many cases. For example, what about the person who isn’t so constituted to value sexual variety? We might say that they should be open-minded and willing to explore with a partner if they want to be successful in their relationships. But, if we do that, then we seem to have misidentified that value to which the virtue of willingness to explore corresponds.

OR, another thought occurs to me. What if there are multiple values that the virtues attempt to achieve. Perhaps the paradigm of one value to one virtue only works for the universal values/virtues and doesn’t apply to constitutional values. If that’s the case, and it seems like it probably is, we must abandon the correspondence framework. This doesn’t mean that we cannot identify sexual values and sexual virtues, but we won’t be able to index them in a 1:1 correspondence. Maybe we should take a step back from this and try another approach.

If we do abandon that approach, and it certainly seems that we should, then we might be able to expand our list of sexual virtues, including those that may seek to achieve multiple values. For example, we might want to include the following attitudes:

• focus on the whole person and not simply their genitals (to avoid physicalism/dualism)
• enjoy all of sex and sexuality and not only the orgasm (to avoid over-focus on orgasm and potentially also dualism)
• Treat your partner as a full person and not something you own (non-jealousy/non-harmful-possessiveness)

There are probably many more sexual virtues, but we seem to have answered our question about whether sexual virtues exist.

Conclusion

At this point, perhaps we can say our aporia is abated. There is such a thing as an erotic character and sexual virtues. We’ve also, in the interim, proved that domain-specific virtues exist and learned a little about them (such as that they don’t index 1:1 to constitutional values). It’s likely we’ll include this in Volume 2, although in a more polished and less aporatic style.

Additional Questions

Now that we have elaborated the sexual virtues, let us answer several other questions that have occurred to us.

1) Can someone have a domain-specific virtue if they lack a corresponding constitutional value? That is, could someone who did not have a constitutional value around sex and sexuality still be sexually virtuous? Or, could a person who lacked a constitutional value around having children still be a virtuous parent?

At first glance, we’d be inclined to say no. However, consider that this would entail someone who didn’t have a constitutional value around children (i.e., that they would not need to have children to live a rich and happy life) would be unable to be a virtuous parent and this seems patently false. Someone either cultivates the virtues around parenting or they do not. But, to the extent that they do, they must have chosen to care about being a good parent: that is, not one becomes a good parent without choosing to and no one would choose to without valuing being a good parent. This choice to be a good parent also entails that they’ve chosen to care about their children and their well-being. To the extent that we choose to care about something is the extent to which we subjectively value it (as we argued in Eros and Ethos). To the extent that the thing in question will help us to live a rich and happy life according to our best judgement, is the extent to which it is objectively valuable. When these things come together, that is when we can be said to truly value it. Anyone who cares about their children and considers them an important part of their life thereby takes on their children as important values. Now, we have already argued that constitutions can change and, in this case, we can see that someone who did not initially have a constitutional value around having children can come to create such a constitution for themselves through their choices and deeply internalizing these values. In effect, they create a constitutional value for themselves through their choice to care and the way they inform the way they live their lives in light of this choice. Thus, anyone would exhibits domain-specific virtue would have to hold at least some constitutional values in that domain. If they did not, they would never be moved to develop the virtues.

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Footnotes:

[1]   The prefix “com-” mean “with” or “together,” the prefix “per-” means “through,” and the suffix “-sion” is used to form nouns and means something like “the state of X,” where X is what comes before the -sion.  So, “compersion” means something like “the state of together through.” This obviously makes no etymological sense. Sadly, it’s the best option because it is already established and because the other options (such as empathy and sympathy) have significant connotations that make them unsuitable. Another alternative would have been “erotic empathy,” but the broader connotations remain.

In the Parts of Animals (PA, 645^a17-23), the philosopher Aristotle relates to us a story about one of the most famous philosophers of his time, Heraclitus. The story goes that a group of potential followers were seeking out the great sage and came to his house. They found him “warming himself by the fire” (a euphemism for taking a shit) and were aghast. He told them to not be afraid and that “there are gods here too.” Aristotle, building on this point, extorts us to go out into the world and engage with all of its parts, even those that we may find repugnant or disgusting because “In all things of nature there is something of the divine.” How does this story, which is over 2400 years old, relate to the #medbikini twitter controversy?

Heraclitus was a great sage and these potential followers were off-put by finding him engaged in the common and “base” act of excretion, because that was something simply of the body and they supposed that such a great thinker would be above such things. So, too, with #MedBikini. Some people suppose that because physicians are smart and well-educated, they must be above the “baseness” of sexuality and that, if anything, these people should be more or less sexless.

Consider that the premise behind this is dualism: one is either more associated with the mind or the body. The position, however, is farcical. As humans, we have both minds and bodies and there is no way to drive a wedge between these different aspects of our existence. A intelligent and educated person is no less likely than anyone else to have sexual needs and a rich sexual life. In fact, research shows that higher levels of education are correlated with more adventurousness in sexuality (likely due to being able to challenge cultural norms) and so intellectuals probably have more interesting sex lives.

This deification and dualism hits women disproportionately hard as it’s assumed that women are either attractive or intelligent (but, inexplicably, not both). This is silly. A person’s level of physical attractiveness has no bearing on how intelligent they are or how educated they become.

We, as a culture, need to let this dualist doctrine go. Intellectuals can be sexual. And ALL intellectuals have bodies. Moreover, we need to reject the doctrine that sex is necessary “base” and somehow diminishes the “higher elements” of our humanity. As Aristotle says, “In all things of nature there is something of the divine” and this emphatically includes sex and sexuality.

I am beyond thrilled to announce that the AUDIOBOOK version of Eros and Ethos: A new Theory of Sexual Ethics is finally available on Audible! It will also be available on iTunes and Google play in the next several days. Now’s your chance to finally listen to all of its sexy glory. (LINK)