How to be a pervert

We’ve been talking of late about “perverted faculty arguments,” which deploy the concept of perversion in a specific, technical sense.  The perversion of a human faculty essentially involves both using the faculty but doing so in a way that is positively contrary to its natural end.  As I’ve explained before, simply to refrain from using a faculty at all is not to pervert it.  Using a faculty for something that is merely other than its natural end is also not to pervert it.  Hence, suppose faculty F exists for the sake of end E.  There is nothing perverse about not using F at all, and there is nothing perverse about using F but for the sake of some other end G.  What is perverse is using F but in a way that actively prevents E from being realized.  It is this contrariness to the very point of the faculty, this outright frustration of its function, that is the heart of the perversity.  (See the paper linked to above for exposition, defense, and application of the idea.)

Perversion, in this sense, is arguably analogous to performative self-contradiction.  (I do not say that it is exactly the same thing as that, but only that there is an analogy.)  Consider first the general notion of a self-contradiction, before turning to the performative kind.  The idea of a round square is self-contradictory, because being round and being square mutually exclude one another.  It’s as if, in trying to make a round square, you would be putting something out with your right hand while at the same time taking it back with your left.  Or it’s as if you would be attempting to create something while at the very same time annihilating it.  A round square is a self-undermining kind of thing, its roundness and squareness mutually subverting or frustrating each other’s very existence.

This is loose talk, of course, since round squares, being non-existent, cannot do anything, including frustrating or subverting themselves.  But performative self-contradictions involve things that do exist, namely people.  Suppose you utter the words “I am not uttering any words.”  The very act of making the statement falsifies it.  The statement gives with one hand what the act takes back with the other.  Or, you might say that the statement points in one direction while the making of it points simultaneously in the opposite direction. 

Perverting a faculty is somewhat like this.  A faculty F is of its nature directed toward end E and in perverting it one directs the faculty instead away from E.  With one hand, as it were, one gives E – just by virtue of using F, which inherently points toward E – while with the other hand one takes E away.  The faculty’s natural function is at odds with your use of it, just as the act of speaking is in the example above at odds with the words being spoken, and just as being square is at odds with being round.

Now, a self-contradictory concept effectively nullifies the being of the thing the concept is a concept of.  Being round nullifies being square, so that a round square cannot even “get off the ground” ontologically, as it were. 

A performative self-contradiction effectively nullifies the truth of the statement made by a speaker.  In our example, the very act of speaking the sentence “I am not uttering any words” falsifies the words being spoken.

The perversion of a faculty effectively nullifies the goodness of the action being performed.  The good use of a faculty must be consistent with its natural end, and the perverse user of the faculty actively prevents that end.  Hence the good use of our communicative faculties is inconsistent with lying, which is contrary to their truth-conveying end; the good use of our sexual faculties must be consistent with their procreative and unitive ends; and so forth.

Being, truth, and goodness are, of course, transcendentals and thus convertible – the same thing looked at from different points of view.  We might expect, then, that just as there are self-defeating kinds of would-be entities (e.g. round squares) and self-defeating kinds of utterances (performative self-contradictions), there would also be self-defeating kinds of action.  That is, I propose, what the perversion of a faculty amounts to. 

The perversity of frustrating a faculty is arguably also analogous to the irrationality of self-contradictory thought.  Indeed, we could just as well switch the descriptions: There is a kind of perversity to self-contradictory thinking, and there is a kind of inherent irrationality to the perversion of a faculty.  Rational action is always and necessarily good action (again, see the natural law analysis in the paper linked to above) and the perversion of a faculty involves acting contrary to the good. 

Note that these (tentative and sketchy) remarks are not intended as an argument for the wrongness of perverting a faculty.  The argument for that conclusion is presented in the paper linked to above, and nothing in that paper depends on anything I say in this blog post.  But it does seem to me that the nature of perversity is illuminated by the analogy with self-contradiction.