CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Yang, Tingyi |
|---|---|
| Title | The Liberal Neutrality, Marriage, and Non-Monogamous Marriage |
| Summary | The paper discusses the relationship between the liberal ideal of state neutrality and the status of marriage law in a liberal democracy. It seeks to explore whether the special status that marriage as a particular form of human relationship enjoys is justified. Taking neutrality as an ideal rather than a restraint, the assumption is that neutrality requires that marriage’s special status should be questioned if no good reason is provided to justify it. It looks at mainly two features of marriage: the amorous assumption and the monogamous limit. It first challenges these features as potentially non-neutral. Basing the marriage law on amorous assumptions is essentially promoting one kind of life. After looking at some of the reasons offered in defense of promoting marriage, it argues that even the best reason, that which concerns the wellbeing of children, is not decisively enough to justify the current legal status of marriage. Similarly, the promotion of monogamy does not seem to be justified sufficiently by the reasons offered in its defense. Some of the criticisms of polygamy may require further considerations. However, even if those criticisms are sufficient, the paper proposes that we do not view polygamy as simply one thing. Instead, we should identify different structures of relationships (along with monogamy). This requires us to have a more general objection to all polygamous structures (both amorous and non-amorous) in order to fully reject polygamy. |
| Supervisor | Miklosi, Zoltan |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/yang_tingyi.pdf |
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