Kathleen Abouzeide
Julia Bruneau
Jackie Faugno
Iesha Stroud
Iesha Stroud
Casual flings shouldn’t take place because,
from a Kantian standpoint, a casual fling would undermine your own and the
partner’s rationality and autonomy. Therefore, disclosure is not necessary in
casual flings because all casual flings are immoral. In other words, if you do
not intend to be with said person then don’t get involved. Kant’s claim that
The Moral Law is universal and implies that morality applies to all people in
the same way at all the time. It doesn’t change due to our whims or
inclinations. Consequently, a lack of sexual attention or increased libido is
not reason enough have a casual fling and compromise another’s morality.
Committed or not, Kant believes
that deception undermines another person’s rationality, therefore things like
disclosing age are a must. If you were to keep something like age a secret,
regardless if you are older or younger, the outcome could be detrimental. For
example, if you are older and pretend to be younger, you could later be
convicted of statutory rape and you, yourself, could be the victim of a
statutory crime if you deceive your partner into believing you are older than
you appear. However according to Kant, the intention behind an action is what
determines whether it is ethical, not the consequences of the action. So, the
only reason you would lie about your age is because you believe that the false
age is more attractive to your potential partner. The only motivation is to
make yourself more appealing, all in all, deceiving the other person and
violating the person’s rationality.
It is not however, necessary to
disclose every detail of past relationships no matter how much you are
pressured. Kant believes that morality sometimes requires us to act contrary to
the majority of the people. So, if your partner and his or her family continue
to ask for the minute specifics of your former relationship, it is seen as
moral to keep them to yourself. You may be sparing your partner’s feelings and
decreasing the potential anxiety they would feel if they could compare their
current relationship with your previous ones.
I totally agreed with your point about someone lying about their age in a relationship. It undermines the partners rationality and autonomy. In addition, you could be creating a serious legal problem for your partner and possibly yourself. At the end you mentioned that not telling your partner everything about past relationships is acceptable. While I do agree with this statement I also think that it is clearly up to the individual and their feelings towards their partner. We talked about in class what to tell and when we can tell but, it really boils down to the individual and their relationship with the person they are currently seeing.
ReplyDeleteUsing Kantian ethics to support your ideas on sexual morality was definitely the way to go. Your arguments were completely in sync and the example you used where a person might lie about their age to seem younger or older definitely shows how people can undermine their own and other peoples rationality and autonomy and therefore is wrong. I concur.
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