Title: Marriage and Domestic Partnership (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Headings: Marriage and Domestic Partnership
Marriage and Domestic Partnership
1. Defining Marriage
2. Understanding Marriage: Historical Orientation
3. Marriage and Morals
3.1 Contractual Views
3.2 Institutional Views
3.2.1 New Natural Law: Marriage as Procreative Union
3.2.2 Marriage as Protecting Love
4. The Politics of Marriage
4.1 Marriage and Legal Contract
4.2 The Rationale of Marriage Law
4.3 Same-Sex Marriage
4.4 Arguments for Marriage Reform
5. Marriage and Oppression
5.1 Feminist Approaches
5.2 The Queer Critique
Bibliography
Contemporary Works
Historical Works
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Acknowledgments

Content: The Aristotelian idea that the stability of society depends on the marital family influenced Hegel, Rawls, and Sandel, among others. Aristotle also disagreed with Plato on gender roles in marriage, and these views too would prove influential. Marriage, he argued, is properly structured by gender: the husband, “fitter for command,” rules. The sexes express their excellences differently: “ the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying,” a complementarity which promotes the marital good ( Politics, ca. 330 BCE, 1253b, 1259b, 1260a; Nicomachean Ethics, ca. 325 BCE, 1160–62). In contrast to the ancients, whose philosophical discussion of sex and sexual love was not confined to marriage, Christian philosophers introduced a new focus on marriage as the sole permissible context for sex, marking a shift from viewing marriage as primarily a political and economic unit.