A Philosophy of Pornography

We were talking at some length here and at AVI's place about the way in which the virtual, and especially pornography, alters the sense of self in the young. Arts & Letters Daily linked to a philosopher who is working on this, and she says some of the nicest things about conservative thought I've ever heard from someone on the left. 
I put it to Srinivasan that her critique shares some of its spirit with conservative objections to porn: the worry that porn’s logic of commodification corrupts the value of sex, manifest perhaps in the creeping feeling—all too easily evoked whenever one finds oneself choosing from a menu with pictures—that one is engaged in something debasing. “I totally agree,” Srinivasan says—“the conservative way of putting it is that we have this kind of sacred thing that’s being degraded by being placed on this screen. I more specifically want to say the thing we’re losing is a certain kind of creative capacity which then gets dulled by its over-reliance on the screen.”

Such arguments, she adds, are another reason to read conservative philosophers—“to understand that part of us, which is very much drawn to and recognises the truth in conservatism, because it’s a very false radical politics that thinks that progress does not come with loss.”

That's a very keen insight as well as a kind word. You may or may not find that you agree with her thoughts on pornography, but that much we can surely appreciate.  

6 comments:

Narr said...

I like porn, and dislike feminists who complain about it. That is all.

Cousin Eddie

Narr said...

May I elaborate?

I consider the policing of images by anti-porn feminists as the modern womanly version of the Islamic prohibition against imagery in general, and just as arrogant. I don't desire the good opinion of such people--but then I'm only conservative in a quasi-Oakeshottian sense.

Cousin Eddie

Grim said...

You may certainly elaborate, though I had thought you were entirely clear the first time. :)

Narr said...

I have been slowly working through some of your older posts, mainly the ones on Women and Chivalry. One of the most highly-regarded history profs at my u was a medievalist and made many of the points you do about the development of courtly love and chivalry. He tried to mentor me, I think in the mistaken notion that the well-read but fatherless kid was seeking adult guidance; he was a paraplegic (a REMF badly wounded in Germany late in The Big One, who claimed to have been at the liberation of Dachau but could not have been, according to his army file).

The Humanities Center was named for him, the local liberal legend. It amuses me to recall how many times he rolled his chair up to some pretty coed and questioned her relentlessly about some historical topic. I knew who Nietzsche and Douglas MacArthur were already, which made me a bit of a pet, but many a future schoolmarm fled his classroom in tears.

I took a gander at Prof Srinivasan's article and website, and must say that her reasoning follows her emotional preferences IMO.

I also notice in one of your Chivalry posts that there is a medievalist specialist named Oakeshott. I was referring to the philosopher Michael Oakeshott in my self-description.


Cousin Eddie


Grim said...

So this one is Ewart Oakeshott, a specialist in swords. He designed what has become the standard typology of Western swords.

http://oakeshott.org/sword-typology/

Narr said...

That's cool too!

Cousin Eddie