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Have you ever been in a situation where you were contemplating the practicality of something and the notion was eventually defeated by the realization that the particular something in question would become absurd in its use?
You may have even heard yourself say, "It would defeat the purpose". That's a pretty common expression. This is often the case when we're making a choice about something. For example, if you were looking to buy a computer and you only needed it for home use in your office. Considering the type of use you're going to get out of it, you wouldn't take much time to consider a laptop for your new purchase. Obviously that type of use of the laptop would defeat the purpose of owning one.
It simply wouldn't make any sense to buy one in this case and would be a waste of resources. Or how about buying a new car? If you are a young single person and only needed it to get yourself around town, you wouldn't consider buying a minivan because that would defeat the purpose. Again it wouldn't make any sense.
The relevance of this reality extends beyond our shopping decisions and can drift into the moral realm as well. Even within our purchasing decisions there can start to exist a moral component. Like buying a hummer just because you like the look of it. Obviously that type of application of its use defeats its purpose as a versatile vehicle that would be useful in extreme situations. But if you're only cruising around town, you’re certainly polluting a lot more than you should. You could get the same function out of a small compact and have less of a negative impact on those around you.
This principle can help us understand our personal choices as well. The types of choices that, on the surface, appear to only affect us. In a moral sense, these are sometimes referred to as healthy or unhealthy choices. Often it's hard to sort through some of the dilemma's that arise when we are considering these types of choices so it's always helpful to have some principles to look to when we're making them. I like this example as one guideline because I think the phrase has a very profound meaning that we may not even be aware of when we use it. Basically, when we dissect the phrase ("it defeats the purpose"), what we are saying is that if a certain action or function is void of its purpose, there's a strong indication that it is being misused.
So the principle that seems to reveal itself is that whenever we are considering a choice, we must always keep the purpose of whatever we are considering in mind and must not try to separate the purpose from whatever end we are trying to achieve. In the example of the hummer, because we're not using it with its purpose in mind, we are in effect, doing something that is immoral. In that example, we can test our principal by measuring the obvious negative effects that our misuse would cause. So in that example our principle holds up because of the obvious negative consequence of pollution.
When it comes to our personal choices (the type that appear to only affect us) I find that this principle can really start to illuminate our decisions. This can be especially true for choices that are tied to our biology because our biological functions all have purposes attached to them (at least the ones that we affect through our choices). Like eating and nutrition. There's a very clear purpose to eating. It is to restore the body and give it energy so that it can continue to live. There are times, though, when we try to separate the purpose of eating and isolate one of its effects; namely pleasure.
Pleasure can be a consequence of eating and sometimes, we can become blinded by that and forget that this is not its purpose. This can take the form of eating things that aren't nutritious at all for us. Eating disorders are a perfect example of this reality run amuck. Bulimia is an extreme case in which someone is trying to completely sever the purpose of nutrition from the act of eating. It is an attempt to gain the pleasure of eating things while not having to face the negative consequences of bad food. This is one example of where hedonism can lead us.
Something that I find startling and confusing about modern society’s collective moral compass, is that we can clearly recognize the disordered mindset of someone with an eating disorder, but completely fail to make that same recognition when we consider another biological function: sex.
Sex is slightly more complex to evaluate in a moral sense because it has more than one purpose. As best as I can tell, they are procreation and bonding. The commonly accepted use of sex, today, however; is a means to an end. That end is often not either of its purposes, but instead; pleasure. For the exact same reasons as we’ve seen in the case of nutrition and any other act or object being used in isolation of its purpose, using sex with pleasure as the exclusive end-goal can and does have severely negative consequences. Even without those consequences, we should not have to think very hard to see how the sexual function is completely misused in cases such as masturbation, pornography, extramarital sex, and artificial contraception. Each of those examples is an attempt to isolate one or both of the purposes of sex from the act in an attempt to merely enjoy the pleasure of the act. Masturbation and contraception are clearly no different from bulimic acts. Bulimics attempt to isolate pleasure from the natural and biological purpose of eating. The natural and biological purpose of sex is to reproduce. If we are artificially interfering with that purpose, we are committing the exact same mistake as a bulimic when we use contraception or masturbate.
In the case of extramarital sex, we are trying to isolate the other purpose, being bonding. The act of sex has a powerful bonding affect on two people. This consequence, if misused can severely hurt one or both party’s ability to relate and bond with future friends/lovers because they have already attached themselves to another through an act that is best reserved for a state of commitment. Marriage is the ideal source of this commitment because it is a legal and public declaration that you are prepared to completely bond yourself to another with your physical body, your emotions, and your economic livelihood. Sex outside of that commitment risks the well being of two people because of the potential outcome of being bonded together and then ripped apart because of a lack of commitment and/or preparedness for the life giving consequence of the act (and this is often the outcome in today’s society).
A very obvious objection arises at this point in my thread of thinking. It is that sex, performed by a couple who is not in a state of fertility, is morally no different from a couple who uses artificial means. The consistency of this comparison is interrupted by the simple fact that the couple who is having sex outside of the fertile time period, is not deliberately interfering with nature. The reality is, nature has accorded us ¾ of our time to enjoy the pleasures and purpose of sex without one of its outcomes (conception). In the case of the couple who is contracepting; they are deliberately trying to isolate the purpose artificially without concern of the natural order attached to the act. This makes it morally; no different from the other examples I’ve given in which it defeats the purpose of the act.
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