Chesterton not only foresaw our current sexual
libertinism, he also predicted there'd come a day when smoking a cigar would be considered more offensive than abortion.
What we call virtue libertarianism is the alternative to
libertinism. Virtue libertarians recognize that we have a duty to respect our own moral nature and to promote its development in others in proportion to the responsibility we have for them.
Its character as a genuinely underground organization radicalized the Green Lamp, and this radicalization found expression in an ostentatious attitude of
libertinism. "Whereas Arzamas was simultaneously a phenomenon of society and domesticity," Peschio argues, "the Green Lamp was conceived in opposition to society norms and values." Hence the Lampists, unlike the comparatively prim Arzamasians, "constructed a self-image that was all about flouting moral convention, about reveling in frivolity, drink, and wild sexual abandon" (62-63).
On the other hand, it would help to shift the emphasis from two diametrically opposed positions sustaining either his Whiggism (Hughes) or his staunch Toryism (Canfield), both equally convincing, depending on the play considered, to a different kind of politics, that borrows elements from both positions: an essentially syncretic discourse that extols
libertinism and mocks puritan morality while, at the same time, containing their opposites: the disappearance or rather the extenuation of
libertinism and a measured promotion of marriage.
The accepted performance of conservatism halted where libertarians became hostile to religion, where antistatism became antimilitarism, where libertarianism and
libertinism became indistinguishable.
The principles of radical sexual autonomy, freedom from any form of moral judgment, and government support to ameliorate the consequences of sexual
libertinism are present in the fights over abortion, gay rights, and now transgender issues.
Yet when our fellow human beings look at America through the screen of our entertainment, what they see most darkly is a rejection of tradition, religion, family and every kind of institutional restraint, in favor of unseemly egotism and
libertinism. Attracted and repulsed by this image, they might be forgiven for not appreciating the part about self-governance."
Both "On the Birthday" and Penelope to Ulysses demonstrate Killigrew's continued interest at voicing her protest against the
libertinism of the age.
It does not at all mean squandering God-given energies and indulging in immoderation and
libertinism.
about his life's work and his unabashed
libertinism.
He is currently researching early modern
libertinism and ideas of the sublime.
Another was Modesta's "
libertinism"--her defiance of accepted ethical norms.
Even the pleasures of
libertinism wane with time, as all the great libertines have discovered, and often admitted.