Introductory Class on Sexual Ethics and (John) Rawls' Method of Reflective Equilibrium‪.‬

Applied ethics has been an intense and fruitful pursuit of moral philosophers over the past twenty-five years. (1) As well as dealing with issues such as abortion, animal rights and euthanasia, philosophers have had enlightening things to say about sexual ethics. Most contemporary ethics anthologies contain articles with titles such as "What's Wrong with Rape", "Is Adultery Immoral?", "Plain Sex", and "Homosexuality and the `Unnaturalness Argument"' (Arthur, 1981; Grcic 1989). As a prelude to analyzing such articles in my first-year philosophy course, I have developed a strategy for limbering up my students' minds regarding sexual ethics. This strategy does its job successfully, and I believe is worth sharing. In Part A of this article, I describe the strategy. In Part B, I show how my strategy can be understood, and further extended, by seeing it in the light of John Rawls' moral methodology of reflective equilibrium. PART A