86:1 January 2003
Perversion

Advisory Editors: Graham Priest, Melbourne, and Roger Lamb, Queensland

The notion of perversion is one that we all operate with in a variety of different contexts. We speak of fetishism as a perversion, or we speak of the course of justice as being perverted. But what does it mean to say of some person, or action, or practice, or institution, that it is perverse, a perversion, or perverts something? What sorts of things can be perverted, and why? Does the existence of perversion require things in the world to have a telos or nature? Is any particular theory of morality necessary to make sense of the notion? Which sexual acts are perverted and why? And are sexual perversions sui generis, or do they fall under a general account of perversion? This issue of The Monist welcomes papers that address the above, and related, issues. The aim is to cast light on this important but relatively neglected aspect of the human world.

Table of Contents:

Peripatetic Perversion: a Neo-Aristotelian Account of the Nature of Sexual Perversion

Dirk Baltzley

Sexual Perversity

Jerrold Levinson

Kant and Sexual Perversion

Alan Soble

Perversion and Death

Ronald de Sousa

Christopher Williams,

Perverted Attractions Being Conscious of Ourselves