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Articles
The discarded Lemon: Kant, prostitution and respect for persons
Timothy J. Madigan thinks Kant’s duty-based ethics could approve of prostitution.
‘… to allow one’s person for profit to be used by another for the satisfaction of sexual desire, to make of oneself an Object of demand, is to dispose over oneself as over a thing and to make of oneself a thing on which another satisfies his appetite, just as he satisfies his hunger upon a steak. But since the inclination is directed towards one’s sex and not towards one’s humanity, it is clear that one thus partially sacrifices one’s humanity and thereby runs a moral risk. Human beings are, therefore, not entitled to offer themselves, for profit, as things for the use of others in the satisfaction of their sexual propensities.’ Immanuel Kant1
It would be hard to find a more complete condemnation of prostitution than the above quotation from the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). For him, prostitution was the ultimate example of treating a human being as merely a means to an end, and was despicable because it thereby placed a human being on the same footing as an animal.
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