Category Archives: Book promotion

A Conceptual Path from Moral Harm to Contrition

In my book on sexual morality*, I confronted Steven Pinker’s example** of coitus between a brother and sister which had, as the imaginary cases for moral philosophy can stipulate, absolutely no harmful consequences in nature. I propose that there is a type of harm over and above natural harm which is specifically a moral harm. Without much development of the notion, I simply proposed that moral harm is the harm done merely by disobedience to a moral law. In my book, I left this notion of moral harm lie in the background of my argument for traditional sexual morality. My case was mainly that the harm of setting aside the rules of traditional sexual morality was a sense of lawlessness and ultimately a sense that life is pointless, viz., nihilism.

After publication, I realized that the argument of my book needed to be strengthened by clarification and justification of moral harm as the harm of simply disobeying a moral law.

I have religious or theological concerns about understanding the fundamental Christian thesis that Christ suffered and died for our sins. In my religious reflections I reached a stage at which I realized that I could not hope to understand doctrines about our redemption by Christ unless, I understood retributive punishment.

A breakthrough in my thinking about the need for redemption was that retributive punishment is repair of moral harm.

The proposal that retributive punishment is repair of moral harm demands portrayal of moral harm as something which can be repaired. What goes on in the violation of a moral law which is something which can be repaired? I conjectured that in violation of a moral norm the violator adds a new moral norm to morality. This new moral norm is ad hoc for this violation. The ad hoc moral norm specifies that some harm ought to be done. A violation of a moral rule does expose a choice that the good aimed at by the rule ought to be inhibited. Inhibition of good is harm. So, moral harm is a perverse moral norm, i.e., a norm with the force of morality but contrary to the goal of morality. This ad hoc norm with the force of a genuine moral norm is damage or dirt in morality.

See Revision of the Normative Theory of Moral Harm for elaboration of the proposal that violation of a moral norm creates a perverse moral norm

This damage to morality can be repaired by fulfilling the ad hoc moral norm and thereby removing it from morality.

Doing the harm required by the ad hoc rule is retributive punishment.

Besides trying to understand moral harm and retributive punishment, I want to understand a thought that abortion is always a grievous wrong despite the fact that it frequently can be justified by utilitarian considerations. What is it like to have sorrow simply over the breaking of a moral law that innocent human life should not be directly terminated? This question led me to the proposal there might be an analogue to the Catholic notion of perfect contrition. Perfection contrition is sorrow over simply disobeying God. So, perhaps, the genuine moral conviction that abortion is wrong is sorrow over simply disobeying a moral law against it. This would be sorrow over moral harm. This sorrow over moral harm would be sorrow over having the ad hoc moral laws requiring harm in morality.

This is where I am now in my investigations. I have in thought, or “on paper,” specified moral harm and contrition for moral harm. But it needs to be shown that there can be genuine human sentiments connected with what I have called contrition.

*Contronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism,, Tulsa, 2014
Email kielkopf.1@osu.edu for a free copy of this book
** p. 63 of my book, Originally in “The Moral Instinct” in the New York Times Magazine,Sun Jan. 13, 2008

With What Right Do I Accuse The LGBQT+ Agenda of Promoting Sexual Immorality?

During the eight years since I published a book on sexual morality, I have been reflecting on how to strengthen my case for a fundamental principle of male sexuality. I called it the Paternal Principle.

A free copy of my book Confronting Sexual Nihilism is available by emailing me at kielkopf.1@osu.edu

The Paternal Principle states:
A male may intentionally attain a sexual climax only in coitus, performed in private, with a consenting woman to whom he is bound by a life-long, monogamous, socially recognized union for procreation, In addition he should:(1) intend to cooperate with his spouse to protect and promote the lifelong natural development of any conception resulting from this intercourse and (2) strive to appreciate with his spouse the natural value of their sexual satisfactions and cooperate with her to enhance those satisfactions.

Of course, someone who accepts this principle, such as I, condemn the LGBQT+ agenda as promoting sexual immorality. Why do I seek to improve a case for this principle since I already accept it? It is always well to seek further support for our beliefs. But my primary motive for seeking a strong persuasive case for this principle is to justify my actions of condemning the dominant current sexual morality of the cultures in which I live. Analogous to religious apologetics, my work is sexual morality apologetics. I aim to provide considerations for public discourse because a decent respect for the opinion of humankind requires explaining rejection the dominant opinion.

The explanation for upholding what can be called traditional sexual morality is long. I have been working it out in my book and in numerous blog posts ever since. For the most part I use only assumptions everyone can understand. The assumptions about God and the supernatural are only introduced to strengthen my case for the religiously inclined. Now, as my dismissal of formal arguments as satisfactory arguments indicate, my explanation needs to be given in a book or series of essays. I have these available. Readers can click back through my posts. I will continue providing the bits and pieces of my rationale for condemning the LGBQT+ agenda in subsequently blog posts.

There is, though, a verbally short consideration which may take a long time to follow. The verbally short consideration is for men to just think honestly about their sexuality. This honest thinking may take some time. In my eighty-seven years, feedback from my body has convinced me that the principle is correct.

Gibt es Kein Gott, nur die Pflicht steht gegen das Nichts

The title of this post is taken from p. 269 of my book on sexual morality -actually only male sexuality- where I asked indulgence to speak as a Teutonic philosopher to express the major premise of my case for traditional male sexual morality. That major premise in English runs: If there is no God, then only duty provides us something indestructible to have lived for when at biological death each of us confronts totally vanishing if there has been nothing indestructible in our lives for which we lived. Nihilism is accepting your vanishing.

When asked for a short answer about what I wanted to show in my book claiming in its title that traditional sexual morality is an antidote to nihilism, I begin my answer with a warning that I try to use only assumptions which can be accepted by secular analytic philosophers. (Frequently, fellow Catholics ask me what I was trying to show.)

I address those who sense some anxiety about nihilism when they consider their biological death. I do not address the blessed innocents, even if intellectual geniuses, who sense no such anxiety.

I argue that living to make ourselves people who obey invariant moral laws is something indestructible in ourselves for which to live – that is duty die Pflicht. This is a stoic defiance of nihilism. The temptations of the flesh, the world and from our own minds that objective morality is an illusion make stoicism an unstable defense against nihilism. Only the strong and the easily distracted escape nihilistic despair.

I go on to argue that we must find such laws governing our sexuality. I continue my argument by pointing out that if we do not find them in our sexuality, we are unlikely to admit such laws as governing any other area of our lives.

So, if there is no God in any traditional sense and no traditional sexual morality, then for each of us biological death is eternal total annihilation.

Perhaps, the implicit recognition of the nihilism conveyed by the moral thought of global elites helps explain the terror of COVID-19 infections. The prospect of infection, with even a slight chance of biological death, makes vivid “vanishing into the infinite pit of nothing” -total emptiness.

I worry that finding the meaning of life in conformity to moral laws is very close to nihilism. Most of my philosophic thought is a struggle against nihilism. So since publishing my book in 2014, I have been searching to find more in morality than laws.

I have found much more. The thought which has exploded into a rich picture of morality has been the hypothesis that the harm of violating a moral law is creation of a new moral law that some harm ought to be. This notion of a moral harm has led to personalizing morality as obedience to a moral authority which finally I interpreted as God. That is why in subsequent posts, I defend and develop a divine command morality. I have set aside the hypothesis: Gibt es kein Gott.

Email me your postal mailing address, and I will mail you a free copy of my booK: Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional sexual morality as an antidote to nihilism, Tulsa 2014.

Email: kielkopf.1@osu.edu

Why the Modest Goal of Moral Apologetics?

In my previous post I wrote the following about the purpose of making a case making a case for a moral principle commanding what could accurately be labeled “Traditional Catholic Sexual Morality.

“We seek assent, even if grudgingly granted to our rationality and decency along with assenting to the claim that the principle we are defending is not irrational. Seeking that type of assent for a moral principle can properly be called moral apologetics.

Why do I take such a humble stance? I satisfy myself with moral apologetics because of the community I hope to reach. I a addressing the secular, or de facto secular, community of progressive and dominant opinion on sexual morality in the early twenty first century.

This dominant opinion forming community accepts, explicitly or implicitly, the moral neutrality of sexuality. Those who hold this view hold that in principle no sexual act is morally wrong. Immoral sexual acts, if any, are determined by the circumstances in which the act is performed, the intentions of the actors and the consequences of the act.

Amongst progressives the moral neutrality of sexuality is regarded as almost self-evident. I have set myself the task of confronting the dominant view on sexual morality with arguments to dislodge any assumption of self evidence and prerogative of moral decency for the moral neutrality of sexuality.

In my book I made clear that my goal was moral apologetics to contemporary secular society. Unfortunately, my book has probably never been read; let alone reviewed.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. See Ch. I in which I explicitly acknowledge that my goal is moral apologetics. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.

Moral Apologetics

I have browsed in a little bit of John Henry Newman’s reflections on proving principles. Back in January in Why Justify a Moral Principle I noted that I needed to look at some of what Newman wrote about giving arguments for principles. He puts well what I think about the effectiveness of arguments for principles as a way of getting people to assent to the principle. I agree that arguments are not the way to get the assent of most, if any body’s. Probably the more rigorous the argument, the less effective it is for obtaining assent at the time of presentation.

However, I should have realized from logical considerations alone that even the best argument for a moral principle- a proof- cannot establish a moral principle as a command a person internalizes as an obligation. A proof of a moral principle establishes a fact about the moral principle! A proof establishes at best: It IS the case that one OUGHT to X. From what IS the case there is a logical gap between “This IS an obligation” and “I OUGHT to obey.”

But deeper than the logical gap is the psychological gap reflected linguistically by a linguistic mood change from indicative mood to imperative mood. A proof allows one to say in the indicative mood “You ought to do X.” is proved. An additional thought and sentiment is required to accept an obligation to do X by dropping “is proved” and accepting the imperative to me “You ought to do X!

This subtle point can be made in another way by distinguishing the assent to a principle as true and assenting to an imperative as coming from a valid authority. Assent to the command of an authority is not obtained by any proof that the authority gave the command but by receiving the command from the authority.

Nonetheless proving, or making a good case, that a command comes from the moral authority – or whatever the source of morality may be is important for clear thinking about morality.

So the purpose of developing an argument for a moral principle is to place in public reasoning, viz., somehow publish, defenses against claims that assent to the principle is irrational. In making a case for traditional sexual morality, the assent we seek is assent that our arguments are logically correct i.e. free from formal and informal fallacies and based on plausible assumptions. We seek assent, even if grudgingly granted to our rationality and decency along with assenting to the claim that the principle we are defending is not irrational. Seeking that type of assent for a moral principle can properly be called moral apologetics.

So, at the risk of seeming conceited, I can write that the approach in my book to defend a fundamental principle for male sexuality was correct. Chapter IV focused on an argument for the principle whose gist I will state one more time.

A man may intentionally seek an orgasm only in coitus open to conception with a woman to whom he has a lifelong commitment to care for her and any children resulting from their intercourse.

I imagined an academic setting – a philosophy seminar- as the context in which the argument is given. Assuming an academic context made clear that there was no intention of getting popular assent. I intended only moral apologetics.

To avoid the criticisms placed against stereotypic natural law arguments, I made an empirical case for selecting our reproductive systems as needing moral control. Sexuality, as opposed to other systems, can be perverted. Then I, more or less, used traditional “perverted faculty” considerations.

I should have used considerations from “New Natural Law” theory to point out the basic human good protected by obedience to the principle. And I probably should not have introduced my idiosyncratic interpretation of Kant to provide a Kantian justification.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. See Ch. IV for my justification. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.

Why Justify a Moral Principle?

I wrote a book* trying to justify a well know, even if not widely accepted, moral principle for male sexuality. In the course of several previous posts, I have been exploring moral theory, from the perspective of the consequences of mere violation of a moral principle. I reached the stage where I realized that a principle needs to be justified from a stance – some basic assumptions about sexuality. Then the argument from the stance must show that the principle follows from the stance and obedience to the principle is for human good. The purpose of this post is to ask myself again why I want to justify the principle along with noting that before presenting a justification I need to consider work of John Henry Newman. I have read that my approach to justification might well be similar to Newman’s way of justify assent to principles.

The principle commands men:

Thou shall not intentionally seek an orgasm except in coitus open to conception with a woman to whom you are committed for life to care for her and any child resulting from the coitus.

Perhaps my Catholic religion led me to take the principle seriously. However, once I learned basic biology the principle seemed sensible to me. Orgasms are for sperm dispersal. The purpose of the inward drive and pleasure are to get men to disperse sperm. Coitus is primarily for “baby making.”
Mothers and babies need care and protection.

Of course, I realize that the principle is hard to follow and is contradicted by many other suggestions. I hesitate to call them principles; let alone moral principles.

I am ashamed to confess that I have not always lived up to the principle. But I have never really doubted it. After violations in my teens as a young soldier and in early courting, I have obeyed the principle for over sixty years of married life. For a time, that involved living in accord with the so-called “rhythm method.” It has required discipline of mind and body. For instance, I love long distance running. I also appreciated how marathon training made obedience easier. There was a thirty five year period in my life during which I kept myself in condition so that I could run a full twenty six point 2 mile marathon on any weekend. Even in my eighties I discipline my eyes and thoughts.

I am not trying to justify the principle because I want to show myself that I have been living correctly most all of my life with respect to sexuality. I am confident that with respect to sexuality, I have.

So, when I consider only myself: Why I am still trying to justify the principle? There is something intellectual with which I am not satisfied. I am searching for a line of thought leading to a conclusion of which I can say “It has to be this way.” I am still searching for an intellectual compulsion.

When I consider others, I hope that my thoughts in these posts and my book are read by others. But what do I want to show others? I want to show that independently of religious considerations, a man who follows, or struggles to follow, the principle has a character trait which makes him a better human being – a man closer to being as he ought to be than if he followed any other principle for sexuality.

In a recent New York Review of books, Gary Wills had remarked that the Catholic Church in promoting the principle was promoting some type of “goofiness” about sex. Wills’ outlook is widely held. I hope to show that that widespread outlook on sex is foolishness.

* My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. See Ch. IV for my justification see pp. 72ff. for discussion of moral harm. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.

Pope Francis’ Opens a Door to Sexual Nihilism

I take the liberty of quoting the entire article by Edward Pentin from the on-line edition of National Catholic Register,September 14, 2019. It is evidence that Pope Francis either endorses what I have called “The moral neutrality of sexuality” or is willing to have inconsistent sexual moral theologies taught as authentically Catholic. However, the moral neutrality of sexuality would be the sexual morality taught at the important the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences.

I have pointed out that accepting the moral neutrality of sexuality undercuts traditional Catholic sexual morality. Note that accepting the moral neutrality of sexuality is tantamount to accepting that no sexual acts are intrinsically morally disordered.

Let us pray that the Holy Father knows how to preserve Catholic Christianity as a serious religion if it in principle accepts that under certain conditions, with certain intentions and high probability of beneficial consequences any sexual act is morally permissible. The moral neutrality of sexuality undercuts the religious outlook of Catholic Christianity which views human beings as fallen, needing redemption for our sins, and divine help to avoid sin.

There is nothing like the struggle to be chaste, eg., struggling against temptations to masturbation, to convince us that we are strongly tempted to sin, we cannot avoid sin by our own efforts and we need forgiveness for our sins. Performance of the corporeal works of mercy is necessary for salvation. But they are far easier to perform than, say, practicing natural family planning. At least that has been my personal experience

The Catholic Register article follows.

New JPII Institute Professors Question Church Orthodoxy on Homosexuality, Contraception

Father Maurizio Chiodi and Father Pier Davide Guenzi currently teach moral theology at the University of Northern Italy in Milan, and both are well known for their questioning of moral absolutes.

VATICAN CITY — The latest development in what is becoming increasingly viewed as both a purge and a revolution of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute is the hiring of two moral theologians whose views on homosexuality and contraception contradict the magisterium.
The new professors, Father Maurizio Chiodi and Father Pier Davide Guenzi, both moral theologians at the University of Northern Italy in Milan, will begin teaching at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences as part of its 2019-2020 curriculum announced this week.
Father Chiodi, whom Archbishop Paglia appointed as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2017, is to teach “Theological Ethics of Life” at the institute.
Father Guenzi is to lecture on the “Anthropology and Ethics of Birth.” Both professors, whose appointments follow highly contentious removals of long-serving lecturers in July, are well known for their questioning of moral absolutes.
In 2017, Father Chiodi gave a controversial Rome lecture on Humanae Vitae in which he used Chapter 8 of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia, to justify contraceptive use in some cases.
More recently, he gave an interview to the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire in which he asserted that, while each homosexual person is called to chastity, “under certain conditions” and depending on circumstances, homosexual relationships can be “the most fruitful way” for same-sex attracted persons “to enjoy good relations.”
The interview appeared to suggest that Father Chiodi was open to considering homosexual acts as “objectively good,” according to bioethicist Tommaso Scandroglio, writing in the Italian Catholic daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.
Father Guenzi expressed similar views to Father Chiodi in another recent interview with Avvenire. On the subject of whether homosexual acts could ever be licit, Father Guenzi equivocated, saying it depended on the “relationship, between the intention of the individual and the sense of their actions.” In this regard, he added, “they may be deemed ‘imperfect’ as other sexual behaviors are, even within the life of a stable heterosexual couple.”
With respect to homosexual relations generally, he drew on Amoris Laetitia, Chapter 8, to assert that every situation has to be discerned differently. In recent years “we have learned that the natural law must be continually rethought,” he said. “There are deep dynamics inherent to each human person which ask to be respected as inherent to the structure of anthropology.”
Fathers Chiodi and Guenzi are two of eight new lecturers to be hired by the institute this forthcoming academic year, all of them Italian, while other incumbent professors including Polish philosophy Prof. Stanislaw Grygiel, a close friend of Pope St. John Paul II, have been sidelined or given their marching orders.
Grygiel has said he believes the institute is being “destroyed” and that John Paul II’s anthropological teaching replaced by “sociological and psychological meanderings.”
Both Professors Chiodi and Guenzi are understood to be close associates of the institute’s grand chancellor, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, and effectively replace Msgr. Livio Melina, a former president of the institute who held the institute’s now-obsolete chair of fundamental moral theology, and moral theologian, Father José Noriega.
The removals in July of Msgr. Melina and Father Noriega, and the way they were dismissed, led to over 200 scholars worldwide, including well-known U.S. academics such as professor Robert George and professor. Scott Hahn, signing an open letter to Archbishop Paglia, and the institute’s president, Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri, asking they be reinstated.
The personnel changes come two years after Pope Francis issued a decree refounding the institute and giving it a new name.
The Register asked Archbishop Paglia whether he could give reasons for employing Fathers Chiodi and Guenzi to teach at the institute in light of their views on homosexuality and contraception. He has yet to reply.

End of Register article

I authored a book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism Oklahoma City March 11, 2014. Sexual Nihilism is equivalent to the moral neutrality of sexuality. I argue that sexual nihilism leads to total moral nihilism which is frequently labeled moral relativism. See Book Web Page for more information about the book. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.

A Year of Chastity

This is a special appeal to anyone who basically agrees with the stance on sexual morality expressed in my blog post and happens to visit my blog site. (I hope this is not a subclass of the null class.)

Please make some kind of effort to persuade the Catholic Church, or at least the Catholic Diocese in which you live, to declare 2020 or 2021 a year of Chastity as Pope Francis declared 2016 to be a year of Mercy -“talk up” the idea. During this year there would be all sorts of programs and practices to lead people to an understanding of the traditional sexual morality taught by the Church and to guide them towards developing the strength of character to practice it.

A call for a year of chastity is not a call for reaction or revolution. There is no exemplary age of chastity. Oh, conversational style varies. In certain places at certain times conversation has been prudish. At other times and places conversation has been bawdy. But we really do not know what has gone on after sunset throughout the ages. It is unrealistic to expect progressing into a golden age of chastity. The struggle to make ourselves proper human sexual beings will always be difficult. There will be failures. For even if the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. A year of chastity would be a time to remind ourselves of the rules for proper human sexuality and seek encouragement for living in accordance with them.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. In my book, I make a philosophical defense of traditional Catholic sexual morality. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.

The Intercourse Theory of Conception

Don’t these people know about the intercourse theory of conception? That’s what I cynically ask myself when I read novels in which the author sends his characters merrily off, for all sorts of reasons, to start baby-making.

That sexual intercourse between a man and woman is the cause of conception is one of our best established theories. Coupled with awareness of this theory comes those positive and negative thoughts and feelings about sexuality. We realize its importance for human survival, pleasures and love. Yet we dread its disruptive power.

The intercourse theory of conception, and accompanying thoughts and feelings are common sense. Suddenly, it struck me that the way to make my defense of traditional sexual morality clearer is to stay with common sense. I am not saying that acceptance of traditional sexual morality is part of common sense. However, the beliefs and concepts used in a strong case for traditional sexual morality are expressible in the every day language with which we talk about sex. The argument does not need some special philosophical vocabulary and system. The ideas we use to talk about relationships, to give advice, to teach children about sex, to gossip, etc., are sufficient to follow, accept or reject the argument. The importance of emphasizing that the argument goes on at the common sense level is that it has to be given serious attention. It cannot be ignored as coming from some special religion or philosophy. It is not necessary to develop a special philosophical vocabulary and then show that use of this conceptual scheme is the correct way to represent reality as it is.

In my book, I tended to develop too much special vocabulary and explicitly draw upon the philosopher Kant. I am not changing the basic themes of the book. But I am setting aside ways of speaking, issues and scholarship which would be of interest to academic philosophers, reference to other philosophers and intriguing philosophical puzzles. I will write for the intelligent lay person using terms of everyday life. Of course, this does not eliminate the critical thinking need for making distinctions and defining how some crucial terms will be used in discussion. But critical thinking is common sense.

There are other common sense concepts whose use we need not justify. The language of morality: right, wrong, good, evil etc. does not need defense. We do not need to show that we have a right to talk about right and wrong. We do make the distinction between the results of natural processes we can alter and the results of natural processes, such as the getting of agreements by promises, which it is wrong to frustrate by lying. We do not need to justify using the notions of good character, a way a person ought to be, and a meaning for life. If we try to show that we are entitle to talk at the common sense level, we start an endless regress of justifying our ways of thinking. This undercuts giving an effective argument.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. These blog posts are in effect work towards a 2nd edition. I have not changing the basic line of argument in my book. But in these blog posts I am developing better ways of expressing my argument by staying with the language of common sense and removing topics and language which could at best be of interest to professional academic philosophers. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.

Trump: His Sexual Nihilism

By accepting the murder of Jamal Khashoggi as the price of doing business with Saudi Arabia, our president, Donald Trump, proclaimed to the entire world that he is a nihilist. Nothing matters, everything is permitted, as along as it serves his interest and he has the power to do it. On this Thanksgiving Day, 2018, let us thank God that the entire world does not yet despise us as a nihilist nation.

How can we protect ourselves from degenerating into nihilists? There is a bulwark against nihilism in the struggle to build the character and follow the rules of traditional sexual morality.

Donald Trump is a notorious sexual nihilist. In principle, every thing sexual is permissible. He sets aside any moral constraints on satisfying his sexual inclinations . Legal need for consent is not a great obstacle for him. His power and wealth allows him to “coerce” consent.

I wrote Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism , Tulsa, 2014 See Confronting Sexual Nihilism. In the book I make three main points. 1.Struggling to live in accordance with traditional sexual morality gives us a purpose in life.
2.Following the commonly held moral theory that anything sexual is morally permissible if there is consent, soon leads to full-fledged nihilism that in principle everything
is permissible.
3. A strong case, using only claims and concepts available to all contemporary rational people, that it is reasonable to struggle to build the character to follow the rules of traditional sexual morality.

I need help in making this case. Please feel free to use and develop any ideas from my book or these blog posts

These blog posts are in effect work towards a 2nd edition. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.