TOMORROW: UKZN–UNIZULU Philosophy Seminar Series, Wed 2 Sept 2026, 14:00--15:30: Richard Swinney, 'Hope and Ubuntu: Building Intersubjective Bridges'
Monique Whitaker
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Monique Whitaker
Wednesday, 16 September 2026 @ 14h00-15h30
Incestuous Relations: Legitimate Problem or the
Medicalisation of Morality?
(A work in progress)
Heidi Matisonn & Jacek Brzozowski
UCT & UKZN
Abstract: Incest is defined as human sexual activity between family members or ‘close relatives’. The latter term can include in-laws, stepparents and stepsiblings, adopted parents, and half-siblings, in addition to siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. While many countries around the world prohibit incestuous relationships, others adopt more permissive approaches, particularly in relation to consensual relationships between adults. Beyond legal prohibition, incest remains a powerful social taboo, often eliciting widespread feelings of disgust and moral condemnation even where no coercion is involved. In recent years, several European states have introduced or proposed restrictions on sexual relations between cousins, and in some cases, first cousin marriage, citing concerns about increased risks of genetic disorders in offspring and broader public health considerations. In this article, we suggest that appeals to public health often function as an insufficient basis for criminalisation or prohibition, particularly where risks are comparatively modest, manageable through reproductive counselling, or analogous to risks tolerated in other forms of reproduction. At best, such laws represent forms of legal moralism, in which prevailing social attitudes are translated into legal constraints; at worst, they may serve as vehicles for religious, cultural, or racial prejudice, especially where cousin marriage is associated with minority or migrant communities and constitute an unjustified extension of state power into intimate and family life.
Heidi Matisonn is a moral and political philosopher and Senior Lecturer in Bioethics in the EthicsLab, part of the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town, where she is based at the Neuroscience Institute. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the London School of Economics and works at the intersection of philosophy, bioethics, and the health sciences. Her research interests include care ethics, moral distress, ethical resilience, clinical ethics, and the ethical implications of new and emerging health technologies. She led the development of, and now convenes, UCT's MSc in Global Health Ethics, which approaches emerging health technologies through the lens of the African humanities.
Heidi occupies a somewhat unusual position: a philosopher embedded within a medical and neuroscience environment, rather than one who occasionally applies philosophy to medicine from outside it. This gives her work a distinctive character, with a recurring concern for the gap between what ethical theory says ought to happen and what people are actually able to do within institutions. She rails against the idea that you have to be a philosopher to do philosophy and to this end, joins Clarence Ford on CapeTalk radio twice a month, for accessible conversations using everyday questions or controversies as a springboard into philosophical thinking.
Jacek Brzozowski is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His main research areas are in Metaphysics and Philosophy of Mind, but of late he has developed an interest in Applied Ethics.
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