From Obedience to Intimacy, or
How Love Conquered Marriage
Contemporary American philosopher John Searle divides the objective world into two categories: brute facts and social facts. Brute facts, he says, exist whether or not human beings are present. For example, Mount Everest has snow and ice at the summit. That is a brute fact. It doesn't depend upon us.
Social facts, on the other hand, depend on human thought for their existence. For example, "I think this $20 bill in my pocket is money." That belief is a social fact, and it has a human history. At one time people exchanged gold coins for goods, and the value of the metal in the coin was considered equal to the value of what they traded for.
Social Facts Change Over Time
Later bankers stored people's gold and issued them paper certificates. The certificates became the medium of exchange, just as gold had been, and paper
money was exchangeable for gold. Eventually someone realized you could issue more certificates than you had gold. As long as people accepted that certificates were "good as gold," they functioned as money.
The final stroke of genius occurred when someone figured out you can forget about gold altogether. Just have paper certificates. Paper certificates, like the $20 bill in your pocket, are money because we believe they're money.
Marriage Was Not About Love
Like money, our beliefs about marriage have changed over time. In Marriage, a History Stephanie Coontz describes what traditional marriage was. For thousands of years it was about getting in-laws, making alliances, passing along wealth, regulating sexuality, and rearing children while exploiting their labor. What marriage was not about was love.
Sure, some married people loved each other, and in the odd work here and there--like Thomas More's Utopia (1516)--people married for love, but the idea didn't gain much traction. More basic needs had to be satisfied first, and most humans lived in an arranged, patriarchal world.
But in the 18th Century interesting things began to happen. The market economy grew, freeing people from community norms and family controls, and new ideas about freedom and equality were unleashed.
Changes In Marriage A Threat To Some
Theorists like John Locke viewed government as an agreement which could be overturned if the ruler failed to live up to his part. By implication, others realized if this was true of the nation, it should be true of the family. By fits and starts marriage started to become a compromise between patriarchal and egalitarian views.
John Locke's work inspired The Declaration of Independence and ended up on the Index of Prohibited Books--forbidden reading for faithful Catholics. This wasn't surprising. Some people understood how helpful his ideas were to their purposes, even as others understood how much they threatened the social order.
Whenever they saw change, conservatives championed obedience to the past--what the Romans called "the customs of our fathers"--against the new ideas of equality and freedom of choice.
Today the idea that marriage is primarily about love is firmly entrenched. As Coontz observes, that idea promises people the greatest fulfillment ever in marriage, but it's also made marriage, as an institution, more unstable.
Marriage, a History is a fascinating travelogue in the country called marriage, and Coontz has a graceful, fact-filled style. In time, she covers the period from hunter-gatherers to yesterday morning; in territory, she spans the globe; in personality, she ranges from Cato the Elder to James Dobson.
The book is littered with illuminating quotes and anecdotes. Above all, it provides an accurate framework for thinking about marriage--where it has been and where it is going. It is a wonderful book.
In our most questioning moments, John Searle says, we ask, "Are these bits of paper really money?" In spite of our doubts, most of us would answer, "Yes."
In a similar vein, when people today ask, "Is this really a marriage?" their answer depends on circumstances. If they feel loved, they answer yes. More and more, if they don't feel loved, they're inclined to answer, "No. For love is the currency of marriage, and there is no love here."
Stephanie Coontz is an historian, teacher, and Director of Research for the Council on Contemporary Families.
John Searle's money illustration is from The Construction of Social Reality, The Free Press, 1995. See especially pp. 42-45.
