Excerpt from The End of Sexual Virtue

Over the next two years I will be working on a book project with the current working title The End of Sexual Virtue. Shared here is a small portion. I welcome dialogue:

The care and cultivation of virtue is fundamentally about living as a people who desire to be excellent as creatures who, as rational creatures, have the power to shape and reshape our lives. Unlike animals, many of which simply follow instincts and appetites, we have the power to reflect on our capacities and powers, as well as our beliefs and appetites. Indeed, we can consider how we might (where it is in the control of reason) make ourselves better. Appetites and desires of hunger and thirst, fight and flight, all can be refined and disposed towards fine (or excellent) ends that actually contribute to our happiness and flourishing as human beings. Sexual desire, activity, and relationships also come under the perfecting power of virtue. what we need, therefore, is a justifiable and defensible 'end' of sexual sexual virtue, towards which we practice and encourage other moral agents in virtue as well.

The sexual dimesnions of human life are individual, relational, and communal. Whether they intersect or collide, the sexual dimensions of human existence elicit a wide variety of strong reactions from each one of us: excitment and embarassment, joy and anger, liberation and oppression, acceptance and suspciion; confidence and shame. Sex and sexuality are deeply personal, and thus rightly regarded by many persons as aspects of human life to be carefully cultivated. For too many, however, a "careful" approcation to sex and sexuality defaults into lack of conversation and education on the sexual dimeniosns of human life. Such deficiency resutls in some people fearing any discussion of sex or sexuality whatsoever. In others, there is a different kind of deficiency, one that defaults into thoughtless hedonism restuling in sexual relationships without care. still more, there are a whole host of people who simply feel ill-prepared to talk about sexuality--whether single or coupled, gay or straight, celibate or sexually active.

If sexual virtue concerns the proper enjoyment of sexual pleasure and the cultivation of excellence in our sexual desires, relationships, and activities, then to engage in sexual ethics via an ethic of virtua is one that invites all persons to consider sex and sexuality in terms of what these mean to us as human persons. The invitation to pursue right ends of sexual virtue is to shine light on human sexuality and our concepts of sexual morality so as to encourage all people to be excellent and unashamed of this awesome human capacity. Where we disagree on the proper ends of sexual desire and activity, and thus the proper cultivation of sexual virtue, the emphasis on virtue itself ought to remind us that where we disagree we nevertheless respect and care for human sexuality as a conduit by which moral character is expressed and known.