I KANT believe he said that!

Kant’s authoritarian views on sexuality are essentially that sex involves the objectification of one by the other, and that this is immoral. This comes from the carnal lust that one feels for another, that removes that lust-object’s humanity, and renders them something akin to a blow-up doll. However, even Kant could see that sex is necessary for the continued existence of humanity so in order to alleviate some of the moral ‘wrongness’ of it all, he suggested that marriage act as a clause. In marrying someone you give yourself to that person in exchange for that person giving themselves to you, and in doing so become one. This should negate the disregard of one person’s humanity by the other (I guess it then becomes an objectification of your own humanity (in a sense), and that is, apparently, alright). My question, then, is why doesn’t something less formal than marriage (such as a pledge of love for one another) suffice in Kant’s book? Why must institutions recognition of a union be essential?

I don’t really have an answer in my head for my hypothetical question to Kant, but what I would like to point out is a startling comparison to what Foucault was talking about in his ‘A History of Sexuality’. Foucault writes about not a repression of sexuality but a proliferation of sexuality through an institution’s control and co-opting of sexuality. It seems as though Kant takes the morality out of the control of the couple, and instead puts it in the hands of an institution; thereby involving the institution in the sexual lives people. This allows the institution (let’s imply that the institutions involved in marriage are the government, and the whatever church is affiliated with the marriage, should it be a religious one) to set boundaries, and norms, that will affect certain aspects of the union. Will this then give the institution(s) allowance to change aspects of the marriage contract at a whim (not even cell phone companies are allowed to do this)? I’d think so.

In short, I believe that a less-formal commitment than marriage should suffice to overcome Kant’s moral bugbears of sexuality (if there are any at all). It could just as easily involve the combination of two persons into one, all the while keeping your sexuality in your hands, not in the hands of shadowy institutions.