Table Of ContentPhilosophy of Love,
Sex, and Marriage
How is love different from lust or infatuation? Do love and marriage really go
together “like a horse and carriage”? Does sex have any necessary connection
to either? And how important are love, sex, and marriage to a well-lived life?
In this lively, lucid, and comprehensive textbook, Raja Halwani pursues the
philosophical questions inherent in these three important aspects of human
relationships, exploring the nature, uses, and ethics of romantic love, sexuality,
and marriage.
The book is structured in three sections:
Love begins by examining how romantic love differs from other types of love,
such as friendship and parental love. It asks which properties of love are essen-
tial, whether people have a choice in whom they love, and whether lovers have
moral obligations to one another that differ from those they owe to others.
Sex demonstrates the difficulty in defining sex and the sexual, and examines
what constitutes good and bad sex in terms of pleasure, “naturalness,” and
moral permissibility. It offers theoretical and applied ethical approaches to a
wide range of sexual phenomena.
Marriage traces the history of the institution, and describes the various forms
in which marriage exists and the reasons why people marry. It also surveys
accounts of why people should or should not marry, and introduces the main
arguments for and against gay marriage.
Features include:
• suggestions for further reading
• online eResource site with downloadable discussion questions
• a clear, jargon-free writing style.
Raja Halwani is Professor of Philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago. He is the author of Virtuous Liaisons: Care, Love, Sex, and Virtue Ethics,
the editor of Sex and Ethics: Essays on Sexuality, Virtue, and the Good Life, and the
co-author (with Tomis Kapitan) of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Philosophical
Essays on Self-Determination, Terrorism, and the One-State Solution.
Philosophy of Love,
Sex, and Marriage
An Introduction
Raja Halwani
First published 2010
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
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© 2010 Taylor & Francis
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Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Halwani, Raja.
Philosophy of love, sex, and marriage: an introduction / Raja Halwani.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Love–Philosophy. 2. Sex–Philosophy. 3. Marriage. I. Title.
BD436.H257 2010
128´.46–dc22 2009036402
ISBN 0-203-85636-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0-415-99350-4 (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0-415-99351-2 (pbk)
ISBN 10: 0-203-85636-8 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-99350-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-99351-7 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-85636-9 (ebk)
Please visit the book’s companion website for discussion questions:
http://www.routledge.com/eresources/9780415993517
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
PART I
Love 5
1 What Is Love? 7
Three Types of Love 7
Characterizing Romantic Love 9
Romantic Love as an Emotion 12
Generally Necessary Features of Romantic Love 18
Romantic Love and Infatuation 24
Summary 27
Notes 28
Further Reading 28
2 Romantic Love 29
Aristophanes on Union 29
Nozick, Soble, and Solomon on Union 32
Romantic Love and Robust Concern 39
Sex and the Durability of Romantic Love 48
Summary and Conclusion 55
Notes 56
Further Reading 56
vi Contents
3 The Basis of Romantic Love 57
Socrates’s Speech in Praise of Love 57
Loving for Reasons 60
What Do We Love? Properties of the Beloved 77
Different Types of Properties and Love’s Durability and Depth 82
Summary 87
Notes 88
Further Reading 88
4 Love and Morality 89
Love and Morality 89
Moral Restrictions on Love 102
The Prudentiality of Love 111
Summary and Conclusion 119
Notes 120
Further Reading 120
PART II
Sex 121
5 What Is Sex? 123
Defining Sexual Acts 123
Defining Sexual Desire 130
Defining Sexual Pleasure 135
Casual Sex, Adultery, and Prostitution 139
Notes 151
Further Reading 152
6 Sex, Pleasure, and Morality 153
Sexual Pleasure and Other Values of Sex Acts 153
Consequentialism and Sex 161
Virtues, Vices, and Sex 177
Summary and Conclusion 184
Notes 185
Further Reading 185
7 Sexual Objectification 186
What Is Sexual Objectification? 186
What Is Morally Wrong with Sexual Objectification? 189
Nussbaum on Objectification 194
Contents vii
Soble on Objectification 197
Kant and Objectification 200
Women and Pornography 210
Summary and Conclusion 224
Notes 225
Further Reading 226
8 Sexual Perversion and Fantasy 227
Sexual Perversion 227
Fantasy 250
Notes 255
Further Reading 255
PART III
Marriage 257
9 What Is Marriage? 259
Defining Marriage 259
Monogamy 264
Notes 274
Further Reading 274
10 Controversies over Same-Sex Marriage 275
Preliminaries 275
The Natural Law Tradition 276
The Slippery-Slope Argument 284
The “Undermining Marriage” Argument 293
Richard Mohr’s Argument for Same-Sex Marriage 294
Cheshire Calhoun’s Argument for Same-Sex Marriage 297
Claudia Card’s Argument against Same-Sex Marriage 300
The Assimilation and Cultural Injustice Arguments against
Same-Sex Marriage 305
The Political Question 310
Conclusion 312
Notes 312
Further Reading 313
Concluding Remarks 314
Bibliography 316
Index 327
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the previous philosophy editor at Routledge, Kate Ahl, for
asking me to write this book and for her encouragement and support, and the
current philosophy editor, Andrew Beck, for his help, patience, and support.
My thanks also go to two anonymous referees for their extensive and insightful
comments on an earlier draft. Thanks to Alan Soble for virtually creating the
field of the philosophy of love, sex, and marriage and making it respectable.
My intellectual debt to him is enormous. I thank all my students at the School
of the Art Institute of Chicago who took my philosophy of sex and love course
over the years and helped me become a better philosopher. I thank all my
friends and colleagues from whom I have benefited immensely over the years
in discussing with me the topics of this book, especially Barbara DeGenevieve
and Steven Jones. Special thanks to Steven also for comments on some chapters
and for designing the book cover. My debt to him is immense.
Introduction
Philosophy is a reflective, higher level field: it seeks to answer questions about
other fields and human practices. Moral philosophy, for example, raises ques-
tions about ethical human conduct, seeking to find out what are right and
wrong actions, good and bad characters, and good and bad policies and institu-
tions. Philosophy of art raises questions about the practice, evaluation, and
definition of art. The same is true of the philosophy of love, sex, and marriage.
The value of philosophy, however, does not lie only in the answers to the ques-
tions it raises. Indeed, because most philosophical questions are still unanswered,
philosophy’s value lies mostly in its method. Philosophical thinking is rigorous,
analytical, and systematic (at least ideally!). On our way to answering the “big”
questions, we philosophers often answer smaller ones and clarify our thinking
about the issues involved. People who practice and study philosophy often
become clearer thinkers, seeing distinctions and problems that others do not.
Like other fields in philosophy, the issues involved in philosophizing about
love, sex, and marriage fall into two groups: conceptual and evaluative. The
first are concerned with defining and clarifying concepts, the second with
assessing whether particular actions and practices are good or bad, in the
moral sense, but also in other senses (e.g., aesthetic). Some of the main concep-
tual issues found in the philosophy of love, sex, and marriage are the following.
(1) What is the nature of love and romantic love specifically? Does romantic
love differ in important ways from other types of love, such as love between
parent and child and love between friends or siblings? Is romantic love an
emotion similar to others, like hate, compassion, envy, and anger, or is it some-
thing else altogether, like a desire or attitude? Does romantic love have some
properties essential to it – is it exclusive or constant by its nature? Does it
involve concern for the beloved, and is the concern ultimately selfish, rebound-
ing to the benefit of the lover? Is romantic love based on reasons or is it – like
Christian love – based on no reasons? And would a romantic love based on
reasons make it more constant, more exclusive, or, generally, a better kind of
love than if it were not based on reasons? (2) Can we define sex and sexual
activity? Why is the same behavior in one context sexual but in another
context non-sexual? Can we define other, more specific sexual practices and
actions, such as adultery, casual sex, prostitution, cyber-sex, and promiscuity?
