Defining Marriage

When attempting to define a social construct as marriage, one encounters a number of inherent difficulties. First and foremost, marriage should be seen as involving three major components: philosophical/religious, social (economic), and legal. These major components offer three different ways in which one may define marriage. These components themselves fall under greater scrutiny when compared across various cultures. In order to adequately define marriage, all things stated above must be taken into serious consideration.

The philosophical implications of religion vary across cultures, and are relative towards one another in this aspect. The foundation of marriage as a wholly religious institute is built on idealist principles that value certain moral aspects and rituals under which two individuals, traditionally a male and female, come together as a form of sacrament. This has been the line upheld by the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, as well as other socially conservative religious sects. Marriage, in this sense, is composed of traditional beliefs perpetuated by a metaphysical abstraction or entity.

However, materialist arguments can be made for a philosophical definition of marriage as well. Eugenicists argue that only those who may claim ownership of the most socially desirable traits should be arranged to be married. A society that is opposed to miscegenation may initiate laws preventing the union of two individuals based on their race or ethnicity. This philosophical argument carries into both legal and social aspects of defining marriage; however it remains in contrast to the orthodox position taken by most religious institutions. The subjective nature of marriage creates a definite burden in attempting to define it, as we will see later on.

In strictly legal terms, marriage may be defined (in most Western countries) as the union of a man and woman recognized by the state. This definition is purposely ambiguous by virtue of the possibility of certain privileges, benefits, and licensing details outlined by legislatures. Most nation-states encourage (if not actively deter) the practice of polygamy. This debate also includes the controversial subject of whether or not legal definitions should include the union of two men, or conversely two women. Legal definitions of marriage are subjective in nature and homogeneous particularly as societies become more advanced, civilized, and industrialized. This is not to say that certain states and cultures do not permit the practice of polygamy, but as a majority consensus monogamy has taken precedence as the preferred practice.

Perhaps the most integral component in the problem of accurately defining marriage is its social implications. These may vary for a number of reasons, across different nations, ethnic groups, races, cultures, time-periods, and materialist conditions. Socially, marriage may be defined as the continual survival of that particular society-especially when the end goal is the production and socialization of children. There are a myriad of reasons for which social conditions may be applied into the definition of marriage.

Economics plays a key role in these defining characteristics as well. Friedrich Engels, in his Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, outlined monogamous marriage as the first significant division of labor (production of children). Indeed, for centuries, marriage has been an aspect of masculine domination over feminine submissiveness. Economics imparts upon marriage a disregard for the more noble reasons one may choose to marry (love, friendship), and replaces it with an incentive of ownership and property rights. Those with wealth are those whom would define marriage (under subtle terms) in such a crude manner, and in fact have the only means of doing so. Lower, working class individuals with no ownership to any means of production are the only one's capable of engaging in a true sex-love relationship or an ideal marriage. Marriage may be defined outside the constraints of property only when the antagonisms of private ownership of production by one class over another are dissolved.

The pluralism that plagues the defining characteristics of marriage makes it a difficult institution to adequately define. When considering the principles and traditional definitions that have typically been applied, we notice trends that typically revolve around both the ideal and materialist interpretations of social relations, and those relations in regards to philosophical/theological, legal, and social values and traditions. The subjectivity of marriage contributes to the difficulty in acquiring a sufficient definition, one that may withstand criticisms that attempt to undermine and subvert it. With this in mind, we have to look at material conditions in order to truly define marriage in the sense of the physical world (for if there is a higher being, his metaphysical presence would still lie outside our own existence). Thus, we may conclude that marriage may be defined as a union between a man and a woman recognized by the state for which social capital of any form is conceived as a fruit of such a relationship.