Objectification

Abstract

This chapter argues that objectification constitutes a third interpretive moral wrong, alongside discrimination and stereotyping. Objectification combines stereotyping with instrumentalisation. Given the fragmentation of the moral person, discussed earlier, the view that the instrumentalisation of ontological persons is uniquely unacceptable might seem to rest on questionable grounds. Nevertheless, in view of the self-interpreting capacities of ontological persons, there is a distinctive wrong associated with reducing them to the status of a means: that of inducing them to adopt an instrumentalised self-conception. The wrong of objectification consists not simply in what we do to another, but in how we interpret them, and how we thereby invite them to think of themselves. There is potential for a form of reduction to the status of a means here which goes beyond anything that need result simply from treating another as a means. An examination of the phenomenon of sexual objectification serves to highlight some of the distinctive features of this form of reduction to the status of a means.