The Government Contract

No abstract available for this article.     

'Not Empire, but Equality': Mary Wollstonecraft, the Marriage State and the Sexual Contract

Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman , first published in 1792, has proved a problematic 'classic text' for feminism. This paper focuses on the liberal concept of self-ownership to show how the Vindication both confronts and perpetuates the dilemmas of 'liberal feminism'. Self-ownership is not a term used by Wollstonecraft herself, but I make use of it in this paper because I believe it captures what she means by 'independence', arrived at by a combination of reflection, self-government and labour. It implies a natural right to resist oppression and arbitrary government and so reaches the heart of Wollstonecraft's argument against patriarchy as a particular form of arbitrary power. As Alan Ryan argues, 'each of us is obliged to obey the government so long as it upholds our natural rights, but if it violates them, we are not obliged to obey'. As a liberal concept, self-ownership is fraught with ambiguity for feminism. Donna Dickenson argues that it can be interpreted both as 'masculinist through and through' and as 'the essence of feminism'. Its very ambiguity makes it an appropriate conceptual lens through which to view Wollstonecraft's own contradictory arguments.     

A Multiple Baseline Study of the Marriage Contract Game's Effect on Problem Solving and Affective Behavior

In a multiple-baseline design, four relatively untroubled couples were guided by the Marriage Contract Game and related instructions as they negotiated contracts. The results demonstrated generalization from clinic to home, and suggested that problem solving and affection are independent behavior domains. When problem-solving behavior was the target of intervention, the rate of problem-solving behavior increased significantly over baseline during generalization probes. When affective behavior was added as a target of training, the rate of affective behavior increased significantly over previous phases and the rate of problem solving continued to increase. Evidence about the interdependence of marital attitudes and behaviors also emerged. Subjective ratings of problems improved along with the increase in problem-solving behavior; mood ratings improved along with increases in problem-solving and in affective behavior. Training had no effect on ratings of marital happiness.     

新合同法中的合同自由原则

合同自由原则是合同法的精神内核和实践纲领。虽然伴随着资本主义市场经济的高度发展 ,合同自由原则不断受到限制 ,但并没有动摇合同自由在现代合同法中的基本原则的地位 ;我国新合同法尽管对合同自由原则未加以明文规定 ,但从合同法的立法指导思想和整体内容来看却始终贯彻了合同自由的精神和理念 ,而且 ,我国新合同法关于合同自由原则是规范化了的现代合同自由原则     

The Marriage of Archaeology and Religion

Book reviewed: Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel , William G. Dever, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2005 (0‐8028‐2852‐3), hardcover, xvi + 344 pp., Hb £15.95/$25     

The Inevitable Social Contract

Res Publica - The mark of ‘the political’, according to Bernard Williams, lies in a society finding an answer to the ‘first political question’—the...     

汉代玄素之道的源流和内容

汉代已有经典《玄女经》和与素女有关的房中图书流传。东晋葛洪《抱朴子内篇·遐览》著录的《素女经》,是汉代的传本、改名本或改编本。六朝以来,《玄女经》和《素女经》广为流传,玄素成为一种房中术的专称。日本永观二年,即宋太祖雍熙元年(984),日人丹波康赖编《医心方》。该书保留着汉代《玄女经》和《素女经》的基本内容,流传至今。《玄女经》和《素女经》教授的玄素之道的主要内容及理论底蕴,与马王堆帛书房中术一脉相承,唯重点有所不同,且有所发展。此外,还增加了一些新内容。     

The State, Marriage and Divorce

ABSTRACT This essay advances several interrelated arguments concerning the proper role of the state with regard to marriage and divorce but my main contention is that 'pure'no-fault divorce laws are unjust—or, at least, they are unjust if marriage involves a genuinely contractual element, and there seems to be very little doubt that it does. Locke, Kant and Hegel are three eminent thinkers who are alike in viewing marriage as a contract (though in the case of Hegel, it is a 'contract to transcend the standpoint of contract') and in the first two sections of the essay I consider their views on the role of contract in marriage. Whilst holding (with Hegel) that marriage is more than a contract, I also hold (with Kant) that it is not less than a contract. In section three I consider the implications of this 'not less than', the most important one being that 'pure'no-fault divorce laws are unjust. I shall contend that whilst the irretrievable breakdown of marriage may be regarded as a suitable ground for divorce, it simply cannot, and certainly ought not to, be regarded as a justificatory basis for the laying aside of rights acquired by individuals as a result of their having entered into a marital contract. However minimal one might wish the role of the state to be, or however averse one might be from allowing the state any role at all in purely personal and confidential relationships, yet to allow the expression 'the irretrievable breakdown of marriage'to be employed as a olanket to cover over the infringement of personal, contractually engendered and civilly recognised rights, is not to exercise commendable restraint but is, rather, to condone what is simply an abnegation by the state of its basic responsibility to ensure that justice prevails.     

Kant and The Marriage Right*

Abstract: The provision of a marriage right is a distinctive aspect of Kant's political philosophy and seems, initially, difficult to reconcile with the general concern with ensuring external freedom of action apparent in the universal principle of Right and the sole innate right said to follow from this principle. I claim that this provision can be regarded as consistent with this general focus and that Kant's treatment of issue suggests an interesting secular argument for the institution of marriage.     

The Divorce of Marriage and Parenthood

Marriage is a template for domestic life and the problems that arise in it. The patterned assumptions that traditionally defined marriage gave substance to the family. These assumptions have become less compelling over the course of a century. In this paper, I suggest how and why this has happened. I focus on the meaning of parenthood and its relationship to marriage. In the course of a century, parenthood has been redefined as a rational choice governed by calculation. As a result, childbearing, pregnancy, marriage and parenthood have been redefined. Their relationships to one another have, to varying degrees, been altered. Marriage is an institutionalized way to care for the babies that once came, inevitably, as a result of sexual intercourse. What becomes of marriage when sex no longer produces babies? The answer is that everything about marriage and the family changes. Such changes help explain the rise of professional family therapy and related fields.     

The Marriage of Families: Cross-Generational Complementarity

Marriage is often characterized as a beginning, a fresh start. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study of two young “normal” couples and the family of origin of each partner. An attempt is made to examine the “emergent” marriage in the context of its familial origins with special emphasis on cross-generational complementarily.     

The Significance of Romantic Love for Marriage

In this study, 605 subjects were asked about romantic love and marriage. Married people differentiated themselves from single people with stable partners and divorced people with new partners by more frequently living together with their great love, more reciprocity in that love, and less disappointments in love relationships prior to the current relationship; but they also described themselves as less happy and satisfied than the single and divorced respondents, particularly with regard to tenderness, sex, and conversation with their partners. Independent of marital status, those who were greatly in love with their partners describe themselves as happier. Love at first sight, relative to a gradually developing love, nevertheless, did not have a worse prognosis for happiness in marriage. Being in love seems to be of greater importance for the prognosis of the marriage than marital happiness and satisfaction.