Raja Halwani

: The paper argues that care ethics should be subsumed under virtue ethics by construing care as an important virtue. Doing so allows us to achieve two desirable goals. First, we preserve what is important about care ethics (for example, its insistence on particularity, partiality, emotional engagement, and the importance of care to our moral lives). Second, we avoid two important objections to care ethics, namely, that it neglects justice, and that it contains no mechanism by which care can be regulated so as not to be become morally corrupt.

Is integrity a virtue? There is a powerful argument that it is not because it would be a redundant virtue -call this the “redundancy objection.” I will, however, argue that there is a plausible conception of integrity as a virtue that meets the redundancy objection. In Section I, start by providing a plausible conception of moral integrity. I then provide, in Section II, a sketch of the virtues and the virtuous person, and explain the redundancy objection. In Section III, I offer a plausible conception of integrity as a virtue: integrity is the virtue that reviews and maintains the coherence between the virtuous person’s life and moral values. In Section IV I briefly discuss the relationship between integrity and contin- ent agents. I conclude in Section V with brief remarks about the importance of the virtue of integrity.

Abstract: This essay explores recent trends and major issues related to gay and lesbian philosophy in ethics (including issues concerning the morality of homosexuality, the natural function of sex, and outing and coming out); religion (covering past and present debates about the status of homosexuality and how biblical and qur'anic passages have been interpreted by both sides of the debate); the law (especially a discussion of the debates surrounding sodomy laws, same-sex marriage and its impact on transsexuals, and whether the law should be used to enforce morality); scientific research into the origins of homosexuality (including discussion of arguments against such research); and metaphysics (especially the question of whether homosexuality is socially constructed during particular times and in particular cultures, or whether sexual orientation is an essential trait cutting across times and cultures).

A common belief is that, among our sexual dispositions, sexual orientations are important and deep features of who someone is. This distinguishes them from other sexual dispositions—“mere” preferences—that are thought to be trivial in comparison. Is there a way to adequately account for this distinction? What is a plausible explanation for the belief that sexual orientation is a deep and important feature of who one is? This paper defends one necessary condition for a sexual disposition to be an orientation, the well-being condition: if a sexual disposition is an orientation, then the inability to act on it lowers one’s well-being by rendering one’s life sexually deprived. The paper argues that the well-being condition better explains than other criteria the belief that orientations are important features of who one is. The paper concludes by tracing the implications of this view to the common understanding of sexual orientation.

The paper argues that the two dominant approaches towards the moral issues surrounding outing are too weak to handle the latter’s complexity and would benefit from being made part of a broader and richer framework, namely, that of virtue ethics. One dominant approach begins by arguing that people do not have the right to privacy in matters of sexual orientation (not behaviour), and so outing gay people does not violate such a right. It con- tinues by arguing that living a dignified life requires the agent to refuse to keep secret the gay sexual orientation of others. The second dominant approach, opposed to the first, argues that gay people have a right to the privacy of sexual orientation, and so outing them is prima facie wrong. Both approaches, the paper argues, are too weak to handle the complexity of outing: the first suffers from emphasizing only one subset of the virtues (dignity, pride, and so on), while the second is too weak to explain fully why in some cases outing is permissible. Virtue ethics is a much richer framework from which to address the complexity of outing

How is love different from lust or infatuation? Do love and marriage really go together “like a horse and carriage”? Does sex have any necessary connection to either? And how important are love, sex, and marriage to a well-lived life? In this lively, lucid, and comprehensive textbook, Raja Halwani pursues the philosophical questions inherent in these three important aspects of human relationships, exploring the nature, uses, and ethics of romantic love, sexuality, and marriage. The book is structured in three parts: _Love_ begins by examining how romantic love differs from other types of love, such as friendship and parental love. It asks which properties of love are essential, whether people have a choice in whom they love, and whether lovers have moral obligations to one another that differ from those they owe to others _Sex_ demonstrates the difficulty in defining sex and the sexual, and examines what constitutes good and bad sex in terms of pleasure, 'naturalness', and moral permissibility. It offers theoretical and applied ethical approaches to a wide range of sexual phenomena _Marriage_ traces the history of the institution, and describes the various forms in which marriage exists and the reasons why people marry. It also surveys accounts of why people should or should not marry, and introduces the main arguments for and against gay marriage. Features include: suggestions for further reading online eResource site with dowloadable discussion questions a clear, jargon-free writing style.

This book's thirty essays explore philosophically the nature and morality of sexual perversion, cybersex, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, promiscuity, pedophilia, date rape, sexual objectification, teacher-student relationships, pornography, and prostitution. Authors include Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Alan Goldman, John Finnis, Sallie Tisdale, Robin West, Alan Wertheimer, John Corvino, Cheshire Calhoun, Jerome Neu, and Alan Soble, among others. A valuable resource for sex researchers as well as undergraduate courses in the philosophy of sex

This paper provides an account of the Aristotelian virtue of temperance in regards to food, an account that revolves around the idea of enjoying the right objects and not enjoying the wrong ones. In doing so, the paper distinguishes between two meanings of “taking pleasure in something,” one that refers to the idea of the activity and one to the experience of the activity. The paper then connects this distinction to the temperate person’s attitude towards enjoying the right things and to hitting the mean by enjoying the right object, at the right time, and so on. Throughout, the paper uses eating meat as a case in point, to both illustrate and inform the discussion. In the penultimate section, the paper argues that temperance admits of various conceptions depending on what is right and wrong in regards to eating meat. The paper concludes by responding to three objections.

abstract The paper, using Spielberg's Munich as a test case, argues that the theory of ethicism – the view that a work of art's moral point of view affects the work's overall aesthetic evaluation – has serious restricted applicability owing to a number of reasons. Ethicism does not apply to works of art (1) that have no moral content; (2) that do have moral content but whose prescribed responses are non-moral; (3) whose prescribed moral responses do not ask the audience to accept or reject the moral claim but merely to contemplate or entertain it; (4) whose prescribed moral responses assert moral claims that are indeterminate; and (5) whose prescribed moral responses are embodied in equally plausible or true but incompatible interpretations.

The book address three central areas of our life—care, love, and sex—from the perspective of virtue ethics. The first chapter on care argues that care should be considered a virtue and embedded within virtue ethics. The second chapter on love argues that romantic love is not a virtue as other philosophers have claimed, but that the virtues enable its best forms. And the third chapter on sex investigates Aristotelian temperance, and it argues that contrary to conservative views of the virtue of temperance, there is a way to conceive of temperance that allows for sexual practices (e.g., promiscuity and casual sex) that are not confined to relationships or marriages.

Philosophers have recently expressed interest in the question as to whether there is a right to sex, a right whose justification is motivated by the existence of sexually excluded people—people who suffer from involuntary long-term sexual deprivation (owing, say, to a chronic medical condition). This paper, after offering preliminary remarks about what a right to sex and its objects might be and who might have this right, surveys seven justifications for the right: linkage arguments, need, well-being, a minimally decent life, sexual activity being a basic good, injustice, and relationships. The paper argues that a right to sex does not likely exist because none of the justifications is convincing. The paper then argues that despite the lack of justification, and because sexual exclusion is a problem worthy of attention, people’s sexual needs can be addressed through the lens of goals instead of rights. This not only takes sexual exclusion seriously enough, it also avoids the crucial problems associated with rights-talk, especially that of sexual coercion.

The paper argues that individual Palestinians have a right of return to historic Palestine in virtue of being members of the Palestinian people that continues to have occupancy rights in historic Palestine. More specifically, the paper argues that the Palestinians were, when Israel was founded, a people with occupancy rights to their lands, that they continue to be a people to this day, and that their occupancy right has not been alienated, forfeited, or prescripted. The paper then argues that individual Palestinians have the right of occupancy in virtue of being members of the Palestinian people. Because the right has been blocked by Israel since 1948, the right of return is the right of individual Palestinians to be allowed to return to their homeland and exercise their occupancy rights there.

The book is a collection of the presentations of the Society for Lesbian and Gay Philosophy from 1998 to 2008. The essays are organized historically, starting in 1998. Their topics cover virtually every philosophical field, and such that each is connected to gay and lesbian studies. Topics include how we are to understand sexual orientation, whether same-sex leads to polygamy, teaching gay studies to undergraduates, promiscuity and virtue, the "war on terror" and gay oppression, the rationality of coming out, the ethics of outing, connections between being gay and being happy, and last, but not least, dignity and being gay.

The paper addresses the issue of whether there is something morally defective with someone who sexually prefers members of a particular race or ethnic group (or someone who does not sexually desire or prefer members of a particular race or ethnic group). People with such “racial desires” are often viewed as racists, but virtually no sustained arguments have been given in support of this view. The paper reconstructs three possible arguments—those based in discrimination, exclusion, and stereotypes—that might support the charge of racism. It argues that none is convincing. It further argues that only in some cases are people with racial desires racist, but that in those cases their racism is not because of their sexual desires.