by Jason Stotts
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.