Readings
Texts
Reading Quiz Questions
There will be at least one quiz today, but it won't be drawn from the above readings per se. We return to our usual reading quizzes next time.
Synopsis
We picked up after Spring Break today by segueing into a discussion of promiscuity and considered two contributions to the literature, above.
First, we noted that both Halwani and Elliston struggle to define the very behavior to seek to evaluate. For example, spelling out promiscuity as Elliston is an invitation to clever counter-examples. Thus Elliston writes,
First, promiscuity demands copulation-its telos is sexual intercourse...
Second, repetition is essential-the pursuit of a new partner must recur...
Third, both partners must be adults...
Fourth, the couple cannot be directly related through marriage...
Finally and most decisively, promiscuity is noncommittal sex...
We're given a set of individually necessary, presumably jointly sufficient conditions on promiscuous sex, but (for example) one can imagine many scenarios in which we have promiscuous sex without, specifically, sexual intercourse. (To be sure, whether oral sex counts as sex continues, mysteriously enough, to haunt these discussions.) It may be that only the third condition is immune to criticism, except when we remember that the age of adulthood is defined differently in different cultures, and, like it or not, lots of teenagers engage in sexual activity. Yet nothing they do can, by Elliston's definition, count as promiscuity, which seems odd, to say the least.
I must confess that I was keen in the process of spelling out Elliston's conception of promiscuity to invite the class to participate in a critical reading of the text. Hopefully it was not a waste of time, although it did, to be sure, take up some time. I think it important to model and encourage the kind of careful and critical reading that is the hallmark of reading philosophy. Instead of being the passive reader carried along by the author, we seek to be active, engaged, and cautious readers the author must persistently work to convince. For this reason, reading philosophy is a slow affair. Sometimes I'll get stuck on a single paragraph, puzzled over a move the author has made and unsure whether to accept or reject it. Good philosophy invites that kind of engagement. It's why, for example, Plato's Symposium has been so successful: Plato invites us to take a seat at Agathon's house and, hearing the back-and-forth of the provocative speakers, begin to make our own contributions to understanding these fantastically important topics.
But I digress.
Elliston's strategy, of course, is to consider all the ways in which one might go about condemning promiscuity: It is contrary to western cultural norms; it violates the inseparability of sex between its purpose of procreation and its purpose of building the emotional and spiritual ties between a (married) couple, as the Catholic Church demands; it is a threat to monogamy, which is a superior arrangement; it necessarily involves lies, deception, and exploitation; and, it threatens emotional security and personal growth.
We didn't go through each of these points, but it is pretty clear how the response will have to go in each case. By unpacking each of these criticisms, of course, Elliston is also developing a richer account of the ways in which promiscuity may be pursued so as to avoid these pitfalls.
To be sure, Elliston well recognizes that a robust defense of promiscuity cannot rest on meeting objections. It must also articulate reasons why one might, should one so choose, to pursue promiscuous sex. That is, he's explained why it's not morally wrong, but why might it also be considered morally permissible?
We begin with these and other arguments next time.