LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP
presents
Veronique Munoz Darde
Unviersity of California, Berkeley and University College, London
Liberalism and Sexual Desire: The Case of Sex Work
Friday, April 6, 2018
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
In this talk I consider a dilemma raised for liberalism by the case of sex work. On the one hand, there is a problem for a common conception of a neutralist liberal response. A view which refuses to offer any objection to sex work, apart from contingent considerations relating to coercion and exploitation fails to acknowledge the special status of sex and the widespread reactions which most of us share, whether liberals or not, to sex work as something inherently shameful. On the other hand, there is equally a problem for the new wave of liberalism which seeks to reconcile fundamental liberal principles with a predominantly feminist critique of neutralism. This tradition typically focuses on commodification and objectification as reflecting the politically urgent wrongs associated with indifference towards markets in sexual favours. This strategy is liable to encourage imposing a rather coercive state structure on some of the weakest members of society. And, to the extent that such a view avoids positing an essential wrong in commodification or objectification, in appealing to various of the social consequences of permitting prostitution, it too loses sight of what is special about sex and the sex trade. Liberals who treasure moral neutrality fail to face up to the reality of our social reactions; liberals who take such responses seriously seem to recommend attitudes and potentially policies every bit as coercive as traditional conservative responses. I’ll suggest that we can avoid this dilemma by taking seriously the social inevitability of the shaming attitudes we all share, without looking to some moral basis which justifies such an attitude of shame. The key morals here are on the one hand a need to rethink liberal neutrality and on the other, to recognize that the claims of liberalism should lie closer to the details of social reality.
Veronique Munoz-Darde is Professor of Philosophy UCL and also teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research is principally in practical reasoning, ethics and political philosophy, as well as in eighteenth century political thought, particularly that of Rousseau and Hume. She has written on aggregation and numbers in practical reasoning; the transitivity of ‘better than’; the social significance of risk; the justification of taxation; the nature of regret and what it reveals about the role of value in practical reasoning; the nature of social goods such as universities and museums; and the nature and importance of the political ideal of equality. In some of her earlier work she pursued questions of justice of the family and the possible abolition of marriage and she has now returned to the cluster of problems which she labels ‘regulation of intimacy’.
A light lunch will be served.
To be added to the paper distribution list, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca. For further information, please contact Professor Larissa Katz (larissa.katz@utoronto.ca) and Professor Sophia Moreau (sr.moreau@utoronto.ca).
