Mike Martin is Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford and Mills Adjunct Professor at University California, Berkeley. His main research is in the philosophy of mind and psychology. He is forever finishing a book on naïve realism in the theory of perception, titled Uncovering Appearances. His interests also extend to aesthetics and social and political philosophy; as well as the philosophy of David Hume.

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Le mariage comme bien culturel

How should we think about marriage? The raging political and social debates over the last five decades have focused on the significance to be found in marriage. From the left, concerns with equality lead to pressure for abolition or drastic reform. From the right, concern with the sacred value of the institution grounds resistance to dissolution, or forbidding same-sex marriage. Both sides mistake the real value of marriage in society.

Think instead of marriage as an instrument of social utility – it is how many manage their intimate arrangements. Its social utility explains its mutability and its persistence. Marriage turns out, like the arts, education and culture to be a social good. This gives us a different perspective on why it should persist and who should have access to it.