Is watching porn wrong ? A Stoic answer (long version)

Should modern Stoics refrain from consuming pornography?

The Stoics have, a priori, never talked about pornography. However, they have studied desire, pleasure, moderation, justice, well-being… Actually, their conceptual system — the virtue ethics — makes it possible to deal with almost any topic. Thus, pornography is no exception to the rule and, despite the lack of serious scientific studies on the subject, an ethical discourse based on stoic sources is possible. This is the purpose of this post.

1. WHAT IS PORNOGRAPHY?

It is not easy to define pornography. The few researchers in pornographic studies have not reached any consensus as the word designates different things. Indeed, what is the relationship between the 3000 years old erotic papyrus of Turin, the Kamasutra, a text by the Marquis de Sade, and a video made by the current biggest production studios ?

In his Introduction to Porn Studies, François-Ronan Dubois suggests “to use a provisional principle, unsatisfactory but partly functional: any document that explicitly represents at least one sexual act is pornographic”. As such, all the above-mentioned documents are pornographic. And while this definition has certain heuristic qualities, it is not the one we will…