I had a lucid dream the other night in which I lost my cool to an extent I would consider morally reprehensible in waking life. But was there any moral failure in the dream? And then there are the dreams in which I am having sexual intercourse with a woman not my wife. I'm aware I am dreaming and I think to myself: "Well, this is just a dream; I may as well enjoy it." So on occasion I grant nocturnal permission to a nocturnal emission.
Was there real, not merely dreamt, moral failure in the dream? (Augustine discusses this or a cognate question somewhere in his pelagic pennings, but I have forgotten where.)
Lucid dreaming while asleep is not the same as fantasizing while awake. But they are similar. Suppose I am entertaining (with hospitality) thoughts about having sex with my neighbor's wife. That sort of thing, I have argued, is morally objectionable. I mean the thinking, whether or not it results in any doing. Jesus just says it (MT 5:28). I argue it here and here. (Of course if he is God, he doesn't need to argue it, and because I am not God, I do.) Does the similarity support the claim that the nocturnal permission is as morally impermissible as the diurnal permission?
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