Dan Moller

Class 7.2 Moller - Marriage

Last week we did childhood, so this week (a short week due to President’s day) we’re going to try marriage. Traditionally in most cultures people form pair bonds that are at least nominally intended to be monogamist and to be permanent. These expectations are made explicit in our understanding of marriage, which even when its participants explicitly disavow any commitment to monogamy, and even when we know that most marriages in fact end in divorce and even more end in unhappiness, still typically involve a particularly serious promise not to do so, but to make it work.

Dan Moller

Dan Moller is professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, where he works on topics in both ethics and aesthetics. Dan and I were in the same incoming cohort of PhD students at Princeton in 2000 and the job that he holds at Maryland is the same one that I left to come to USC in 2006, so there are two connections for you.

Marriage

The basic line of argument in Moller’s paper you will not find terribly surprising. Drawing on some background facts about the rate by which marriages end, he asks whether it actually makes sense to enter the kind of commitment that marriage involves. But it is an example of what careful philosophical writing can do, because he shows how an argument that you might get from your friend while chatting over takeout can be made more rigorous and careful, and how possible objections can be anticipated and addressed. In that way it is a good model to think about when writing your midterm and final papers this semester.

Reading

As you read Moller’s article, “An Argument Against Marriage”, ask yourself, “What is Moller’s main argument?” “Am I persuaded, or am I still open to getting married in my own life?” “Would Moller’s argument look better or worse if we both expected to live forever?” and “How is any of this affected by Williams’ arguments that in order to avoid boredom each person must continually change as they live longer and longer?”