Join us for the inaugural session of SPSL’s Vritual Seminar, Thursday August 25 at 1pm EST. Zoom link here.

“In this talk–“Playful Sex: A Kantian Account”–I develop ideas from my Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Account regarding the many ways in which we can engage sexuality playfully. The talk starts from an analogy I draw in Sex, Love, and Gender between playing squash and having sex. I then introduce some basic, philosophical ideas of Kant’s that we can use to better understand how we develop, transform, and integrate into a dynamic sexual, erotic whole what Kant calls our “vital forces” and our “animality,” “humanity,” and “personality” through aesthetic-teleological, associative, and conceptual means. Rather than ending up with the alienating and strangely moralizing conception of sexuality typically attributed to Kant and the Kantians, the resulting account is very useful as we try to get into view how playfulness can be productively and constructively engaged as we strive to flourish sexually.”