kant

pre/extra marital sex

• Never treat people as means to an end but only an end in themselves 

• Sex involves using people bc what interests those having sex is not the other person but having sex -> is essentially objectification 

• ‘sexual love makes of the loved person an object of appetite’ 

• Persuit of sexual pleasure is only allowed when serving more valuable goals, such as marriage for companionship 

marriage

• Marriage has potential of men using wives merely for sexual gratification and to produce children 

• Kant believed in the autonomy of every living person and this included married women 

• However Kantian ethics would argue that there is perhaps a duty to preserve the human race through procreation 

homosexuality

• Kant argued that homosexuality was wrong (it was legal at the time in his native prussure) 

• Contends that homosexual acts are unnatural ‘crimes against nature’ that degrade human beings below the level of animals 

• engaging in homosexual acts would fail the test of duty we have in terms of the categorical imperative not to use ourselves or others as a means to an end, the end being mere sexual gratification or to degrade ourselves. 

• homosexuality fails to cross the barrier of universalisation as far as the first formulation of the categorical imperative is concerned. This is because if everyone were to become homosexual the population of the world would decline to zero. So for this reason too, Kant sees homosexuality as morally unacceptable 

counter to homosexuality

• However this is an unreasonable criticism, because of Kant’s lack of consistency. Kant is hypocritical, because if everyone was celibate (like Kant who never married, and catholic priests), the population would similarly decline, yet he does not criticise celibacy for the similar result. 

• Bentham points out that ‘if then merely out of regard to population it were right that [homosexuals] should be burnt alive, monks ought to be roasted a live by a slow fire