It is significant to see a JME article that deals with prostitution ethics. Moen provides a clear and succinct outline as to why he considers nine of the most influential arguments against prostitution invalid or incomplete and concludes that prostitution is 'no more harmful than a line of occupations’.1 However, while Moen is able to clearly challenge contemporary objections to prostitution, I suggest that Moen's argument is itself incomplete as it does not address essential key ontological issues surrounding human agency and the definition of harm. This critical analysis will briefly suggest why this omission weakens Moen's argument. I conclude that prostitution differs substantially from other professions through the type of harm that it causes to the moral agents involved.

First, to clarify my general terms, I will refer to prostitution as ‘the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity for employment’.2 This is the same definition that Moen uses in his argument. I would argue that this practice or occupation offers an ethical challenge as it involves two moral agents interacting under a contractual agreement. That is, they must be somehow rationally capable of forming such a contract. The client and the prostitute negotiate a price in exchange for the service provided. Rational and reasonable deliberation ensures that the client and the prostitute both receive what they require from the exchange. The ethical agents are therefore presumed to be essentially capable of rational decision-making.

Moen begins the article by outlining ‘two views of sexual ethics’. These are the 'significance view’ and the ‘casual view’: Either ‘sex is permissible as an expression of romantic love’ or ‘sex need not be significant in order to be permissible’.1 From the onset, it is surely fundamentally problematic to ‘categorise’ sexual ethics into merely two types? Surely there are a multiplicity of sexual ethics that cannot be confined to this arbitrary categorisation!ⁱ To take but one example, there is no mention of the still influential conservative Roman Catholic ethic that sexual activity is only appropriate, and therefore permissible, in the context of marriage for the sake of procreation. It is inadequate to assume just two general categories when in fact sexual ethics is multifaceted and various. Moen uses two variations of the significance view (the ‘weak significance view’ and the ‘strong significance view’) as the framework for his counterargument. In arguing for the ethical validity of prostitution, he will provide counterarguments against the arguments for a sexual ethic that either weakly or strongly requires a precondition of romantic love.

I would argue, however, that this incompletely frames the contemporary discourse in sexual ethics. There are different categories of sexual ethics and there are different approaches to sexual ethics that exist within these categories. For example, the ‘virtue ethics’ category is not addressed in this article, but maintains a strong influence within the contemporary discourse on sexual ethics. Within virtue ethics there exists a wide range of perspectives: Halwani's temperance-based approach suggests that what is sexually virtuous is that which bases itself on a balance of self-control,4 whereas Scruton's chastity-based approach defines sexual virtue through its role in the shared 'generality of the human condition’.5 However, as Moen uses the ‘strong significance view’ and the ‘weak significance view’, I will employ these categories for the remainder of the critique. Both positions essentially argue that there ought to be some type of attachment behind the act of sex for it to be morally permissible. Moen attempts to dismantle this ethic (ie, that moral sex contains attachment) in nine separate steps.

To take just some of these, in the ‘objectification argument’, Moen argues that the voluntary nature of prostitution may challenge the assumption, ‘that which involved objectification is harmful’.1 He claims there is nothing forced upon the prostitute and that ‘prostitution may be one of the only professions where the buyer cares for the seller’.1 While prostitution may indeed be performed through the mutual rational consent of both agents, care is not a concept that usually characterises such a transient context. Normally, if sexual partners care for each other they do not require any monetary exchange for sex. Moen also fails to understand the profundity of the concept of objectification.ⁱⁱ A deeper understanding requires looking at what it is, if anything, that makes human agents unique in agency and humanness. Thus, what I am arguing for could perhaps be referred to as a more existential conceptualisation of harm, whereby the ontological question of ‘what is it to be human?’ gives weight to the exploration of how prostitution may affect this humanness in a manner that objectifies it. The objectification argument would therefore be one of 'what is it that makes this human less of a human and more of an object?’ That is, how does the act of selling sex reduce the complex ontology of the human being through exchanging physical intercourse for money? Similarly, the concept of care is employed in a shallow sense: for the care that the client shows to the prostitute is a care for the prostitute's sexual pleasure, and lacks any continuity or depth beyond the sensual moment of activity. I would suggest that it is problematic to define this as an act of 'care’. I would argue that care requires a movement beyond the self towards the recognition of the need of the other. Thus, within this recognition of the need of the other the human agent is identifying and nurturing an attachment that permits the human to become more rather than less human. I would suggest that this discussion requires looking beyond the given understanding of human as primarily a rational agent in order to more fully conceptualise an existential understanding of harm. The objectification argument is therefore not essentially problematic insofar as it conceptualises the reduction of sexual activity to a sellable product, but rather the definition of harm upon which this argument rests.

The ‘selling one's body argument’ is similar to the argument of organ donation. Is it ever acceptable to sell a part of a human? Moen clearly distinguishes between two understandings of ‘selling’: either selling relinquishes the rights of the agent upon reception of payment or it is a mere ‘renting’ and the agent maintains full property rights and ownership of their body.1 The challenge in prostitution may be which body parts are being sold. For while the client may technically just be ‘renting’ the body of the prostitute, in the act of heterosexual intercourse the man enters the woman and uses her body as a means of gaining physical pleasure. Whether it is a ‘selling’ or a ‘renting’ makes no difference in the actual act of intercourse. What is different from selling is that, in borrowing the body, the client must then pay a sum and leave without being able to have sex again until the next payment. If handing over rights is the definition of sale, then selling may be more linked with illicit sex trafficking rather than voluntary prostitution (which is what Moen essentially argues). However, this still leaves us with the question: What does it mean to ‘rent’ a body, and does the specific anatomical part affect this? I would argue that this requires understanding the ontology of the human agent. It also requires a deeper analysis of sexual ethics. How does sex affect what it is to be a human agent? Is this being then harmed through the renting of the body for sex?

I have questioned two of the nine aspects of Moen's analysis. However, I would argue that all nine follow a similar structure that point to essentially the same concepts. Different facets of prostitution are judged based on the ‘harm’ that they result in to the individual agents involved. For example, if prostitution causes the objectification of women, and the objectification of women constitutes that which is harmful to women, then prostitution is harmful. What is troubling is not the individual arguments, for they are succinctly presented and cleverly discussed, but rather the underlying problematic terminology that is employed. These relate to underlying questions of ontological agency. Nowhere is the human agent defined as what it is to be this particular human agent. It seems that Moen employs a rationalist framework of human identity to define agency. The challenge is, however, that the harm discussed does not have a defined source to point to. If there is a harm done in prostitution, then there is a harm done to some specific human agent by another specific human agent. This harm is based on something that affects ‘being a good human being qua being human’.6 Yet this fundamental ontological discussion is not addressed, which leaves the reader to wonder: How can we know what harm is when we do not know what it is to be this particular agent? Nowhere is the human agent defined as what it is to be this particular human agent. Nor does Moen allow for this discussion to occur elsewhere for his terms his approach that of essential ‘objectivism about harm’.1 ,ⁱⁱⁱ

I would suggest that a more complete understanding of sexual ethics with regard to prostitution ought to address fundamental ontological questions. For if sexual activity is the physical union of two human agents, and prostitution is a paid contractual agreement for sex, then an understanding of who it is that is performing this act is crucial. Are we speaking of a merely rational being? Or is there something more that is involved in our human agency? Thus, while Moen considers some key issues in the contemporary discussion concerning prostitution, the argument is incomplete. It is difficult to understand how to measure harm when there is no adequate definition of who it is that is being harmed. Sexual ethics concerns itself with the specific ethical nature of the sexual act. This is the distinguishing feature between sexual ethics and other forms of ethics. Prostitution can only be argued for or against with this as the ethical foreground. I would argue that Moen has not outlined why a sexual ethic is necessary, per se. In presupposing an essential ‘objectivism’1 about harm, he cannot provide an adequate groundwork that fully answers why his ethical perspective ought to be chosen over others.