Tucker and Aquinas

1
Tucker and Aquinas

• Philosophy of Love and Sex

2
Aquinas A puzzle about sex

• Anti-sex objection Sex makes people irrational
  (at least while theyre having sex). Human
  beings should be rational. So, sex is always
  wrong.
• Aquinas response We can do something that makes
  us be irrational if we do so for a rational
  reason. But there are rational reasons for
  sexe.g., procreation.

3
Aquinas Purposes of marriage

• Reproduction
• The creation of a joint family life
• These purposes make monogamy appropriate, since
  human children need both parents to raise them,
  as they have a very long dependency period.
  Also, need the example of more than one persons
  virtue. ARP

4
Aquinas How to marry?

• The cause of marriage is the couples mutual
  exchange of consent. This is needed for
  validity.
• It would be a mistake on Aquinas view to talk of
  a clergyman as marrying the couple the
  clergyman is only a witness.
• Nonetheless, Aquinas would agree that the Church
  can create requirements for a valid marriage,
  such as the presence of a clerical witness.

5
Tucker

• Human females take care of fertilized egg. If
  they abandon it, they havent reproduced. They
  get one (or slightly more with twins -ARP) chance
  per reproductive season. They need to be choosy
  about partners.
• Males can fertilize and disappear. They dont
  need to be choosy.

6
Definitions

• Polygamy Marriages with more than two parties
• Polygyny One male and two or more females
• Polyandry One female and two or more males

7
Polyandry

• More males would be reproductively unsuccessful
• Unstable system a male who broke with the system
  would increase reproductive chances

8
Polygyny

• Common among mammals
• Social order with a dominant male
• Winners
• High status males
• Low status females
• Marriage is less of a relationship between peers
• High level of male violence (allegedly)

9
Monogamy

• Works well with a long period of dependency
• Nobody is a reproductive pariah
• A more egalitarian society (both male/female as
  well as low/high status)

10
Polymorphous polygamy

• Works fine for chimps that cant figure out
  paternity
• High-status males and low-status females would do
  better

11
A caution

• If an author says something clearly false about
  something you know about, be cautious about the
  things you dont know about.
• Tucker Socrates, remember, was condemned to
  death for luring the youth of Athens into
  homosexuality This is patently false.