‘It’s only a Story’: Pornography, want, as well as the Ethics of Fictive Imagining

‘It’s only a Story’: Pornography, want, as well as the Ethics of Fictive Imagining

Abstract

Can it be ever morally incorrect for the customer to assume one thing immoral? Brandon Cooke has argued that it can’t be. On Cooke’s account, fictive imagining is immune to ethical critique because such instances of imagining usually do not total the consumer’s endorsement of this immoral content, nor do they mean that the writers of these fictions always endorse their contents. We argue against Cooke that in reality something that is fictively imagining may be morally blameworthy when it comes to customer, particularly in cases where fictive imagining is involved in the solution of immoral desires. Taking one powerful case specifically, rape dream pornography we argue that the appropriate engagement with pornography requires the engagement for the consumer’s desires, and therefore customers usually engage with works of pornography as a means of ‘trying on’ desires. Continue reading “‘It’s only a Story’: Pornography, want, as well as the Ethics of Fictive Imagining”