Can Democrats be pro-life in 2020?

Al Gore has been in the news lately. He recently endorsed Joe Biden for President and continues to advocate for action on climate change. People on social media are ruefully speculating about how different things would be if Gore had won in 2000.

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Something nobody on the left wants to acknowledge is that Gore's approach to abortion contributed to his defeat. Yes, Florida was stolen, but he also lost his home state of Tennessee, which would have put him over the top had he won it, even with the loss of Florida. Why did he lose Tennessee? Not because a few people voted for Nader. It may well have been because he not only shifted his position on abortion from one that was borderline pro-life to one that was fully pro-choice, but did so in a way that alienated many of those who had previously voted for him and/or Bill Clinton. Instead of Bill's conciliatory "safe, legal, and rare", which at least acknowledged that this was a moral issue to many people, Gore adopted the tone and language of pro-choice activists, dropped his previous opposition to federal funding for abortions, and pretended that he had always been unequivocally pro-choice.

Gore wasn't the only one. Some heartland politicians like Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich switched their positions on abortion and were defeated anyway. Others like Bob Casey, Sr. didn't switch but were silenced by the Democratic Party elite, which may have led some of their supporters to vote for Republicans for other offices, including the presidency.

John Kerry’s loss in 2004 is also instructive. There are similarities between Biden and Kerry that should worry Democrats. Like Kerry, few voters are particularly enthusiastic about Biden, and the race is more about why the incumbent is bad than why the challenger is good. Also like Kerry, Biden is a pro-choice Catholic. Catholics in the US come in all political persuasions, but nothing riles up conservative Catholics more than pro-choice Catholic politicians. Gay marriage was another cultural issue that drove up conservative turnout in 2004. COVID-19 may render cultural issues and the lack of enthusiasm for Biden moot in 2020, or it may not -- a lot can happen between now and November.

If the Democrats lose the swing voters, they lose the election. If progressives take the bait and once again allow the GOP to frame the election in terms of culture-war issues, Democrats will lose the swing voters. Biden has already backed away from his previous support of the Hyde amendment, which is more than he should have had to do. With all due respect to Bernie Sanders and all that he has achieved, he was wrong to suggest that Democrats can't be pro-life. Some are in Louisiana and other places, and the Democrats can't afford to lose them.

Instead of trying to chase pro-life voters and elected officials out of the party, Democrats need to find common ground, emphasize that progressive policies will in fact lead to fewer abortions, and point out that outlawing abortion will not make it stop if the other conditions that drive women to it are still present. The Democratic Party also needs to make sure that pro-life Democrats go to the polls and vote for downballot Democrats -- including pro-life Democratic candidates -- even if some of them might cast no vote for president rather than vote for a pro-choice nominee.

The 2020 election ought to be about two things: (1) saving the republic from oligarchic degeneration, corruption, and incompetence, and (2) saving the planet from catastrophic climate change. The culture wars will have to wait. 

Comparison of the Aristotelean and Liberal Traditions

Based on some feedback I’ve received, I see that I need to say more about the differences between the Aristotelean and Liberal traditions. Here is a section of my doctoral dissertation (2005) that outlines what I see as the most important differences. 

2.6 Comparison of the Aristotelean and Liberal Traditions 

The Aristotelean tradition contrasts with Liberalism on a number of points:

Relation of desire to morality

This is perhaps the most important contrast, yet it can be summed up in very few words: Aristotle’s value theory is based on what people should want; Liberal value theory is based on what people do want.

The nature of the individual 

Both Liberalism and Aristotle posit the individual as a relatively independent entity, and not a mere social construct, as postmodernism claims. But Aristotle’s position is a moderate individualism, while the Liberal position takes individualism to an atomistic extreme. From Hobbes, for whom the “state of nature” is a “war of each against all”, to John Rawls, who bases his “veil of ignorance” thought experiment on the imagined responses of individuals who are completely disconnected from any particular time, place, culture, physical characteristics, or set of human relationships * [...], the individual-as-monad has been a constant metaphysical assumption of Liberalism. Aristotle recognizes that, while the individual is metaphysically independent of his or her culture in some sense (i.e., the individual subsists), a human existence is possible only in the context of a community. An individual who can live utterly separated from this human context is for practical purposes “a beast or a god” (1253a 20), and our “intuitions” about what such an entity would do when confronted with the choice Rawls proposes are of dubious evidential value.

Spirituality and religion

Since the Enlightenment, scientism has become a persistent current in Western thought. By scientism (or naturalism if one prefers) I mean the position that the methods of the natural sciences are the only rational basis for belief, that entities that can be studied using such methods are the only ones that exist, and that questions that cannot be answered using the methods of the natural sciences are pseudo-questions. Most of the major Liberal thinkers have been scientistic to some degree, while Aristotle clearly accepts a transcendent reality in the form of the First Mover. 

There is, however, an important difference between Aristotle’s attitude toward religion and that of certain republican thinkers. Aristotle recognizes that “there are other things much more divine in their nature even than man” (1141a 35), and that the contemplation of such things is the highest form of theōria, which a well-run state should make possible for its citizens [...] religious practice is one of the “purposes of life” that states are formed to fulfill. But in the republican tradition, there is a tendency to idolize the state. [...] Machiavelli presents civic virtue as being in opposition to Christian virtue (and not simply in opposition to the degenerate practices of the religious authorities of his day). James Harrington, on the other hand, gives the state a Christian eschatological character, making the republic an earthly realization of the kingdom of heaven (cf. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment). Either way, religious devotion is effectively subordinated to devotion to the state. In light of the experiences of the 20th century, we must be wary of this kind of nationalistic appropriation of religion, for nationalism has tended to beget fascism. [...]

Applied knowledge 

Concerning the application of knowledge to the concrete problems that people face in their day-to-day existence, Aristotle distinguishes between those that require phronēsis and those that require technē. Aristotle’s teacher Plato was fond of drawing an analogy between politics and crafts such as medicine, particularly in his critiques of democracy--just as one would not decide on a medical treatment by submitting the question to a vote of unskilled persons, neither should one do so for political decisions. Plato suggests that politics is a technē like any other (cf. Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground; Winner, The Whale and the Reactor, ch. 3). Aristotle, however, recognizes the limits of this analogy. The problems confronting statesmen are more complex and less well-defined than those facing craftsmen and require a different kind of intelligence.

Liberals have come to accept a technicism that outdoes Plato in terms of the level of faith it places in experts. Lacking any concept of human telos to guide their moral theories, Liberals have made “desire-satisfaction” the criterion of rightness, science the source of all truth, and instrumental reason the whole of rationality. The result is that efficiency has become a goal in itself, without regard to to the fact that it is better to pursue a good end inefficiently than pursue a bad end efficiently (cf. Dunne; MacIntyre, After Virtue). [...]

Nature, purpose, and value of human association 

The contrast here is multiple. Firstly, there is the contrast between a compact for shared goals (Aristotle) and a contract for separate goals (Liberalism). Secondly, for Aristotle, the most important purpose of government is to enable its citizens to achieve eudaimonia; for Liberals, the most important purpose of government is to preserve property (these different views of government come with corresponding commitments to positive freedom and negative freedom, respectively [...] ). Thirdly, there is the contrast between Aristotle’s recognition of levels of association between the individual and the state which are not reducible to either (especially the family and the household; Aristotle also briefly mentions the village), and the Liberal view which reduces all such associations to aspects of the contract between individuals. Fourthly, Aristotle views political association as intrinsically valuable, while Liberals view it as merely instrumentally valuable.


The set of characteristics that I here ascribe to Liberalism represent a set of Wittgensteinian “family resemblances” rather than a strict definition of Liberalism. I base these generalizations about Liberalism on the views of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Berlin, and Rawls, as expressed in their writings, and on the views of contemporary neoliberals, as expressed in the policies they have promoted during the past thirty years. This is a disparate group, and no single thinker exemplifies all of the above attributes. My purpose in this section is neither to present a comprehensive survey of Liberalism, nor to discern its essence; the extent to which the above currents of thought may be central or merely peripheral to Liberalism is not important. What is important is the way these currents of thought have affected American society, and the way the Aristotelean tradition challenges them. 



 * Rawls asks the reader to imagine a situation in which a person can choose what sort of society to be born into, yet a “veil of ignorance” prevents the person from knowing what specific position he or she will occupy in that society (what sex, race, wealth, abilities, disabilities, etc.). Under these circumstances, Rawls argues, rationality would dictate that the person choose a society that does not oppress people based on these characteristics, lest the person find him/herself born into one of the oppressed groups. Rawls uses this thought experiment to argue that justice is based upon rationality. Rawls presented this idea in A Theory of Justice (1971) and defended it over a period of thirty years, most recently in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001).

Neutrality, Pluralism, and Sex Education

Here is another of my conference talks that I am recycling into a blog post. This one I gave at the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry in 2011. I am moved to post this for two reasons. First, I think my response to Isaiah Berlin in the middle section was not bad, if I say so myself. In fact, that's where the current name for this blog comes from. Second, I am disturbed to find that "integralism" is being taken seriously here in the US. I expect to write about integralism at some point, but for now all I will say is that this piece offers a way to address some of the concerns about the liberal order that motivate integralism without taking the reactionary sectarian approach favored by integralists. I have tried to show that republican institutions can promote a particular vision of objective morality without discarding pluralism, using sex education as a test case.  

Disclaimer: I have never taught sex education. 

Neutrality, Pluralism, and Sex Education 

By M. D. Robertson (2011)

I. Pluralism without neutrality

Liberals claim that government must be neutral on certain fundamental questions; to do otherwise would be to impose values on citizens, which would be a form of domination. Critics of liberalism such as Alasdair MacIntyre have convincingly argued that such neutrality is impossible. Government will always favor certain ways of life and segments of society over others, de facto if not officially. Liberals have responded that the ideal of official neutrality can still be approximated in reasonable ways, and that the alternative would be worse. For the alternative to nominal official neutrality would be to explicitly enshrine some set of values as the official values of the state, and this would be antithetical to pluralism.

I would like examine the supposed connection between official neutrality and pluralism in general and also within a specific context: sex education in American public schools. I will argue that it is possible for the state to promote the good life as Aristotle conceived it without suppressing other conceptions of the good life, and analogously, it is possible to teach children eudaimonistic values concerning the responsible exercise of their sexuality without coercively suppressing other conceptions of sexual morality. Of the three concepts in the title of this paper, I am most concerned with pluralism. Neutrality is of less concern because it is impossible, and as for sex education, people will figure out the facts of life one way or another. But pluralism is a real accomplishment, one that not all societies achieve and one that conceivably could be lost.

I will begin by suggesting an alternative to the so-called neutrality favored by liberal thinkers, one in which the state would recognize a preferred way of life and seek to make it attainable by all citizens. In pursuit of that end, the state would concern itself with the character of its citizens and would play an active role in the formation of that character. This might sound like perfectionism to some. I prefer to think in terms of eudaimonism, or more precisely, what I shall call eudaimonistic republicanism. A eudaimonistic republic would be a state that enables its citizens to realize their human potential as fully as possible (that is, achieve eudaimonia) within a framework of republican political institutions. The three most important conceptual components of eudaimonia as explicated by Aristotle are the contemplative life (theōria), virtue (aretē), and friendship or love (philia). I trust that Aristotleʼs teachings on virtue are sufficiently well known, but the relationship between the contemplative life and virtue has been a subject of interpretive controversy (Knight, 2007, 15-16), while the importance of friendship to Aristotleʼs ethics has probably been under-appreciated; hence some exposition is in order before I address the issue of pluralism.

By contemplation, Aristotle seems to have mainly intended the study of nature, “first philosophy”, and mathematics (cf. McKeon 1947). This might seem to be too narrow a basis for the good life. But he also offers grounds for viewing it more broadly, or as a matter of degree. In Poetics, Aristotle seems to suggest (a) that contemplation is not only for philosophers, (b) that activities partake of contemplation to a greater or lesser degree, so that while physical, metaphysical, and mathematical inquiries are the most contemplative, other pursuits can also be contemplative to some extent, (c) that aesthetic enjoyment partakes of contemplation, and (d) that any activity that involves learning also partakes of contemplation, especially insofar as it leads to a knowledge of universals. [1]

The key to contemplation is wonder. The exercise of this universal human capacity for wonder is the most fundamental form of contemplation [2].

But eudaimonia is not simply contemplation, it is the contemplative life. This way of life also requires friendship and virtue. Virtue, contemplation, and friendship are interdependent. Virtue enables friendship insofar as perfect friendship depends on the virtues of the friends, and even lesser forms of friendship (those based on pleasure or utility) must exhibit a minimal degree of justice in order for the friendship to fulfill its purpose. Virtue enables contemplation insofar as virtues are the means to the contemplative life--the intellectual virtues make one able to see the value of contemplation and do it, and the moral virtues are necessary for the constructive interpersonal relationships that make such a life feasible. Contemplation is the end or telos towards which virtues are the means, without which there would be no basis for preferring any given set of dispositions over any other. Friendship makes contemplation as a way of life possible, for human beings are physically, emotionally, and intellectually interdependent, and inquiry is a collaborative enterprise.

To fully understand how virtue, friendship, and contemplation interact to constitute eudaimonia, one must appreciate Aristotleʼs conception of what we are. Aristotle was not a dualist in the sense that Descartes was, but nevertheless Aristotle sees human beings as having a dual nature: we are earthbound, temporal, and mortal, yet we also have a spark of something divine, eternal, and immortal in us. This spark gives us the potential that is actualized through contemplation. But nevertheless Aristotle does not disregard the rest of our nature. Eudaimonia not only realizes our divine potential but also realizes our earthly potential. Thus the contemplative life for Aristotle is not the life of a cartoon guru on the mountaintop thinking deep thoughts in solitude, but rather one in which contemplation is simply the most important part of a balanced life that includes constructive interpersonal and political engagement and fulfillment of social obligations.

This brings us to republicanism. Here again I shall look primarily to the Aristotelian tradition and especially Aristotle himself, rather than the republicanism of Machiavelli or other offshoots.

For Aristotle, there is no separation between ethics and politics; both are aspects of the same subject matter, namely practical philosophy. Having stated in his ethics what constitutes the highest good for human beings, i.e., eudaimonia, Aristotle posits this as the most important purpose of the state and the ultimate basis of political association. [3]

Although Aristotle believes the ideal form of government to be one in which one or a few individuals of outstanding virtue and ability exercise power on behalf of the entire community, he recognizes that that may not be achievable under the actual conditions that a state is faced with. In many cases, a majoritarian constitutional government or republic is the best that a community can realistically hope for. Aristotle is optimistic about the ability of “the many” to arrive at the correct course of action through deliberation [4], and although Aristotle does not believe that “the many” should hold the magistracies of the state, he does believe that the magistrates should be accountable to them. “The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook.”

Aristotle also discusses citizenship and civic virtue. Aristotleʼs account of virtue in his ethical treatises concerns the virtue of a person qua human being, but human virtue is not necessarily the same as civic virtue, i.e., the virtue of a person qua citizen. A person can be a good citizen without being a good person, and presumably vice versa. The virtue of a human being is the same for all, but the civic virtue of a citizen is relative to the constitution of the state to which that citizen belongs. Behavior that makes one a good citizen of a democracy might make one a bad citizen of an oligarchy [5]. Governments must therefore take an interest in the character of their citizens.

Aristotle recognizes that in practice a republican constitution tends to be a compromise between oligarchic and democratic factions. To maintain the stability of this compromise and avoid degenerating into plutocracy, mob rule, or civil strife, the middle class must predominate in a republic and civic virtue must be inculcated in the citizens. Aristotle recognizes the household as another form of community, one that is essential to the larger community of the state. The household is a necessary intermediate organizational step between the individual and the state. The state cannot take over the functions of the household, and the state cannot fulfill its functions if the households that compose it do not fulfill theirs. Aristotle is not completely clear about the respective roles of the state and of the household in the education of children, but he clearly believes that that education is not simply a matter of private concern (Politics, 1179b,
1180a-b, 1337a 20).

Aristotleʼs household is a natural community with affective, procreative, and economic dimensions. In Aristotleʼs Greece the household was not just a family but also a productive unit. It might be useful to think of the Aristotelian household as combining the modern concepts of the family and the firm.

The Aristotelian and republican tradition of integrated practical philosophy contrasts with liberal ethical and political theories on a number of points, including the relation of desire to morality, the value and purpose of political association, and the nature of the individual and the community. These theoretical differences entail differences of policy. Here are two examples: first, a eudaimonistic administration would direct greater aggregate wealth toward education, research, and the arts. Second, qua republic, it would devote resources toward the cultivation of civic virtue and the maintenance of a predominant middle class. In a country like the US, in which the neoliberal policies of the past 30 years have distorted the distribution of wealth in favor of a small economic elite, both of these policy goals might require significant redistribution of wealth.

II. Reconciling Eudaimonism with Pluralism

I turn now to the question of whether eudaimonism is compatible with pluralism. Aristotleʼs conception of the life of contemplation as human telos and of genuine forms of government being those that promote this way of life is at odds with the currently predominant liberal view that “questions of ultimate concern” should be left to individuals to decide for themselves, and that governments should not endorse particular answers to these questions. Such an endorsement, liberals say, would not be compatible with pluralism, which they take to be fundamental to democratic government as we understand it.

Isaiah Berlin states this position in “Two Conceptions of Liberty”. The eponymous “two conceptions” are, firstly, “negative freedom”, i.e., freedom from coercion and interference, and “positive freedom”, i.e., freedom to be oneʼs own master, make the best of oneself, and achieve self-realization. Berlin acknowledges that both of these concepts may be manipulated, but he argues that, historically, positive freedom has proven to be more dangerous. The notion of self-mastery has become connected with the notion of the “true” self, and that philosophies that speak of freeing the “true” self from ignorance , irrationality, “lower” nature, etc. (such as those of Plato, Hegel, and Fichte), have been used to justify coercively suppressing the desires that people actually express. The “true” self has also been associated with extra-personal entities such as a tribe, a race, a Church, a State, a nation, or a class, in the name of which mere individual persons may be oppressed or sacrificed.

Berlin argues that the positive values that people seek, such as liberty, justice, and equality, are not all compatible, and that the search for a final answer that reconciles these competing values has led to enormous human suffering, for those who believed that they had found such a final answer have used it to justify historyʼs greatest crimes against humanity. Pluralism, for Berlin, means acknowledging that no such final answer is possible. Individuals will have to decide for themselves how to balance conflicting and irreconcilable values. The role of the government is to guarantee the “negative liberty” that allows individuals to seek their own particular answers; government must not promote any answer above others.

In reply, I say that none of this has any force against Aristotleʼs eudaimonism.

Yes, values conflict; that is why prudence (phronēsis) is the supreme practical virtue. The fact that values conflict does not mean that there is no right answer, or no best answer in a particular situation, to the question of which values should take precedence and to what extent. When circumstances force a tradeoff between, say, liberty and equality, prudence allows one to assign the proper priority and weight to each.

Berlin contrasts pluralism as he defines it with a monism that asserts that there is a best answer to the question of how we should live, and accuses the proponents of the latter of suppressing dissent. If one is convinced that one has the answer, Berlin reasons, then one will believe oneself justified in suppressing other answers, since these other answers cannot be correct.

While examples of this mindset are easy enough to find in history, there is no logical connection between the belief that one has the right answer and the belief that others should be coerced to accept it. Freedom of conscience and pluralism are two different things. The oppression that Berlin points to is a matter of content, not form. Oppression does not necessarily result from the condition of the state formally favoring a particular way of life; it results from the content of the way of life that is favored or the methods used to enact that favoritism.

Moreover, if one accepts that the life of contemplation is the best life for human beings, one will value freedom of conscience all the more. The life of contemplation is a life devoted to the collaborative search for truth and meaning. This can only be successful in an atmosphere of free inquiry and discussion.

Berlinʼs pluralism is strictly a matter of principle, not of practice. In practice, in every society, one way of life (broadly defined, perhaps) is favored over others. In postindustrial America, the approved lifestyle is one that is centered on consumption and acquisition, because this is the lowest common denominator that official neutrality effectively endorses. Consumerism is the de facto official morality. Conversely, Aristotleʼs ideal of the contemplative life offers pluralism in practice, not principle. In principle, the truths that the contemplative life discovers (or creates) are objective. But in practice, different contemplators who are equally sincere in their pursuit of truth will arrive at different answers to the questions that excite them due to differences in ability and differences in the data they have available to them; moreover, to the extent that questions of method are unsettled, even those with equal ability who start with the same data may arrive at different conclusions. Only by free, open, and collaborative inquiry can the blind men hope to assemble a veridical image of the elephant; if any are forcibly silenced, a piece of the puzzle may be lost.

If one way of life is to be favored above the rest, officially or de facto, Aristotleʼs eudaimonia deserves consideration for this position. Moreover, valorization of this way of life is compatible with toleration of other ways of life. One way to express this toleration is in terms of Aristotleʼs survey of the answers people give when asked what happiness consists in. He examines wealth, pleasure, honor, and contemplation as alternative answers. A system that facilitates the contemplative life while allowing people the freedom to try other paths to happiness to some degree would be to that degree a tolerant and pluralistic society--certainly no less so than a society that valorizes consumption and acquisition, and demands that those who wish to engage in intellectual or artistic pursuits justify their actions in terms of the values of the marketplace.

III. Sex Education in a Eudaimonistic Republic

Having outlined what eudaimonistic republicanism is, and suggested how a republic can be overtly eudaimonistic without jeopardizing pluralism, I now turn to the question of what the implications of all this might be for sex education -- and vice versa. Sex education provides a valuable test case for the claim that eudaimonistic republicanism is compatible with pluralism.

Sex education in public schools in the US generally comes in two varieties: it is either a “just the facts” biological account of the human reproductive system, or it is an “abstinence only” approach that focuses on getting teens to avoid coitus until marriage. In neither case is sexuality placed within a larger moral framework. Compared to other developed Western democracies, the US has the highest rates of pregnancies, abortions, and sexually transmitted infections among teenagers, and the US divorce rate is also the highest (NationMaster.com). Clearly, the American approach to sex education isnʼt working. What would a eudaimonistic approach to sex education look like?

Eudaimonistic sex education would differ from typical current approaches in two respects, namely, it would be teleological and holistic. These differences track important differences between Aristotelian and liberal ethical and political theory concerning the nature of desire and community. Eudaimonistic sex education would be teleological insofar as it would propose that the question, “What is sexuality for?” can be answered objectively. Questions of final cause may no longer have a role in the natural sciences, but they are still useful for applying the findings of the natural sciences to moral reasoning. From an Aristotelian point of view, human sexuality is the way it is for a reason, i.e., it has an objectively discernible purpose. Qua living organisms, our telos is to survive to maturity and reproduce. Human sexuality is oriented toward this twofold purpose and is manifested in accordance with our animal and rational nature. The immediate purpose of sexual expression is pair bonding, which is instrumental to survival and reproduction (note that reproduction entails more than conception; successful reproduction requires that oneʼs offspring survive long enough to reproduce themselves, which requires the contributions of parents and the wider community). Qua human beings, our purpose is to achieve eudaimonia. Friendship is integral to eudaimonia, and the pair bond between parents is
ideally an instance of perfect friendship. The purpose of sexuality is not pleasure, but a virtuous sexual life is pleasurable. The ethical upshot of all this is that forms or acts of sexual expression that intentionally preclude pair bonding, such as “friends with benefits”, are generally a misuse of sexuality.

Eudaimonistic sex education would be holistic, situating sex education within the larger context of what I shall call household education for lack of a better term. Sex education should be part of a broader education on family life, which would prepare young people to take their places as eventual heads of households, just as civics class prepares them to take their places as citizens of a republic. As stated above, households have affective, procreative, and economic dimensions. Household education should address all of these dimensions and the ways in which they are interrelated. In particular, young people should be encouraged to think about the relative importance of their roles as parents, spouses, workers, and consumers. Currently, there is enormous societal pressure to favor the roles of consumer and worker at the expense of the roles of parent and spouse. Young people should be encouraged to think critically about consumerism and its effect on family life and on their own desires. It is no coincidence that the American republic is degenerating into an oligarchy at the same time as middle- and working-class family life is being undermined; the two phenomena are connected. Eudaimonistic sex education would also be holistic in the sense that it would address the whole person. It would address the whole person by seeking to form the character as well as provide knowledge. It would provide all relevant information, including information about birth control. It is important to add that from a eudaimonistic perspective, the science of sexuality is worth knowing for its own sake, and is not simply a tool for shaping the behavior of young people.

Since eudaimonistic sex education has never been tried, there is no empirical evidence that it would have any impact on the adverse trends mentioned above, and in any case the causes of those trends surely go beyond what is or is not being conveyed in the classroom. But a comprehensive review of 150 studies of sex education methods conducted by the Child Trends organization offers tentative conclusions about what works and what doesnʼt, and those conclusions support comprehensive and holistic approaches (Manlove et al., 2002; see also Lawlor & Shaw, 2004, and Ball & Moore, 2008).

So, in brief, eudaimonistic sex education would teach young people that the purpose of sex is pair-bonding, and the purpose of pair-bonding is, on one level, survival and reproduction, but on a higher level, a partnership that will promote the eudaimonia of the partners and their children. People should not engage in sexual activity if they are not open to the possibility of forming a genuine emotional attachment of perfect friendship with their sexual partner, and the partners in such a relationship should generally be open to the possibility of procreation. The purpose of courtship is therefore to find oneʼs life partner, the person with whom one will form a household, preferably within marriage. The household is fundamental to both the eudaimonia of its members and to the stability of the republic, so the obligations it generates take precedence over the demands of the workplace or the marketplace.

Now, finally, we come to the question of whether eudaimonistic sex education is consistent with pluralism. Eudaimonistic sex education would not merely present facts or discourage certain behaviors; it would overtly seek to inculcate certain values both intellectually and habitually. Critics might ask, is it appropriate to promote such a program in public schools at the expense of other conceptions of sexual mores? Would it not be more appropriate to stick to the facts and let parents present the values at home?

In defense against these objections, let me first reiterate that neutrality is impossible. Even to suppose that facts and values can be neatly separated in the way the critic suggests is to depart from neutrality on an important metaethical question. More importantly, failure to impart a definite set of values concerning sexuality cedes the field to and thereby tacitly condones the values of sexual consumerism promoted by commercialized popular culture, which has in effect become the default sexual ethos of American society. It might be said in defense of a putatively value-neutral curriculum that it leaves values to the parents to impart, but this is naive. Parents are out-gunned in this battle for the hearts and minds of their children, and many parents themselves have either failed to develop a coherent set of values concerning sexuality or are unable to model healthy relationships.

Secondly, eudaimonistic sexual education is consistent with the values that most parents profess. It is obviously consistent with religious conceptions of sexual morality; to the eudaimonistic exhortation to conduct sexual relations within the bounds of true friendship, religious parents need only add that those who truly love each other in this way will consecrate their relationship with marriage. While it is true that eudaimonistic sex education as outlined above does not explicitly condemn certain things that some religious parents do condemn, it does not explicitly endorse them either.

Thirdly, while eudaimonistic sex education clearly has what might be called a heteronormative bias, it need not be construed as intolerant of alternative lifestyles or atypical sexual orientations, provided that (a) those who belong to those categories can find a way to form households based on true friendship, and (b) those households are open to procreative possibilities (which might include adoption, fostering, mentoring, or assisting in the upbringing of nieces, nephews, grandchildren, or stepchildren).

But now the question becomes, is tolerance enough? The foregoing suggests that the relationship between eudaimonistic sex education and pluralism is a special case of the more general relationship between official or de facto eudaimonism and pluralism, which is to say that at both levels, the state promotes a “right” way, but gives people some latitude to choose various “wrong” ways, provided they do not interfere with othersʼ attempts to follow the “right” way. This will not satisfy everyone. Homosexuals, to take just one example, have made it clear that in 2011, tolerance is no longer enough. They wish to be fully accepted as they are, as full members of society, not merely tolerated.

In replying to this objection, I will suggest that we should look at the concrete particulars of what gay people in 2011 are asking their compatriots to accept. In the course of the debate over gay marriage, some gay people have at times expressed some diffidence at the prospect of having to conform to heterosexual norms of committed monogamy, but on the whole, the movement for gay marriage has stressed the fundamental similarity between gay and straight unions. By the same token, they have nothing to fear from eudaimonistic ideals. If both gay and straight unions are instances of true friendship, then they are both acceptable, not merely tolerable, from a eudaimonistic standpoint.

The concept of the household is flexible enough to accommodate various alternatives to heterosexual monogamy, provided that the participants enter into these arrangements in the spirit of true friendship. As St. Augustine said, “love and do as thou wilt”. What it cannot accommodate (in a free society) is arrangements in which some participants sacrifice their chances of achieving eudaimonistic goals for the sake of othersʼ pleasure or utility, or even for their own pleasure or utility.

There is no reason not to discourage young people from entering such arrangements. We must be circumspect. We must not become like the moralist whom Nietzsche mocks, who paints his picture on the wall and declares, “Ecce homo!”, and a wealthy and powerful nation can afford to allow some experimentation. But when we must decide what to tell our children, we need not pretend that we do not have millennia of human experience to draw upon, or that we do not know what has been weighed and found wanting at other times and places. Offering them a firm set of norms that is situated within a comprehensive moral and political framework will not prevent them from trying other paths if they truly need to, nor will it silence the voices from Hollywood, Madison Ave, and the darker corners of the Internet that will offer competing norms. The best we can hope for is that we can construct a new default ethos so that the burden of proof will lie on the purveyors of commercialized sexuality rather than on young people who wish to hold out for committed monogamy.

Quotations from Aristotle

[1] Contemplation (theōria) may be construed broadly: . . . to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosophers but also to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it; the reason of the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time learning -- gathering the meaning of things . . . poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. (Poetics 1448b 14 - 1451b 6)

[2] Wonder is the basis of theōria: For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and first began to philosophize . . . even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders” (Metaphysics 982b 11 ff.)

[3] Eudaimonia is the ultimate purpose of the state: Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or
political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good. (Politics 1252a 1)

[4] Popular government can work: For the many . . . when they meet together may very likely be better than the few good . . . . For each individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence, and when they meet together, they become in a manner one man . . . the guest will judge better of a feast than the cook. (Politics 1281a 40 ff.)

[5] Human virtue (aretē) is absolute; civic virtue is relative: In the perfect state the good man is absolutely the same as the good citizen; whereas in other states the good citizen is only good relatively to his own form of government. (Politics 1239b 5)

[6] On friendship/love (philia), pair bonding, and the complementarity of the sexes: . . . human beings live together not only for the sake of reproduction but also for the various purposes of life; for from the start the functions are divided, and those of man and woman are different; so they help each other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common stock. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure seem to be found in this kind of friendship. But this friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are good; for each has its own virtue and
they will delight in the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union (which is the reason why childless people part more easily); for children are a good common to both and what is common holds them together. (Nicomachean Ethics 1162a 20-24)


Other works cited

Ball, Victoria, and Kristin Moore. “What Works for Adolescent Reproductive Health: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Programs and Interventions”. Washington: Child Trends, 2008.

Knight, Kelvin. Aristotelian Philosophy. Malden, MA: Polity, 2007.

Lawlor, Debbie A and Mary Shaw, MA PhD “Teenage pregnancy rates: high compared with where and when?” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2004 March; v. 97(3): 121–123.

Manlove, Jennifer, et al. “Preventing Teenage Pregnancy, Childbearing, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases: What the Research Shows.” Washington: Child Trends Research Brief, 2002. <http://www.childtrends.org>

McKeon, Richard. “General Introduction”, in McKeon, ed., Introduction to Aristotle. New York: Random House, 1947.

NationMaster.com -- World Statistics, Country Comparisons. <http://www.nationmaster.com>