Thus, we can condemn necrophilia but we should get rid of the term and simply call it property violation. There is nothing special about a dead human body. A notable inconsistency arises. If so, we ought to be willing to say that if someone truly wants to be merely a cadaver with which another can sexually pleasure himself, then so be it.
Why are we willing to chop up, burn and mutilate a body but suddenly turn Puritan when sex steps into the picture? Again, one might oppose it on property violation grounds, but this only highlights the irrelevance of its being a dead human being. Another response to necrophilia rests, as usual, with the transmutation of disgust into a crime. No one, surely, can consider disgust a sufficient criterion for sending people to prison and darkening their lives with a criminal record.
But different things disgust different people, so we would be resting criminal procedure on the whims of whoever happened to hold the highest office that day. This would affect anyone, since one could be convicted for merely holding a view, let alone committing an act, that someone finds disgusting. This is no way for a society to exist. We need open discussions, based on reasonable debate, as much as possible.
This is not a call for relativism, as some might think, but a call for an effective use of open, critical discussion, not using merely emotions and personal feelings as sufficient grounds for decision-making. This need not be said but at least should be mentioned: corpses cannot be physically harmed. Thus, if we factor out aspects like property violation, there is little that crops us to indicate necrophilia as a wrongful act. Some might say having sex with the dead is unhealthy.
But then so is smoking, driving, drinking, which we allow. Besides, corpses can be cleaned and can be made more hygienic than many living people. If there was no living person who cared about the corpse in question, what would make violating it — whether through sex or mutilation or eating — wrong?
Necrophiliacs may disgust us, but we cannot let our disgust filter out clear reflection on the subject. This chapter offers a discussion of necrophilia, an offense that has been almost completely ignored in the criminal law theory literature but that raises interesting moral and conceptual issues—about the limits of the harm and wrong principles and the problem of the so-called missing subject.
After ruling out a harm to third parties rationale, it suggests that the most plausible argument for criminalizing necrophilia is that it causes harm to the deceased person whose corpse is mistreated. But does it make sense to say that a person can suffer harms or wrongs postmortem? The question has an ancient philosophical pedigree and remains contentious.
The chapter argues that the wrong caused by necrophilia is not to the corpse as such but to the antemortem person the corpse once embodied, who had an interest in maintaining her sexual autonomy while she was still alive. Keywords: necrophilia , crimes against nature , harm principle , Epicurus , missing subject. Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content. To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us. All Rights Reserved. John Troyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The allegations were based on statements that Savile made himself after the fact and were far less substantiated than other abuses carried out by Savile with actual living persons. But nevertheless the necrophilia quotes took centre stage. But what is it about the sexual abuse of corpses shortened to the term necrophilia in the 19th century that some seem to find so fascinating, titillating, and abject? We find many dead things difficult, not least a human.
The authors said necrophiles — as they are also called — often chose occupations that put them in contact with corpses.
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