Hi, my question concerns Kantian ethics and contemporary sexual practices associated with BDSM, for example.

I propose a distinction between two senses in which 'Dignity' is meant: firstly, in the Kantian sense of a rational autonomous being able to self-determine their actions in appreciation of reason. Let's call this K-Dignity. And there are also socially constructed conceptions of symbolic dignity, which are, unlike Kant's conception of inherent human dignity, culturally, historically and temporally contingent. Let us call this sense of dignity S-Dignity.

My question relates to sexual practices that diminish S-Dignity but which emerge from within a person's exercise of erotic autonomy, that is, their K-Dignity. That is, I conceive of cases of even extreme symbolic degradation which superficially seem to objectify and instrumentalize a person, seemingly reducing them to a 'mere means', an object of sexual gratification. Nevertheless, I think at least some of these cases uphold and maintain the integrity of K-Dignity. In fact, I think there are conceivably cases in which to fail to sexually degrade someone with their desire and consent on paternalistic moralistic grounds would in fact be a violation of K-Dignity; a failure to honor and respect someone's erotic agency and desire.

It seems that there is a complex dialectical relationship between these two forms of dignity. For example, S-Dignity is sometimes in conflict with K-Dignity. Often, for example, some women feel they need to uphold and maintain their symbolic dignity in, for example, academic and professional life in a way that feels onerous, tiring and exhausting. Between the bedsheets, sexual submission offers a means of relaxing this posture. Empirical research shows that often feminist women entertain such fantasies. I say this not in a reactionary way to advocate male chauvinism, but merely to point out that sexual practice is often the realm of inversion, contradiction, and seeming hypocrisy (although I don't think there is any real hypocrisy here.)

My claim is that there are cases where sexual instrumentalization in fact upholds and is consistent with the full recognition of someone's dignity in the Kantian sense: in the sense of their being a self-determining rational being seeking sexual pleasure. While they accede to their partner's objectifying desires, their partner's satisfaction of these desires upholds K-Dignity even as S-Dignity is undermined. Of course, this differs from simple, brute instrumentalisation (i.e., reduction to a mere means.) Arguably, there is a kind of sublation in this: S-Dignity is negated, K-Dignity (against which S-Dignity is in tension) is revealed even more sharply, even in the wake of superficially humiliating or degrading sex acts. The operation is a sublation because dignity is simultaneously abolished and preserved. -S K.

Provided the dominative partner upholds his partner's K-Dignity at all times, even during acts which degrade S-Dignity, is everything cool from a Kantian perspective?

Is the Konisberg virgin the unlikely and unwitting patron saint of kink?