Erotic Morality: The Role of Touch in Moral Agency

Erotic Morality examines the role of the senses and the emotions, especially touch, in moral reflection and agency. Moving from organic disorders such as autism to culturally induced feeling disorders found in dualistic philosophy, pornography, and some forms of sadomasochism, Linda Holler argues that reclaiming the sentient awareness necessary to our physical and moral well-being demands healing the places where we have become numb or hypersensitive to touch. By considering ascetic practices designed to produce what Buddhists call mindfulness, Holler presents alternatives to destructive patterns of actions dictated by desensitivity and habitual conditioning.
For more than two decades feminist and other ethicists concerned with social justice and ecology have called for and worked toward an understanding of morality that is body-affirming rather than body-denying. Just as dualistic, disembodied philosophy inevitably gave rise to an ethic based on logos—on rules, authorities, and duties— so embodied awareness is giving rise to an ethic based on eros, a somatic, intuitive form of agency in which empathy, compassion, and care are the central moral qualities. This book seeks to be part of the transformation, within ethics, that hopes to reshape understandings of the moral life by teaching us to value our senses and our experiences as sentient beings.