Jessica Brown

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Flakne, April

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

This thesis looks at the question of sexual ethics and asks, “how do we have an ethical relationship?” After detailing issues and dissatisfactions with contemporary consent issues, the author proposes a shift in the conversation towards a relational dynamic theory incorporating the body through phenomenological virtue ethics. Recognition requires that we see another simultaneously as a being like and unlike us— as similarity and alterity in the unique being of another, as dynamic potentiality in relation to our own unique being. Reciprocity is an asymmetrical phenomena which must be content laden and considerate of fairness and justice in terms of what people need and what people can do in a relationship. Responsibility simultaneously addresses the responsibility we have to others when we encounter them as ontologically vulnerable beings; a responsibility which emerges out of our preceding abilities to be ethical. We are faced with these possibilities always, already. Care is integral to the process of actualizing personal and spiritual growth with another. The foundational virtues proposed (recognition, reciprocity, responsibility) cultivate the opening to and conditions of possibility for an intracorporeal shared existence among us, and the privileged virtue of care allows us to cross the threshold form the neutral, unharmful relationship to the ethical relationships we ought to aspire to.

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