A few remarks on polygamy, marriage and reproduction

1. One of the paper topics will be on monogamy.  For those of you who want to write about this, you will need to see an additional film, Leila, an Iranian film about a man who is pressured by his family to take on another wife because his first one is infertile.  It's in the library, both in VHS and DVD.

2. In our culture, if we had polygamy, we couldn't just have polygyny, but we'd need polyandry: otherwise, we'd be discriminating (against women? Against men?) by not allowing one woman – several men relationships.  But once we admitted polyandry and polygyny, why would we restrict ourselves to relationships that involve one person of one sex and many of the other?  And if we dropped that restriction, for it does not seem particularly defensible once one allows polyandry and polygyny, what would stop Bob from marrying Jane and Martha, then Martha from marrying Todd, and Jane and Martha marrying Fred, thereby giving rise to incredibly complicated relationship charts, with nastily complicated legal dimensions.  What happens to Bob's property if his wife Jane marries someone who marries someone else, and the last couple divorces? 

3. Aquinas on marriage and sexuality

• Sex makes one irrational—one doesn’t think clearly while in the throes of pleasure.  Since our nature is to be rational, we can’t just willy nilly make ourselves irrational.  (That is why drunkenness is wrong.)  To do something that makes us irrational requires that we have a good reason for it.  (For instance, there are kinds of anesthesia where one remains conscious but not quite rational.  There one does have good reason: to avoid pain.)  So, sex is wrong unless there is a good rational reason for it.  However, there is at least one good rational reason for sex—reproduction—and so the irrationality that results from sex can be excused morally.  Reproduction is rational, because it is needed for the preservation of the species.
• Consequently, sex isn’t always sinful.  Note that Aquinas does not say that reproduction is the only morally acceptable reason for sex.  On the contrary, he thinks that spouses have sexual obligations towards one another.  But since all he needs to establish here is that sex isn’t always sinful, it is enough for him to cite one reason.
• One might think that because the pleasure of sex is so extreme, it violates Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean.  But, Aquinas says, “the mean of virtue depends not on quantity but on conformity with right reason: and consequently the exceeding pleasure attaching to a venereal act directed according to reason, is not opposed to the mean of virtue”.  It’s not the amount of pleasure that counts: what counts is whether the act is reasonable.
• Marriage for Aquinas (or, more precisely, the author of the Supplement to the Summa) has two interrelated purposes: (1) reproduction, and (2) the production of a joint family life (this presumably includes the sexual life of the couple).  The couple joins in taking on these two common purposes.
• In Aquinas’ account of love, we had a distinction between formal and real union.  Formal union is essential to love.  Real union is a result of love.  Here, too, Aquinas make a similar distinction.  Having the two purposes in mind is essential to entering into marriage: there is no marriage if the couple did not have these purposes.  From this, however, there results a further union, a union in body and mind.
• What is essential for the marriage ceremony is the exchange of mutual consent.  The consent is the cause of the marriage (not any declaration by a celebrant, though that may be a necessary condition).

4. Tucker's main claims:

• Females take care of the fertilized egg.  They can abandon it, but then they haven't reproduced, and the issue of the egg will come up again, given the basic evolutionary drive to reproduction.  Males, however, can fertilize and go.  In species where things aren't like this, the social roles are different.  Females have one reproductive chance per season.  Thus, they need to be choosy. 
• Polyandry would also mean that more of the male would be reproductively unsuccessful.  And the system would be unstable, because a male who broke with the system would greatly increase his reproductive success, from less than 1/n (where n is the number of mates) to whatever his best chances are, by switching to an unmated female, of whom there would be many.
• Polygyny is common among mammals.  It produces a social order with a dominant male.  High-status males (get many mates) and low-status females (can have higher status mates) are winners.  Low-status males lose: they can be discontented, form gangs, etc.  Maximization of reproductive capacity since all females mate and females are the limiting factor for reproduction, due to the once-a-season requirement.  Older men marry younger women due to a shortage of women.  Marriage is less a relationship between peers.  High level of male violence. 
• Monogamy is better for child-rearing, especially in species that have a long period of dependency.  Like humans.  Like Aquinas, Tucker notes that birds are like that (at least through the mating season).  Monogamy reduces sexual competition among males (remember that one male can impregnate many females).  Nobody is a reproductive pariah.  Thus, society can be cohesive. 
• Polymorphous polygamy works for chimps, but humans are too smart—they can try to figure out paternity.  In monogamy, high-status males and low-status females do worse than under polygamy.  Low-status females are confined to low-status males.  
• "Socrates, remember, was condemned to death for luring the youth of Athens into homosexuality." – Simply and embarrassingly false!
• Polymorphous polygamy in lower classes in U.S.

4. Possible criticisms:

• None of this takes into account the availability of contraception, which seems to significantly change the social meaning of mating.  Of course contraception doesn't always work, though.  And we do have a genetic drive to have children, perhaps.
• As an argument to an individual to be monogamous it may seem weak: Do not be polygamous in order not to contribute to the decay of social institutions.  The individual may think that in her case, no such contribution will be made.  (But no man is an island, on the other hand.)

5. Borowitz sees marriage as a crucible of maturity in a person, something that develops character.

6. Muir sees marriage as something that sets up a framework within which freedom can operate. Without this “iron reign”, some things could never be awakened.