The Ontology of Marriage

Date
2014-09-02
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Abstract
This thesis is a response to the lack of philosophical integrity in contemporary same-sex marriage legislation and jurisprudence, both for and against, in North America. Rather than being based on an account of the authentic ontology of marriage, these legalities are merely assimilated to external terrains of meaning. In the case of the expansion of the institution, the assimilation is to frameworks of rights, while the obstruction of this expansion is founded upon notions of tradition and the divine. As a solution, I undertake an examination of three varieties of political philosophy: liberalism, new natural law, and Hegelian idealism. And as will be shown, each account is an attempt to get at the same ontology: marriage as an instance of self-constitution. However, I will argue that Hegel’s formulation best fulfills the goal of marital self-constitution—encompassing form, substance, and participation—and, crucially, implies the possibility of same-sex marriage.
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Philosophy
Citation
Haase, J. (2014). The Ontology of Marriage (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28260