LEGALITY: IS CONSENT Enough?

SEXUAL MORALITY: IS CONSENT ENOUGH?

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IGOR PRIMORATZ

SEXUAL MORALITY: IS CONSENT ENOUGH?
ABSTRACT. The liberal view that valid consent is sufficient for a sex act to be morally legitimate is challenged by three major philosophies of sex: the Catholic view of sex as ordained for procreation and properly confined to marriage, the romantic view of sex as bound up with love, and the radical feminist analysis of sex in our society as part and parcel of the domination of women by men. I take a critical look at all three, focusing on
Mary Geach’s recent statement of the procreation view, Roger Scruton’s theory of sexual desire as naturally evolving into intimacy and love, and several radical feminist discussions of sex in sexist society which
A teleological account of sex as meant for procreation is problematic in any of its three possible versions.
Claims about God’s purposes are too parochial for a philosophical discussion of these matters. Procreation is certainly not the purpose of humans who have sex; most of the time they do that without the slightest intention of procreating, and quite often after having taken measures to avoid doing so. And the claim that procreation is Nature’s purpose makes sense only within a world-view hardly anyone finds feasible today. As Graham Priest remarks in a recent paper on sexual perversion, this claim “is like the grin of the Cheshire Cat: it lingers on when the conditions of its possibility have been removed” (Priest, 1997, p. 366).
Today, Catholic sexual ethics will more likely be presented in a more sophisticated version. The new natural law school of Catholic ethics no longer puts the emphasis on procreation as the purpose of sex. It rather focuses on marriage, conceived as a basic but complex human good constituted by the two goods of friendship (or marital love) and procreation.
Most of the moral work is now done by the concept of a marital act, defined as the inseparable unity of these two goods. To be sure, the
Surely there is more to it: surely morality also includes conceptions of the human good, ideals of human flourishing. And each of the three views discussed that look beyond consent can be construed, and is best construed, as one such conception, one such ideal, relating specifically to human sexuality. What the view of sex as meant for procreation and marriage is telling us is that we will make most of what human sexuality has to offer, and be at our best as sexual beings, if we let the experience of sex evolve beyond mere pleasure into something larger, more lasting, more fulfilling: marriage and family. The views of sex advanced by Scruton and by radical feminists should be taken as addressing the same question: How to make the most of human sexuality, how to be at our best as sexual beings? For
Scruton, human sexuality is at its best, at its most human when it exhibits
‘individualizing intentionality’ of sexual desire that naturally evolves into intimacy and love. Radical feminists make the same claims for sex that is engaged in on equal terms and solely for its own sake, without any ulterior purpose. And these portrayals of human sex at its best surely have moral