iwpoe wrote:

Well, we could start with the most obvious case that's a good candidate for a metaphysical gender problem: the medical hermaphrodite. I'm not exactly sure what to do with people who have a problem down to the point of a chromosomal abnormality that results in mixed expression of genitals and sexual characteristics.

Even if they are some kind of deformation of human nature they still would have some kind of proper metaphysical description. They wouldn't have no essence. And in that case you would have to admit that this is a human being or at least something very much like a human being that is not one gender or the other but in some sense analogous to both. Is that an adequate way of talking about it or is there something wrong with that account?

If you don't want to admit that the soul can be neither male nor female (or both/and), then it seems to me that the hermaphrodite would be a genuine case of somebody of some unknown metaphysical gender stuck in a body that does not express it.

Of course they have an essence: human being.  But we have an imperfect instantiation of that essence.   I would unhesitatingly says "This is a human being." 

You are wrong that it follows from this that I would "have a human being that is neither one gender nor the other."  First of all, there are a good number chromosomal abnormalities, XXX, XXY, XYY, and others.  I know that *what* I am dealing with is a human being that is neither clearly male or female.  But since I know human beings are sexually dimorphic as male or female, and I know "here is a human being with whose development something has gone wrong" it is perfectly reasonable for me to say "this human being is either a male whose development has gone wrong or a female whose development has gone wrong, even if I can't easly tell which I am dealing with."  

BUT

I don't want to talk about INTERSEXED people now (unless we need to).   I am interested in knowing what MAKES one be of a given sex.

iwpoe wrote:

Thus, in the bulk of cases, I don't understand you to be dealing with anything metaphysically problematic.

Yes, I'm aware that the peculiar metaphysics of modernity dictate both that my autonomous will can simply "identify" as a woman, and I will be one, my "existence creating my essence" or "constructing my own reality", and that my body is my property, to autonomously do with as I please, to such an extent that if it were biologically possible for me to conceive a child in my body, I would be a have a moral right to have it killed.

And I'm also aware that some people have a pathological kind of gender dysphoria that should be treated as a sickness.

But you got my question backwards. I don't care about the bulk of cases (if your account does apply to the bulk of them).  I am interested in the ones that ARE metaphysically problematic, IF ANY ARE.  



 

iwpoe wrote:

Well, I take it that Etz means 'pleasure improperly taken as an end in itself: an entire ethic and lifestyle founded on pleasure for pleasure's own sake.'

That was the idea that I took disagreement with: is that homosexual, provided that they genuinely do wish to "marry", are necessarily aiming at mere pleasure.

Would it be controversial to say that human beings discern the good in a confused and disordered way in general, so that it would make perfect sense that some homosexuals to discern the good of marriage and think that this good can be realized in a same-sex union? 

I think something parallel took place among the Greeks.  They placed a much higher value on friendship than we moderns do.  And it isn't because friendship is less good for us than them, but they did a much better job in being AWARE of this goodness, and thus you see them praising friendship everywhere.  Plato has a dialogue aboun friendship, but he doesn't have one about marriage.  Aristotle devotes two of ten books in the Nicomachean Ethics to friendship, but treats marriage as lesser kind of friendship for direct flourishing, but one which is necessary in other respects.  

I have two points.  The first is, since the Greeks thought so highly of friendship, why would we be surprised that some of the Greeks wanted to say "friendship is a great good, and sexual pleasure is a great good, so wouldn't the best thing be Friendship + Sex? " ?   We may want to say, "No, no, if you sexualize your friendship, you  won't make it better, but will destroy it in essence."  And we would be right.  But it isn't necessarily easy to see that that is true.  Fortunately, Plato pointed it out clearly enough.   Once you accept the proposition "sexual pleasure is a great good", there doesn't seem to be any in principle reason not to attempt to COMBINE this great good with some other great good to make something even better.

Oddly enough, the same-sex marriage argument is "se

The claim that God is not a being, but is either Being itself or is beyond Being or both, seems to me to function as a constant reminder to us in our thinking about God that we are ALWAYS thinking analogically.  To say that "God is" is correct, but is not univocal with any other "X is."  

Existence is not a quality.  Kant probably had something like that in mind in his famous assertion that "being is not a real predicate."  If existence is added to something, it does not gain a new quality it previously did not possess; rather, it must first be before it can have any qualities or properties at all.

If it is true we can only grasp and speak of God analogically, then it follows that someone can always make the move of pointing out the disanalogy in any speech about God, since a perfect analogy would be a univocity. 

This is why the via negativa is preferable when speaking of God.  
 

Timocrates wrote:

In my experience wrestling with things philosophically, I have found that clarity does not come easily but once it comes it's almost difficult to understand how you could ever have believed otherwise or doubted the truth. That is, it is as if it was obvious all along.

Yes, it is very much like that.  Plato describes it exactly this way (or rather, Alcibiades does) in his speech at the end of the Symposium.