This book presents varying perspectives on the contemporary value of chastity. A recovered and reconceptualized concept of chastity can offer partial solutions to problems associated with externalized sexual desire, including sweeping patterns of sexual harassment, the high divorce/relationship-failure rate, and widespread pornography use.
Eric J. Silverman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Christopher Newport University. He has written two monographs: The Supremacy of Love: An Agape Centered Vision of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics (2019) and The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits the Agent (2010). He has also co-edited Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven (2017).
Section I: Visions of Contemporary Chastity
1. Chastity and the Well-Lived Life
Jennifer A. Herdt
2. Sexuality as Secularly Sacred
Alexander R. Pruss
3. Contemporary Chastity Still Consists in Principles of Temperance, Justice, and Prudence
Eric J. Silverman
4. Chastity, Lust, and Practical Wisdom
Michael Beaty
Section II: The Limits and Dangers of Chastity
5. Is Chastity a Virtue?
Alan H. Goldman
6. Chastity, Power Dynamics, and Enduring Spousal Love
R. Mary Hayden Lemmons
Section III: Culturally Contextualized Expressions of Chastity
7. Finding Chastity in a Secular Age: Chastity as a Virtue of Sexual Autonomy
Nancy E. Snow
8. Cephalus: A Quotidian Case for Chastity in Republic I
Kevin Kambo
9. The Family as the Foundation of the Confucian Ethical Order
Benjamin Huff
Section IV: Chastity and Objectification
10. Sexual Temperance and Sexual Objectification
Raja Halwani
11. Objectification, Indication, and Chastity
Dustin Crummett
Section V: Specific Applications of Chastity
12. Chastity in the Workplace
Chris Tweedt
13. A Renewed Chastity for a New Era: An Aretaic Response to Contemporary Pornography
Joseph Prud'homme