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Love's Constancy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Mike W. Martin
Mike W. Martin
Affiliation:
Chapman University
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Extract

‘Marital faithfulness’ refers to faithful love for a spouse or lover to whom one is committed, rather than the narrower idea of sexual fidelity. The distinction is clearly marked in traditional wedding vows. A commitment to love faithfully is central: ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part… and thereto I plight [pledge] thee my troth [faithfulness]’. Sexual fidelity is promised in a subordinate clause, symbolizing its supportive role in promoting love's constancy: ‘and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her/him.’

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 68 , Issue 263 , January 1993 , pp. 63 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1993

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References

1 Church of England Prayer Book (1549). I will understand marriage as a moral relationship centred on lifelong commitments to love and significantly involving sexual desire at some time during the relationship, whether or not the marriage is formalized in legal or religious ceremonies, recognizing homo sexual as well as heterosexual marriages, and independently of government intrusions. On the latter see Palmer, David, ‘The Consolation of the Wedded’, in Philosophy and Sex, 2nd edn, Baker, Robert and Elliston, Frederick (eds) (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), 119–129.Google Scholar

2 Or its presumed supportive role. Some couples, of course, enter into (or transform their relationship into) ‘open marriages’ in which they permit extramarital affairs while retaining lifetime commitments. For an early and especially interesting example, see Nicolson's, Nigel portrayal of his parents in Portrait of a Marriage (New York: Atheneum, 1973)Google Scholar. Two illuminating (and contrasting) discussions of the rationale for traditional links between lifetime marital commitments and sexual fidelity are: Leites, Edmund, The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, and Scruton, Roger, Sexual Desire (New York: Free Press, 1986).Google Scholar

3 Singer, Irving develops the idea of love as a special way of valuing persons in his masterful three-volume study, The Nature of Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1987)Google Scholar. Whereas I understand (‘true’) love as permeated by the virtues, Singer separates morality and love, as a result of his constricted view of morality as demanding impartiality (by contrast with love's preference for one individual). See especially p. 11 of vol. I.

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