Contemporary Chastity Still Consists in Principles of Temperance, Justice, and Prudence

This chapter argues that despite recent philosophical ambivalence towards chastity, there still is a virtue of chastity. Such viciousness results in a wide variety of harms, including sexual harassment, non-consensual sexual contact, unwise or short-sighted romantic/sexual relationships, sexual addiction and compulsion, unintended pregnancy, neglected children, the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and so forth. The history of philosophy gives numerous examples of thoroughly secular defenses of very restrictive sexual morals. In the ancient world, the Stoics saw great advantages to sexual self-restraint. Chastity was advocated by enlightenment thinkers like David Hume and Benjamin Franklin. Hume declared the obvious ‘usefulness’ of chastity despite its innate unpleasantness, and Franklin connected chastity to personal health. Aristotle claims that vicious sexual acts like adultery can either stem from lack of self-control, expressing intemperance, or from moral indifference towards others, expressing injustice.