Fourteen THE ETHICS OF PLEASURE

Graciela Hierro

“Whoever controls your pleasure controls you.” —Lezek Kolakowski

1. Introduction

In this chapter I engage in a philosophical reflection on relevant aspects of morality currently accepted in Latin America. In the course of my reflection, I employ the perspective of gender based on a hedonistic idea of sexual ethics. This perspective is useful in orienting moral decisions made in pursuit of personal development. My reflection groups the most pleasurable erotic relationships together with all other relationships on the understanding that they contribute to social well-being. I begin by clarifying the gender perspective underlying my reflections. Next, I defend a theory of ethics, and a type of moral argumentation, a possible critique of morality. The morality I will critique is a version of a double sexual morality with regard to the issues of free love, divorce, homosexuality, contraception and other related issues. I am not setting forth my own moral view of these problems. Instead, I am presenting examples of critique, based on rational criteria that agents of morality may use. I conclude with a commentary on hedonistic ethics. The central principal underlying the ethics of pleasure is that pleasure is the purpose of life. I refer to three levels of sexual pleasure: sexuality, eroticism and love.

2. The Gender Perspective

“We are not born women—or men—society converts us into women—and men.” —Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Sex-gender systems are a combination of social practices, symbols, representations, norms, and values that societies draw up based on anatomical physiological sexual difference, and that give meaning to the satisfaction of sexual impulses, the reproduction of the human species, and in general, to all forms of social relationships between people. (De Barbieri, 1992) 198 GRACIELA HIERRO

The gender assigned to us at birth confers on us, as sex-determined beings, a place in the social hierarchy. This place justifies the subordination of the female gender to the male gender, in all known social organizations. Gender is socially constructed sex. The foundation of the gender perspective is the observation of differences between the two genders, which influence theory and practice, producing contradictions, which are evident to rational scrutiny.

3. Ethics

“Ethics is the easiest of all the sciences; a very natural thing, given that each person has the obligation to construct them for himself or herself, to extract for herself or himself, from the supreme principle that is rooted in her or his heart, the rule applicable to each case that occurs….” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics

Ethics constitutes the philosophical reflection on practiced morals. Ethics involves a rational process that analyzes the significance of concepts, and determines the validity of moral decisions. Ethics gives legitimacy to judgments based on the logic of moral reasoning. In essence, ethics is the study of morality, in the same way that psychology is the study of individual behavior and sociology is the study of human social or group conduct. Moral ethics or philosophy constitutes the science of the formation of moral conscience, the foundation of “the art of living.” People acquire a moral conscience the first time they experience the value of other people, remaining in the process of formation for the rest of their lives. Moral conscience questions which actions respect the value of people, and which actions diminish that value. The value of a person is her or his dignity. We say that someone is a person “of conscience” if he or she tries to act in a way that accords dignity to himself or herself, and to any other people affected by that person’s decisions. Ethical decisions are personal and non-transferable, and no one can escape developing her or his own system of ethics. This may happen with less or more moral conscience and intellectual dexterity, with the aim of personal development and social solidarity, as Schopenhauer affirms in the quote cited at the beginning of this section.

4. Good and Evil

In human experience, a basic sense exists that things are not the way we suppose them to be. Given that we have a moral conscience, we are able to reflect on what happens to us and also to imagine better life alternatives. In relation to the natural and social world, we are aware of our lacks and needs, and of what we do not have but would like to have. For example: we prefer