Sex, love, and friendship play an integral role in Immanuel Kant’s conception of human life. Against common prejudices, Kant provides substantial contributions to the philosophical discussion of these topics. This unique collection of essays sheds light on how the notions function in Kant’s philosophy, both individually and in conjunction with each other. The essays examine intertwined issues such as theory of sexuality, marriage (including same-sex marriage), morality and sexual objectification, love and autonomy, love of human beings, the conceptual structure of love, friendship, misanthropy, and the highest good. The contributors include internationally well-known experts in the field. They approach the topics diversely from historical, philosophical, critical, and interpretative perspectives. The collection will be an invaluable resource for Kant scholars and for anyone interested in affective social relations in the history of philosophy and beyond.

The joke is that all the prostitutes go on vacation when the philosophers come to town. The reason that the other conventioneers do it; philosophers just talk about it. And talk about sex and love, and friendship is what the contributors to this volume do! They talk and argue, split hairs and clarify, all trying to advance our understanding of this most interesting practice of the human species. Some of the best minds on three continents, from four nations, and eighteen of the United States discuss such topics as adultery, commitment, cross dressing, gender politics, date rape, family, friendship, friends as lovers, gayness, love, marital pluralism, marriage, prostitution, religiously motivated anti-queer sentiments, same sex marriage, seduction, and self-respect. Rather than preach, participants probe our attitudes and practices involving these issues with the aim of better understanding the broad range of sexual practices of our species. The result is a collection of stimulating essays that can enliven class discussions as well as provide guidance for the sexually perplexed. The work is accessible to readers from high school through college and beyond.

This collection joins together sixty essays on the philosophy of love and sex. Each was presented at a meeting of The Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love held between 1977 and 1992 and later revised for this edition. Topics addressed include ethical and political issues (AIDS, abortion, homosexual rights, and pornography), conceptual matters (the nature, essence, or definition of love, friendship, sexual desire, and perversion); the study of classical and historical figures (Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, and Kierkegaard); and issues in feminist theory (sexual objectification, the social construction of female sexuality, reproductive and marital arrangements). Authors include Jerome Shaffer, Sandra Harding, Michael Ruse, Richard Mohr, Russell Vannoy, Claudia Card, M.C. Dillon, Gene Fendt, Steven Emmanuel, T.F. Morris, Timo Airaksinen, and Sylvia Walsh. The editor, who is the author of Pornography (1986), The Structure of Love (1990), and Sexual Investigations (1996), has also contributed six pieces and an Introduction.

“This is an immensely useful resource for other scholars and philosophers wishing to understand Kant’s views on love.” – Rae Langton, University of Cambridge What did Immanuel Kant really think about love? In Kant on Love, Pärttyli Rinne provides the first systematic study of ‘love’ in the philosophy of Kant. Rinne argues that love is much more important to Kant than previously realised, and that understanding love is actually essential for Kantian ethical life.The study involves two interpretative main propositions. First, that love in Kant includes an underlying general division of love into love of benevolence and love of delight. Further, the study divides Kant’s concept of love into several aspects of love, such as self-love, sexual love (and love of beauty), love of God, love of neighbor and love in friendship. A chapter of the book is devoted to each of these aspects, beginning with the lowest forms of self-love as crude animality, and moving gradually upwards towards idealised ethical notions of love. One way or another, the major aspects relate to the general division of love.This analytical trajectory yields the second main proposition of the study: Together, the aspects of love reveal an ascent of love in Kant’s thought. Perhaps surprisingly, for Kant, love permeates human existence from the strongest impulses of nature to the highest ideals of morally deserved happiness.

This book defends the thesis that Kant’s normative ethics and his practical ethics of sex and marriage can be valuable resources for people engaged in the contemporary debate over same-sex marriage. It does so by first developing a reading of Kant’s normative ethics that explains the way in which Kant’s notions of human moral imperfection unsocial sociability inform his ethical thinking. The book then offers a systematic treatment of Kant’s views of sex and marriage, arguing that Kant’s views are more defensible than some of his critics have made them out to be. Drawing on Kant’s account of marriage and his conception of moral friendship, the book argues that Kant’s ethics can be used to develop a defense of same-sex marriage.

Helga Varden rethinks Kant's work on human nature to make space for sex, love, and gender within his moral account of freedom. She shows how Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves.

Sex, Love, and Gender is the first volume to present a comprehensive philosophical theory that brings together all of Kant's practical philosophy — found across his works on ethics, justice, anthropology, history, and religion — and provide a critique of emotionally healthy and morally permissible sexual, loving, gendered being. By rethinking Kant's work on human nature and making space for sex, love, and gender within his moral accounts of freedom, the book shows how, despite his austere and even anti-sex, cisist, sexist, and heterosexist reputation, Kant's writings on happiness and virtue (Part I) and right (Part II) in fact yield fertile philosophical ground on which we can explore specific contemporary issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, sexual or gendered identity, marriage, trade in sexual services, and sex- or gender-based oppression. Indeed, Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves. Structured on a thematic basis, with introductions to assist those new to Kant's philosophy, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone who cares about these issues and wants to make sense of them.