Abstract

It seems commonplace to talk about Plato and eros, but it seems peculiar to write about Immanuel Kant and sexuality. In fact, Kant’s statements about the dangers of masturbation in his On Education give the impression of a conservative and even unenlightened attitude. Yet highly progressive aspects manifest in the same text. A reasonable dealing with our »mere animal nature« does not mean its suppression. A public discussion about sexuality, ›Sexualaufklärung‹ (sex education), did not exist before the middle of the 20th century. People were mostly depicted as asexual creatures in biology teaching books. Female sexuality out of wedlock was taboo. I will show that Kant’s marital law and his aim of pedagogical enlightenment are already much more emancipated. Kant argued for certain liberties concerning sexual identity and thereby anticipated gender-theories that emerged in the later 20th century. He also argued that pedagogical enlightenment must deal with the »Ge- schlechtsneigung« (sexual attraction) explicitly. It would be dangerous not to talk about this issue, Kant warned, which nature had tried to combine »with all sorts of morality«. I will illuminate this ambivalent pedagogical concern as paradigmatic for the Enlightenment. It is inevitably bound to the complex ideas of transcendental vs. practical freedom and duty. Quite interestingly, Kant’s notion of female education centered around freedom and more specifically, autonomy, while male education foregrounded duty.