Kant and Sexual Perversion

Abstract

In the first part (the "Doctrine of Right," the Rechtslehre) of his late, post-critical Metaphysics of Morals (1797), which part is devoted to the Law, Immanuel Kant tells us about a crime that is "deserving of death, with regard to which it still remains doubtful whether legislation is also authorized to impose the death penalty." This crime is "a mother's murder of her child." 1 But Kant is not concerned with a Susan Smith, who drowned in an automobile submerged in a lake her properly, legally, conceived children. That it is "doubtful" that the law should be brought to bear against infanticide is reserved by Kant for a special case: Legislation cannot remove the disgrace of an illegitimate birth.. .. A child that comes into the world apart from marriage is born outside the law. .. and therefore outside the protection of the law. It has, as it were, stolen into the commonwealth (like contraband merchandise), so that the commonwealth can ignore its existence (since it was not right that it should have come to exist this way), and can therefore also ignore its annihilation. 2 The old Kant is cruel, heartless about the plight of the illegitimate child, which he likens to a stash of marijuana. This is not a humanist Kant, but a callous, prejudiced kisöreg. 3 The slightly younger Kant is no more compassionate. In his pre-critical Lectures on Ethics (1775-81; the Vorlesung), he expressed this piece of brutal misogyny: No matter what torments I have to suffer, I can live morally. I must suffer them all, including the torments of death, rather than commit a disgraceful action. The moment I can no longer live in honour but become unworthy of life by such an action, I can no longer live

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