Abstract
Human sexuality is not binary: this, although counter-intuitive initially, is a medical fact. Homo-sexuality was an anomaly under a M/F taxonomy, and so ‘unnatural’ and ‘an abomination’. It is a mere statistical anomaly: it is a fact of Nature, nevertheless. Doctrines of Natural Law must recognize that even if Nature is stable, the notion/word ‘Nature’ is a shifter. As medical and other sciences amend our understanding of Nature, the idea of ‘Nature’ shifts. Natural Law theory is – and must continue to be – based on Nature: the contents of the idea of ‘Nature’ change progressively. So must cultural attitudes.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
‘For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,’ Matthew xviii 20 will do for Protestants as the Petrine text does for Catholics.
1) The Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse chaired by Justice Peter McClellan was made public on December16, 2017. The Commission sat for 444 days, looked at 4,000 plus institutions, it heard 1,300 plus witnesses and listened to 15,000 survivors of abuse and/or members of the families of survivors. There were 2,559 referrals to Police. The Catholic Church topped the list of shame. (It is the largest Christian denomination in Australia). One recommendation of the Commission was that the Seal of Confession be broken if a priest hears the confession of someone seeking absolution for an act of child abuse. This—understandably—has troubled the Australian Catholic Bishops, and threatens the—informal—separation of Church and State which obtains in Australia. The Constitution guarantees Freedom of Religion, disallows the establishment of any State Religion, but does not separate Church and State as radically as does the Constitution of the United States. There is an Executive Summary of the Report in The Age (Melbourne) for 16 December 2017. The full Report (in many volumes) is available online at https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/finalreport.
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo by Mary Douglas, London and New York, Routledge, 1966: new edition, with a new preface by the author, 2002.
Also see Douglas, p. 210 for an expansion of the notion of the fictive.
One has to apologise for the apology quotes but see below, appeals to Nature seem to be appeals to something ‘always there’ so, objective. The matter is as we shall find more complex. Further, the ‘>’ move from fact to value has difficulties of its own. Two problems linger: ‘the always-there-ness-of-nature and moral conclusions from nature’. For the latter, see footnote 6
One don't wish to get into David Hume’s bind about getting an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. ‘If act x is against nature how does one get from “against nature” to “bad!”?’ What Hume was after seems to have been pure logical inference, as in geometry. Moral reasoning is more nuanced. We need, if not quite Edinburgh Moral Sentiments, something else again. To an anthropologist such as Douglas, the ‘>’ is always constituted by social-constitution, mirroring the structure of the whole society. It is a fiction (of a kind). This, (a) is often a, mere, fiction in fact, (b) and it is a rule in anthropology which considers various, and often very different, societal structures, that local ‘>’ structures are fictions. That ‘>’ is fictional in anthropology does not necessarily imply that it is always fictional. However, anthropology might seem to play into Hume’s hands. Hence, the quest for ‘cultural universals’ and so on. I suggest that we ‘get from fact’ by acting on principles, these principles themselves need to be dug out of the context in which they are implicit. Then, they may be debated. This by now is a classical problem and its solution is not central to the present paper. Appeals to self-evidence seem to be so strong as to be invulnerable. This—alas—is not always the case. The present paper is not the one addressed to that issue. The sun of self-evidence surrounding the firm, factual, appeal to Nature which vaporises the ‘>’ problem may form a cloud which rains on the ‘self-evident’ parade. We cannot go into this here.
Natural Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy, London, Hutchinson, first ed. 1951, second and revised ed. 1970. A fellow of two Oxford Colleges, d’Entrèves, had been a Professor of Law in Turin. He was a Serena Professor of Italian at Oxford.
Sophia Issue 4, December 2015: Laudato Si’: Climate Change Si!’, p. 409.
‘Things act according to their nature’ sounds like Aristotle, but has not come up on an index search.
The Sunday Age, p. 28, EXTRA, April 30, 2017, story by Linda Morris. Real and Radical anxiety here!
Twins: There is a useful article on twins ‘Same but Different’ (Annals of Science) by Siddhartha Mukherjee in The New Yorker, May 2, 2016, pp. 24–30. The article covers the phenomena of Epigenetics; modifications of DNA signals within an organism can produce difference where uniformity might be, reasonably, expected.
Gay Marriage required a Constitutional Amendment in the Irish Republic. In Australia, a conscience vote in the two houses of parliament would suffice. However, conservative forces have saddled Australians with the prospect of a Plebiscite, in the obvious hope of delaying the matter for as long as possible. The conservatives in question overlap—interestingly—the climate change deniers. In the ‘post-truth’ atmosphere of the early twenty-first century, one hears the unspoken: ‘My opinion—to which I have a democratic right—is as good as the consensus of scientific opinion’. This is utter balderdash. Having a right to hold an opinion does not render your opinion right, or as valuable as that of a Fellow of the Royal Society or of the Chief Scientist. Democracy does not entail the truth of any idle or loopy opinion. Politicians should be forced to go to the ‘Scientific Method 101’ summer camps at their nearest university; bone-head ignorance may cost us the only planet we have.
‘US psychiatrist took the “mental disorder” out of homosexuality’, Robert Spitzer, Psychiatrist, 22-5-1932–12-12-2015. Obituary by Benedict Carey. Reprinted from New York Times, The Age Wednesday January 6, 2016, p. 28. Professor Spitzer’s replacement for homosexuality as a ‘disease’ was: ‘sexual orientation disturbance’ which according to the obituary ‘described people whose sexual orientation—homosexual or heterosexual—caused them distress’. Spitzer was in charge of the diagnostic and statistical manual DSM3, the psychiatrists’ handbook, which has set the standard for future editions.
The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant, A479 B507.
See my Editorial/Review ‘Laudato Si’: Climate Change Action: Si! In Sophia, Vol. 54, No. 4, December 2015, pp. 405–410: H.H. Pope Benedict XVI cited in p. 407. I take the occasion to correct, an over hasty proofreading, and so an omission. The second paragraph of the first page should read: ‘H.H. Pope Francis is said to have studied chemistry, so he knows the difference between hard science which is evidence based and tested, and testimony: between science and the Gospels…’ My intention was to contrast evidence and testimony, without at all denying the truth-claims of either.
That Donald Trump thinks climate change ‘A Chinese hoax’ does not count as a valid contestation. Donald don't know how science is done. So, ‘pfui!’ The same goes for a—former—Australian P.M. and for some back benchers of the soi disant ‘Liberal’ Party.
Final causes in Aristotle need to be looked at again after Kant’s Critique of Teleological Judgement’, etc.
London Review of Books, 16 June 2016, Volume 38 Number 12, p. 4 Column a. See also LRB Letter page: 5 May 2016, p. 9, Column c [Volume 38, Number 9.] and LRB, 2 June 2016, Column a [Volume 38, Number 11.]
The author of this letter appears, inter alia to be engaged in a controversy between trans-sexuals and feminists. I am not au fait with this controversy, but I guess that it may be about the feminist/some feminists’ thesis that gender is socially constructed, and not biologically given. On this, I can only say—in ignorance—I will have two bob each way.
What is Metaphysics? GA 9312.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hutchings, P. The Tyranny of Taxonomy Sexuality and Anomaly. SOPHIA 57, 521–532 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0634-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0634-5