Chapter III. Family, love and marriage
Love + monogamy = monophilogamy
Leaving aside the economic causes of the emergence of monogamy, which, I repeat, no one described better than Engels, I want to draw your attention to the most elusive and at the same time most important ethical aspect of monogamy, namely: love.
For starters I feel compelled to dissociate myself once again from that point of view, popular among philosophers and neo-Darwinists, that “love between man and woman appears to have an innate basis.”[1] Supposedly this is where the monogamous “pair-bonding” originates from. It doesn’t occur to them for some reason that “pair-bonding” exists among gibbons as well, though it can hardly be argued that it happens “through love.” Love is not biology; it is a human feeling, i.e. a social concept. However, even in this case love (romantic love) is not, as believed, for example, by Yonie Harris (University of California, Santa Barbara), “a human universal (personal communication)” (ibid., 397). It is implied usually that love is embedded in man as if genetically. Perhaps several million years from now human beings will develop a “love gene,” but in the current historical moment it does not exist. Love is a phenomenon that is not only social, but also historical; it emerged at the same time that specifically the monogamous family was formed (then again, not right away), and it has been in existence for no longer than three thousand years.
Let us recall that when Plato in his Symposium examines through the mouth of Socrates the concept of Eros (in the quality of sexual love), his sphere includes boys and women, and not so much family women as hetaeras, i.e. mistresses and prostitutes. This means that in the initial stage of the monogamous family’s development erotic love was a rarity, more like an exception. As Berdyayev noted with justification (with reference to Engels), economic relations dominated then in the family. Engels himself wrote: “It (monogamy. – A.B.) was not in any way the fruit of individual sex love, with which it had absolutely nothing in common, for the marriages remained marriages of convenience, as before. It was the first form of the family based not on natural but on economic conditions, namely, on the victory of private property over original, naturally developed common ownership.” (p.74)
Sexual love as passion, as the highest form of sexual attraction, started developing in embryonic form on the ruins of the Roman Empire, and quite often it existed not so much inside the monogamous family as beside it and often even in spite of it, as described in medieval chivalrous poetry.
At this stage sexual love had nothing to do with continuation of the species. It started functioning in this capacity inside the monogamous family in the new historical phase – under capitalism, and then again not in all strata of the population.
So what was the cause of the emergence of sexual love? Its main cause was freedom, the freedom of choice granted to it by capitalism. This is precisely why the other forms of love (patrophilia, simply philia), even though requiring realization, are less needful of freedom, since no one ever impeded them. True love between sexes, on the other hand, was under a multitude of constraints. It suffices to recall the harsh restrictions imposed on marriage of monarchs and leaders of the aristocracy during the middle ages. Those men, however, retained plenty of loopholes for circumventing monogamy, which, as noted justifiably by many, was in essence monogamy for women, yet polygamy for men. The restrictions, therefore, applied mainly to women. It is only in the process of capitalism’s development that they started acquiring freedom, including freedom of choice. On this topic Kant and other precursors of the capitalist epoch justifiably pointed out freedom as the primary condition of true love. However, even in capitalist society this freedom does not apply to all. Fromm, for example, believed that in modern Western society love is manifested as a “marginal phenomenon,” as the exception of non-conformist individuals. Unlike him, Engels pointed out more clearly who has real “freedom of love.” He wrote: “Sex love in the relation of husband and wife is and can become the rule only among the oppressed classes, that is, at the present day, among the proletariat, no matter whether this relationship is officially sanctioned or not.” (79)
Engels was exaggerating, of course, since true love, apart from freedom, requires a high degree of self-awareness, which in all probability was not sufficiently developed among the 19th-century proletariat. Much has changed since then. Still, the essence of Engels’ thought is correct. It is constantly confirmed by contemporary practice which will be shown in the corresponding chapters.
Here we need to figure out something else: why does the tie-in of love and monogamous family serve through natural and objective reasons to increase the life delta?
Firstly, the monogamous family of itself, even without love, through its (economic) properties works to accelerate population growth. Therefore, mankind as a species in the process of its prolongation acquires broader opportunities for implementing the best selection of the best adapted, most adaptable offspring. This is not social-Darwinism that proceeds from the objective course of natural evolution of the organic world; it is a process based on the understanding of natural laws and regularities of nature and human development.
Secondly, love even in just its “pure” form, i.e. without family, as was shown in Chapter I, increases the force of the subjects of love, including the case of love between man and woman.
Thirdly, the highest good for man is immortality, which is possible through reproduction. If this is so, then in joining the monogamous family with love we acquire a stable structure that ensures the realization of man’s principal dream – the way to immortality, immortality of the human species at least. This is a metaphor, of course. However, in combination with other aspects of social development it can become a reality that conforms to the requirements of increasing the life delta, with the ideal version being precisely immortality.[2] It is this stratagemic goal of mankind that is “served” by the combination of monogamous family and love in a new phenomenon which might best be called monophilogamy (literally: one-love-marriage),[3] or the monophilogamous family. Family of this type stands higher by an order of magnitude, quality-wise, than ordinary monogamous families which, I repeat, can exist without love. It is higher if only because love is built into the structural system, and any structure is more stable and vital than non-structured connections. Love becomes here something like the core of the family structure with its inherent stability and increased force.
I find this idea, albeit expressed in a different language, in a judgment made by Hegel, who, I think, was the first of philosophers to see the great meaning of love precisely in combination with family. He wrote: “The family is the direct substantive reality of spirit. The unity of the family is one of feeling, the feeling of love. The true disposition here is that which esteems the unity as absolutely essential, and within it places the consciousness of oneself as individuality. Hence, in the family we are not independent persons but members.” (138-9)
Now it is time to figure out how does the “substantive reality of spirit” of the family existing in love turn its members into engines of progress, which metamorphoses they undergo so that the idea of human immortality is realized.
To that end, let us try to formalize the above judgments in order to explain more obviously why the monophilogamous family is higher than the monogamous one. I want to stipulate right away that the formulas presented below reproduce purely theoretical constructions that imply 1) love-Eros without family (it was discussed in Chapter I); 2) monogamous family without love-Eros, but with love-agape (I hope that the reader has grasped by now the meaning of these terms); 3) monophilogamous family that absorbs all kinds and forms of love.
Of course, in real life many other versions of love-family relations can be found. I select, however, the main types (at least the ones that are constantly discussed in corresponding literature) and present them as models that reflect tendencies. So, please take a close look at the formulas below:
From these unpretentious formulas, some curious conclusions can be made.
The first formula is not discussed here; it was examined in detail in Chapter I. Just in case, I remind here the main conclusion from that analysis: the realization of love-Eros, for all its shortcomings, does nonetheless improve the quality of the lovers’ personalities. That is, it is tied to the category of quality.
The second formula discloses the inner essence of the monogamous family which for many centuries managed without love-Eros. I think that such families are in the majority even today, especially in those countries where patriarchal social relations survive and co-exist just fine as a segment in advanced bourgeois states, the most striking example being Japan. The monogamous family, apart from its economic functions, serves also its main purpose – continuation of the species – precisely through a structured cell of society. As a result, even in the absence of erotic love the process of complication, and therefore enrichment, of personality takes place within the family - through transformation of man and woman into husband and wife (formal family) and their subsequent transformation into father and mother (real family). Each link is an integrity endowed with its own force, and as such it strengthens the parts. Moreover, each link in totality is stronger than the preceding link. In this formula, however, the most important component is the effect – the child, which means at a minimum simple quantitative reproduction. At this stage love-agape comes into its own in full force – sacrifice, self-giving, care – all for the sake of the family and the child. The monogamous family works for the life delta quantitatively.
The third formula – the monophilogamous family – reproduces the metamorphoses of man and woman in the combination of love-Eros with the monogamous family. At this stage love-Eros is built into the family in which love-agape dominates. A double strengthening of the whole chain takes place, and this means strengthening of the personalities in each of the links, since they become more complex on account of the doubling of their functions which change their quality. I would call this new quality by the old word philia, albeit with a new content: philia not as love-friendship (the Greek version) but as love-reason that absorbs both Eros and agape. Philia then transforms the first two formulas into a new formula of family: monophilogamy, or the monophilogamous family as the most stable structure, one that conforms to the greatest degree to the requirements of increasing mankind’s life delta.
Consequently: firstly, in the stable monophilogamous family the child’s upbringing is entirely different. The quality of the upbringing is a priori superior to the quality of upbringing in the monogamous family, where love between husband and wife is not obligatory. The reproduction that takes place in such a family is not simple – it is qualitative reproduction. This is confirmed by any practice: children who grew up in families without love are different from those who grew up in loving families.
Secondly, in such a family the parents preserve and increase their personality potential through the combination of love-Eros and love-agape, and as a result a double strengthening of personalities takes place. This means that they are qualitatively stronger outside the family as well - not just as father and mother, but of themselves as individuals. Spouses in simply monogamous families usually lack such personality qualities. Thus monophilogamy is a model of sorts of the ideal family, to which it is necessary to aspire, since it not only extends mankind quantitatively, but also improves its quality.
For all that it is necessary to keep in mind one extremely important peculiarity. Monophilogamy is a model; it is, to use philosophical parlance, given in potentiality. In order for it to turn into reality, it is necessary to master not only the art of love, but also the art of managing family life. This requires will that is fertilized with knowledge and understanding – the understanding of the meaning of life.
* * *
Love is thus not a frozen concept but a dynamic one, one that reflects constantly the transformation of interrelations within the family: husband and wife, father and mother, personality and personality. Nonetheless family even in its monophilogamous form would hardly have survived the trial of historical time if it hadn’t acquired the status of marriage. Here is where other phenomena come into their own, and it is time to sort them out.
[1] Wright. The Moral Animal, 59.
[2] Let me repeat again, just in case: the concept “immortality” in the context of this work means the time of existence of our Universe.
[3] This word is formed by the joining of the words “mono” (one), “philia” (love) and “gamos” (marriage). It is somewhat unwieldy, but it conforms exactly to the essence of the phenomenon.
On Love, Family, and the State
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)