Lara Denis

International Phenomenological Society
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant

Author(s): Lara Denis
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jul., 2001), pp. 1-28
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Vol. LXIII, No. 1, July 2001
From Friendship to Marriage:

Revising Kant
LARA DENIS
University of California, Irvine
This paper examines Kant's accounts of friendship and marriage, and argues for what
can be called an ideal of "moral marriage" based on Kant's notion of moral friendship.
After explaining why Kant values friendship so highly, it gives an account of the ways
in which marriage falls far short, according to Kant, of what friendship has to offer.
The paper then argues that many of Kant's reasons for finding marriage morally
impoverished compared with friendship are wrong-headed. The paper further argues
that a few of Kant's views about friendship are false. The main point is that, when we
slightly revise Kant's account of friendship and jettison Kant's misguided notions about
marriage, we see that marriages can aspire to much of the same moral richness as
friendships. Finally, the paper argues that this friendship model of marriage does not
obscure the important ways in which marriages and friendships differ.
Many philosophers have portrayed Kant's moral theory as one which would
have little of interest to say about such personal relationships as friendship
and marriage.1 Feminist philosophers in particular have been critical of what
they see as Kant's focus on universalization, his emphasis on autonomy over
community, and his relegation of women to an inferior class of persons.2
Indeed, Kant sometimes portrays what we might hope to be one of the
warmest, most intimate relationships between two people, marriage, as
emotionally cold or as impersonally sexual. In the Rechtslehre, for example,
Kant defines marriage as "the union of two persons of different sexes for
lifelong possession of each other's sexual attributes" (MS 277).3
1 In this paper, I will understand marriage as a heterosexual union. I do not think that it
need be so. For a discussion of some related issues, see my "Kant on the Wrongness of
'Unnatural' Sex," History of Philosophy Quarterly 16 (2) (1999): 225-48.
2 See Sally Sedgwick, "Can Kant's Ethics Survive the Feminist Critique?" Pacific Philo-
sophical Quarterly 71 (1990): 60-79; and Robin May Schott, "The Gender of Enlighten-
ment," in Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed. Robin May Schott (University
Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) (originally published in
What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers to Twentieth Century Questions, ed.
James Schmidt (University of California Press, 1996)).
3 I use the following abbreviations to cite Kant's works: Ant: Anthropology from a Prag-
matic Point of View, trans. M.J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974); C: "Moral
philosophy: Collins's lecture notes," trans. P. Heath, in Lectures on Ethics, ed. P. Heath
FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 1
And yet a number of features of Kant's ethical theory suggest that it
would be unwarranted to discount Kant's thoughts on personal relationships,
including marriage. Kant's formula of humanity requires agents to act in
ways that show respect for others and for themselves-a requirement that fits
well with current, Western notions of proper interpersonal relations. And
Kant's formula of the kingdom of ends makes clear that we are to think of the
moral law as a law for a community of rational beings with different particu-
lar desires, not for isolated, "abstract" individuals. Furthermore, when Kant
discusses marriage and friendship, he often portrays them as relationships
with great potential for moral expression and communion. Kant states that
marriage partners are to constitute "a single moral person" (Obs 95): "The
two persons...constitute a unity of will. Neither will be subject to happiness
or misfortune, joy or displeasure, without the other taking a share in it" (C
388).4 He stresses that partners must be taken to have equal possession of
each other (MS 278-79) and must be seen as equally owning all possessions
in common (unless they decide otherwise) (V 640). These points about equal-
ity and unity suggest that marriage affords both partners recognition of their
equality as rational beings, puts them in the best possible position to
promote each other's ends, and offers a high degree of reciprocity-an equal
give and take of love and respect, of equal influence and interdependence. Yet
according to Kant, the reciprocity between marriage partners pales in compar-
ison with the reciprocity between friends. Kant says that "[i]n friendship...the
unity of the persons, or the reciprocal possession of one another by two
persons, whereby they feel and think in common, is still more perfectly
present, and with more equality, than in marriage" (V 683). And it is friend-
ship, not marriage, that Kant describes as "the maximum of mutual love" (C
423) and "the most intimate union of love with respect" (MS 469).
and J.B. Schneewind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); G: Grounding for
the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. J.W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991); KPC:
Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-99, trans. A. Zweig (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1967); KU: Critique of Judgment, trans. W.S. Pluhar (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987); MS: Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M.J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991); Obs: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the
Sublime, trans. J.T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); V: "Kant
on the Metaphysics of Morals: Vigilantius's Lecture Notes," trans. P. Heath, in Lectures
on Ethics, ed. P. Heath and J.B. Schneewind (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1997).
4 Christine M. Korsgaard remarks that in the reciprocity necessary to form a unity of will,
"[w]hat is exchanged is a part of one's practical identity, and what results is a transfor-
mation of identity," suggesting that-contra many of his critics-Kant takes certain rela-
tionships to be constitutive of identity ("Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and
Responsibility in Personal Relations," in Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 215-16, nt. 14. Originally published in Philosoph-
ical Perspectives 6: Ethics, 1992, ed. J. Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publish-
ing Co.).
2 LARA DENIS
My goals in this paper are to explain why Kant takes friendship to be a
more morally fruitful relationship than marriage, to show how we can revise
Kant's conception of marriage to bring it closer to that of friendship, and to
defend that sort of revision. I begin by discussing Kant's account of friend-
ship and the principle that best illuminates the moral significance of friend-
ship for Kant. Next I turn to Kant's account of marriage and discuss how
marriage compares with friendship. I then show that, by altering some of
Kant's assumptions about men and women, and by drawing on some of
Kant's insights about friendship, we can sketch a morally rich ideal of
marriage. But I also show that we cannot reach such an ideal without revising
some of Kant's views about friendship in the process. Finally, I caution
against letting our reliance on friendship as a model for certain aspects of
marriage obscure the important differences between these two types of rela-
tionships.
1. Friendship
Kant acknowledges at least four notions of friendship. He takes at least three
of them from Aristotle: friendships of taste (aesthetic friendship), need
(pragmatic friendship), and disposition and sentiment (moral friendship).5
Friendship of taste "consists in taking pleasure in the company and mutual
association of the two parties, rather than their happiness"; Kant considers
friendship of taste only "an analogue of friendship" (C 426). Friendship of
need is characterized as one in which "participants may entrust each other
with a reciprocal concern in regard to their needs in life" (C 425). Friendship
of disposition and sentiment, the highest of these three, consists in "the
complete confidence of two persons in revealing their secret judgments and
feelings to each other, as far as such disclosures are consistent with mutual
respect" (MS 471). According to Kant, all three of these kinds of friendship
are realizable. The fourth notion of friendship that Kant introduces-perfect,
ideal, or complete friendship-is not; we can only approximate it. Kant's
conception of perfect friendship incorporates elements of each of the other
kinds, particularly emphasizing the characteristics definitive of moral friend-
ship.6 When I talk about Kant's conception of friendship, I will mean his
5 See book eight, chapters 3-6 (1156a5-1158b10) of Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence
Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), pp. 211-20.
6 This is clearest in Vigilantius's lecture notes. Although some commentators have made
interesting points about the difference between ideal and moral friendship as distin-
guished by Kant in the Metaphysics of Morals, I find the inclusive account of friendship
in the Vigilanitius notes to offer a more plausible picture of what Kant would see as
perfect friendship-largely because of its incorporation of the characteristics of moral
friendship. For two discussions that contrast moral and ideal friendship in Kant, see H.J.
Paton, "Kant on Friendship," Proceedings of the British Academy (1956): 45-68; and
Josephine C. Nauckhoff, "Kant on the Moral Structure of Friendship," Pacific APA,
April 1999.
conception of friendship in its perfection. When I talk generally about friend-
ships and friends, I will have in mind those relationships and persons that
embody (if ideal) or approximate (if real) perfect friendship.
Perhaps the most morally salient feature of Kant's conception of friend-
ship is that it embodies and unites the moral attitudes that we are required to
take toward others: love and respect.7 By "respect" I mean the recognition of a
human being as a moral agent with dignity-one equal in worth to all other
rational beings and more valuable than anyone's merely desired ends (G 427-
29). By "love" I mean what Kant calls "practical love," the willingness to
help others in their pursuit of their morally permissible ends (MS 402-3).
Theformula of humanity (FH), Kant's second formulation of the categorical
imperative, grounds these attitudes of love and respect, and certain ways of
acting based on them, as duties. FH commands: "Act in such a way that you
treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another,
always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (G 429).
Most generally, FH requires practically demonstrating that one regards ratio-
nal nature-the capacities to choose among various objects of desire and to
act morally-as having value over and above objects of desire. This require-
ment gives rise to two classes of duties to others. Duties of respect require
not degrading others, and limiting our use of them to that which is consistent
with their dignity and equality with us as rational beings (MS 449-50, 462-
68). Duties of love involve actively promoting the well-being of others and
making ourselves more sensitive to opportunities for that promotion (MS
449-58). FH also gives rise to self-regarding duties. We must respect
ourselves, in part by not becoming unilaterally dependent on others (MS 436;
V 605-6, 651-52). And we must strive for our moral and natural improve-
ment.
Duties of respect are owed equally to all rational beings: there is no one
whom we may demean. Duties of love are less stringent and more flexible.
No one without a special relationship to me (e.g., my child) can demand my
aid as her moral right. Moreover, Kant says that, while the well-being and
happiness of others generally must be my end, "in acting I can, without
violating the universality of the maxim, vary the degree [of beneficence]
greatly in accordance with the different objects of my love (one of whom
concerns me more closely than another)" (MS 452). Friends are people in
relationship with whom we give and receive more than the requisite respect,
and share much love. We are vividly aware of each other's autonomy and
capacity for goodness; our interaction with each other reflects this recogni-
tion. We seek and rejoice in each other's happiness with nearly as much
7 For discussions of the nature and relation of love and respect in this context, see Marcia
Baron's "Love and Respect in the Doctrine of Virtue" and Robert Johnson's comments,
"Love in Vain," in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Nelson Potter and Mark Timmons,
Supplement to the Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (1997): 29-44, 45-50.
4 LARA DENIS
eagerness as we do our own, and are keenly alert to opportunities to help each
other achieve our desired ends. Thus, friends are those with whom we most
fully realize the interpersonal ideal implied by FH.
Not only do friends give a large amount of their love to each other, but
this giving is repaid in kind. The reciprocity of love in friendship helps
greatly to distinguish friendship from other human interactions in which we
might help others or wish them well (V 675-76). Friendship is a bilateral,
equal bond: one that exists between people who feel that they are loved by
their friend with the same degree of love that they give (V 677; C 423-24).
Thus, as important as the amount of love that the friends feel for each other
is the equality of their love. Moreover, within each friend, love must be
balanced by respect.
Friendship (considered in its perfection) is the union of two persons through equal mutual love
and respect.... But it is readily seen that friendship is only an Idea (though a practically neces-
sary one) and unattainable in practice.... For in his relations with his neighbor how can a man
ascertain whether one of the elements requisite to this duty (e.g., benevolence toward each
other) is equal in the disposition of each of the friends? Or, even more difficult, how can he
tell what relation there is in the same person between the feeling from one duty and that from
the other (the feeling from benevolence and that from respect)? (MS 469)
Anytime we take it upon ourselves to be loving toward another, we must be

careful not to diminish the other's self-respect. We must minimize his sense
of dependence on, and obligation toward, us: "it is our duty to behave as if
our help is either merely what is due him or but a slight service of love, and
to spare him humiliation and maintain his respect for himself' (MS 448-49).
The closer to a person we become and the more love we show him, the more
important it is that we make an effort to preserve his self-respect. For exam-
ple, while friends may strive to improve one another, they must do it with
utmost caution so as not to demean the other (MS 470; C 427; V 625).
Similarly, we owe it to ourselves to avoid relationships in which we are
continually dependent on someone else. Because of the importance of self-
respect, Kant urges that friends be equals: "inequality in rank, means, or other
aspects of worldly fortune has nothing in common with friendship. This
reciprocal love must absolutely be coupled, among friends, with mutual
respect for humanity in the person of the friend" (V 682). In order for some-
one to respect her friend, Kant implies, her friend must be able to contribute
as much to her well-being as she can contribute to that of her friend.
Friends must also keep a certain distance from each other in order to main-
tain mutual respect. "For love can be regarded as attraction and respect as
repulsion, and if the principle of love bids friends to draw closer, the principle
of respect requires them to stay at a proper distance from each other" (MS
469-70). More dramatically, Kant states:
Although it is sweet to feel in such possession of each other as approaches a fusion into one
person, friendship is something so delicate...that it is never safe from interruptions if it is
allowed to rest on feelings, and if this mutual sympathy and self-surrender are not subjected to
rules preventing excessive familiarity and limiting mutual love by requirements of respect. (MS
471)
What is perhaps most striking about this passage is the intensity with which
Kant characterizes the feelings that friends have for each other: "possession"
that "approaches fusion into one person," and "self-surrender." Kant attributes
to ideal friendship a level of intimacy and identification that many people
associate only with romantic or sexual relationships.8 But note that Kant
urges that, even in the midst of this intensity and intimacy, we not reveal to
our friend anything that we could reasonably expect to diminish his respect
for us (C 426; V 684-85). Kant is also concerned that we avoid revealing
aspects of ourselves that could shock our friend about us or disillusion him
about people in general (MS 466; Ant 152-53).
In addition, friends should try to rely as little as possible on each other for
the satisfaction of their needs. This might seem surprising, for we began talk-
ing about Kantian friendship in the context of practical love, and Kant says
that all friendships presuppose pragmatic friendship to some degree (C 425).
But while Kant certainly thinks that friends must be able to count on each
other for help in case of need, "friendship cannot be a union aimed at mutual
advantage" (MS 470). Friends should strive as far as possible not to draw on
their friends for aid, for to do so risks disturbing the balance of equality
between the friends, and the balance of love and respect within them (MS
470-71; C 425-26; V 684). Furthermore, Kant does not see need or enjoy-
ment, however reciprocal, as solid foundations for a true union of persons. It
is "the complete confidence of two persons in revealing their secret judgments
and feelings to each other," which characterizes moral friendship, that is at the
heart of Kant's conception of friendship. Because of prudence and unsociabil-
ity, Kant sees people as prone to keeping their thoughts to themselves (MS
271-72; C 427). But he also sees people as feeling a need to share their
thoughts with like-minded others (V 681). Such mutual disclosure also aids
people in the correction of their judgments (C 427; V 683). Indeed, the
exchange of thoughts is at the heart of Kant's conception of moral friendship.
When two people share their thoughts, they "are fully in communion" with
each other (C 427).9 They do not simply report their feelings or thoughts, but
8 Paton, op. cit., p. 53, suggests that Kant sometimes humorously exaggerates the devotion
between friends both to emphasize the degree to which some moralists have turned
friendship into a romantic ideal and to imply the foolishness of moralists who presuppose
the realizability of such an ideal.
9 Kant says that there would be no need of this sort of exclusive, particularistic relationship
in a morally perfect society such as heaven, in which rational beings could universally
trust one another with their thoughts (C 428).
6 LARA DENIS
develop principles together (V 685). This sort of sharing, trust, and sympathy
is essential to any relationship that Kant would call a genuine friendship.
So friends feel an intense bond with (or a "reciprocal possession" of) each
other that is based not on inclinations or needs, but on moral principles. For
a friendship to be solid, it must be based on principles shared in common and
on disinterested affection and esteem, not on enjoyment of each other's
company or on expected material assistance.
The essential thing here is the idea that each has of the other, that one belongs to the other, and
that they possess each other in respect of their whole moral disposition, and each mutually
shares in every situation of the other, as if it were encountered by himself...though no
community of resources or of enjoyment of happiness is understood thereby. (V 677)
Such sharing of ideas and judgments requires both respect and prudence. Kant
warns that friends must not share thoughts that would make the other feel
uncomfortable or demeaned. Nor should friends say anything that would cause
the friend to lose respect for the speaker or that the friend could later use
against the speaker, should they cease to be friends. And we should add, in
keeping with Kant's general views about the importance of reciprocity in
friendship, that friends should have an equal give and take of thoughts-one
friend should not, for example, serve as an unpaid psychotherapist for the
other.10 But within these bounds, friends should enjoy the rare opportunity to
speak their minds with someone who understands them, and who shares their
fundamental principles and outlook. While some amount of diversity is desir-
able in a friendship, "in one particular they must agree: they need to have the
same principles of understanding and morality, and then they can fully under-
stand each other" (C 429).
Because of the moral and intellectual nature of their bond, friends share
mutual esteem, which Kant calls "well-liking." Well-liking goes beyond the
attitude of well-wishing that we are obligated to have for all rational beings.
Well-liking "can never be wrung from us...without an occasion; so it can
never be commanded as a duty. This liking is based on the esteem the other
has acquired through his characteristics, and the acknowledgment of his
worth" (V 676). Mutual well-liking "lies solely in the intellectual disposition
of the friends, engendered from the material of reciprocal esteem" (V 680).
And indeed, one should see one's friend as having virtues that merit well-
liking. For a friend must be someone whom one can trust to keep one's
confidences, to protect one's self-esteem, and to help one improve oneself and
to refine one's principles (MS 470-72). Worthiness to be a friend consists in
"uprightness of disposition, candor and trustworthiness, by conduct that is
0 This point was made clearer to me by the comments of William J. Wilcox on Josephine
Nauckhoff's paper, op. cit.
free from malice and falsity, and conjoined with vivacity, amiability and
cheerfulness of mind" (C 429).
A friendship based on solid principles should last. But Kant does not argue
that friendships ought never to end. One may be wrong about the virtues of a
friend, and may leave a friendship when it does not meet one's expectations
(C 429). Moreover, though inclinations will not form the basis of deep
friendships, one will usually share or sympathize with many of the inclina-
tions of one's friends. This is so not only because friends may influence one
another's inclinations, but also because some commonality of inclination
may make one potential friend better suited to one than another. '
Kant sums up his conception of friendship as "a complete love of well-
wishing (benevolence) and also of well-liking (esteem) among equals, in
regard to their moral disposition and inclinations" (V 680). Kant praises
friendship because he understands it as a relationship that embodies love and
respect for others, preserves self-respect, and fosters self-development. The
perfect moral relationship, for Kant, would be one in which people loved each
other while balancing that love with respect, and in which neither party felt
beholden to or burdened by the other. It would be one in which thoughts
could be shared and principles refined. It would be one in which people felt
sympathy, trust, appreciation, and understanding for each other. Kant's ideal
of friendship contains all these features. That is why Kant says that "striving
for friendship...is a duty set by reason, and no ordinary duty but an honorable
one" (MS 469). Friendship is a union forged of reciprocal love and respect, a
union that lets each friend be his best and share the best of himself as a moral
and intellectual being with his friend.
2. Marriage and its lesser status

In friendship, the reciprocity that Kant talks about is a reciprocity of self-
disclosure, respect, and practical love. Friends "possess" each other as intel-
lectual and moral beings; they are so closely united by their shared-and even
jointly formed-principles, thoughts, and sentiments, that they feel as
though they belong to each other. Friendship is characterized by equality and
a balance of love and respect. Kant sees reciprocity, mutual possession, and
unity in marriage, too. But in marriage, the reciprocity, unity, and possession
are of somewhat different sorts than in friendship. To understand the marital
In Emile, Rousseau urges his charge to think carefully about his love for Sophie. Emile
should not marry someone just because she pleases him and is morally good: "[Sophie] is
virtuous, I know. But is that enough? Is being decent sufficient for people to be suitable
for each other?" (Emile, ed. Allan Bloom (Basic Books, Inc., 1979), p. 447). While incli-
nation cannot be the basis for Kantian friendship, I doubt that any random pairing of two
morally good people-even with some similar principles-would make equally good
friends; similar inclinations will bring them closer.
8 LARA DENIS
relationship as Kant sees it, it is important to understand why Kant takes
marriage to be a morally necessary institution.
Kant takes marriage to be a morally necessary institution because he sees
it as the only way to make sex morally permissible (C 388; MS 277-78).
Kant has a starkly unromantic view of sexual passion. He thinks of the desire
for sex as an appetite for another person (C 384-87). When we want to have
sex with someone, we desire to use "someone directly [as an object of
enjoyment]" and, in so desiring, "reduc[e] him or her to an immediately
enjoyable thing" (KPC 235). Moreover, when we willingly enter a non-
marital sexual relationship with another person, we offer ourselves as a mere
object of enjoyment. One is a "mere" object of enjoyment here because,
according to Kant, without marriage, there is no guarantee that the person
sees one as anything other than an object of enjoyment: "taken in and by
itself, [the sexual impulse] is nothing more than an appetite. But, so consid-
ered, there lies in this inclination a degradation of the human being; for as
soon as anyone becomes an object of another's appetite, all motives of moral
relationship cease to function" (C 384-85). To put oneself in a position to be
so viewed and treated by others fails to comply with the self-regarding
requirement of FH, and so violates a duty to oneself.12
But Kant does not think that all sexual expression is wrong. Sexual incli-
nation can be understood as having an important natural purpose: the contin-
uance of the human race (MS 277, 424-26; C 391; KU 425; Ant 303, 310;
V 639).13 Thus, according to Kant, there must be a way for human beings to
have sex without degrading themselves (C 388). Kant thinks that this possi-
bility is realized only in marriage, understood as "the union of two persons of
different sexes for lifelong possession of each other's sexual attributes" (MS
277), or as "a contract between two persons, in which they mutually accord
equal rights to one another, and submit to the condition that each transfers his
12 Although one may object to this somewhat grim view of sex, and so object to any account
of marriage that presupposes it, I will accept Kant's account of sexual desire for the
remainder of this paper. Sexuality is a large topic; exploring the validity of Kant's
conception of it would shift the focus of the paper away from what primarily interests me
here. Moreover, I think that it is important to show that even if we retain Kant's unsettling
view of sex, we can forge an appealing Kantian account of marriage. (The project of
arguing that marriage has more going for it than Kant usually recognizes would be easier
if one challenged rather than accepted Kant's notion of sexual passion.) Finally, although
Kant's picture of sex is far from complete, I think that he has identified deep and morally
troubling elements present in much of human sexuality. Sexual desire often does feel like
an appetite for another person qua sexual partner; it often is difficult to continue fully to
recognize the object of one's sexual passion as an autonomous, separate person; and
when one has sex with another person outside of marriage, it can feel as though one
gives her one's whole self, uncertain as to whether one is more than an object of enjoy-
ment for her.
13 Kant suggests that it may have more social purposes as well. See Ant 305-6; Obs 93.
whole person entirely to the other, so that each has a complete right to the
other's whole person" (C 388).
Five aspects of marriage that emerge as significant from these definitions
are that (a) the partners have reciprocal use of each other as sexual objects,
that (b) these rights extend beyond control over the others sexual organs to
the "whole person," and that this relationship is (c) monogamous, (d) perma-
nent,'4 and (e) legally enforceable. The equality and reciprocity of use of
sexual organs seems to follow from Kant's understanding of the requirements
of FH regarding respect for oneself. Kant says that "a right of both sexes to
acquire each other in the manner of things by marriage" arises "from one's
duty to oneself' (MS 280). One would not be respecting oneself if one gave
another person greater rights over one's sexual capacities than one's partner
gave in return. One would be making oneself an object of enjoyment for the
other without asserting one's status as a rational being, equal in worth to all
other rational beings.
Kant thinks that one would also violate a duty to oneself if, freely or by
contract, one were to grant another use of one's sexual parts only-that is, if
one did not agree to merge one's life with that of one's sexual partner (C
386-88; V 638). For Kant, the human being is a unity, composed of physi-
cal and rational nature (MS 278; C 387). One cannot treat one's body like a
thing and not degrade one's humanity. And Kant thinks that any attempt by
people to enjoy each other merely as sexual beings will lead to this degrada-
tion, for doing so is tantamount to saying, "here is my whole self; you may
ignore my humanity and treat me simply as a thing for your direct, cannibal-
istic enjoyment." We cannot separate our sexuality from the rest of ourselves.
Thus, the only way it can be permissible for me to allow another person to
enjoy me sexually is for that person to have rights over me as a whole
person.
Two qualms might arise regarding Kant's claim that permissible sex
requires a marriage in which partners unite their lives (in part) by granting
and accepting rights over each other as whole persons. First, one might
wonder why any sort of life-merger is necessary for self- and other-respecting
sex. We permissibly engage in all sorts of activities without (or outside of)
marriage that express different aspects of ourselves: playing chess, singing in
a choir, and philosophizing, to name a few. Why cannot one have a respectful
sexual relationship simply by avoiding deception and manipulation? One
must remember that for Kant, sex involves allowing another person to enjoy
you as an object of sensual pleasure. However sexually talented your lover is,
sexual passion is not the desire to receive physical pleasure from her, as when
you desire a Swedish massage. Nor is it the desire for an activity, like tennis,
14 Adultery and inability to perform the sex act are (perhaps the only) two conditions under
which Kant takes divorce to be justified (MS 279-80; V 640).
10 LARA DENIS
that you can engage in together for mutual satisfaction. Sexual passion
makes people view each other differently than desires to play music or
basketball together do. It makes one see the other person as an object of
enjoyment, as a potential source of sexual satisfaction; this is why a person
cannot separate her sexuality from the rest of herself. Our sexuality colors our
whole selves in the eyes of those who sexually desire us. Thus, when one
person gives herself sexually to another, she is giving that person her whole
self.'5 Only if she and her partner merge their lives can she receive practical
recognition from him that she is a rational human being whose sexuality
only partly defines her-that she is an object of respect more fundamentally
than an object of sensual enjoyment. Moreover, since casual lovers often act
and speak in ways that married lovers do to express their affection and
commitment, lovers who tell each other that they want a purely sexual
relationship are likely inadvertently to mislead each other into thinking the
relationship means more to them, or themselves into thinking it means more
to their lover.16
Second, the notion of rights over another person might sound morally
suspect, especially given Kant's view that one has a duty to oneself to "be
one's own master" (MS 237-38). Remember, however, that I have the same
rights over that person as the other has over me. Kant seems to think that
these reciprocal rights give rise to a union of two people who are free
precisely because they retain equal rights over the other (and over the other's
property):
Now in this, that they both fully acquire each other, and one becomes the other's property,
there is constituted the union of the two conjoined sexes, in respect of all their relationships.
Yet each, for all that, is self-possessing, although given over to the other as a thing, since each
retains freedom to dispose over the other's property as their own. (V 639)
If I am your master, but you are also mine, I cannot treat you in any way that
you do not allow me to treat you. Similarly, even if I give myself to you for
sexual enjoyment and make my well-being dependent on you, I do not lose
my mastery over myself if I am at the same time in possession of you and so
largely responsible for your happiness in the same way. What emerges from
15 Kant is aware that sex can radically alter the lives of women-sometimes fatally-due to
resulting pregnancy and childbirth (MS 359-60). So there is a way in which women
really do put their lives in the hands of the men with whom they have sex. Considerations
of equality, reciprocity, and self-respect would seem to require a woman not to make
herself dependent on a man who has not first promised to merge his life with hers,
committing himself to sharing as fully as possible the burdens of the sexual relationship as
a condition of enjoying the woman sexually.
16 Onora O'Neill discusses how vital and difficult requirements of Kantian respect can be
in sexual relationships. See "Between Consenting Adults" in Constructions of Reason
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), especially pp. 118-25. ("Between
Consenting Adults" originally appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (3) (1985):
252-77.)
reciprocal rights over the whole person of the spouse is a union of two
persons who have joint determination over themselves and shared responsibil-
ity for their joint welfare.
The monogamous, permanent, and legally binding nature of marriage also
follows from requirements of Kantian self-respect. Marriage must be monog-
amous to assure that the partners posses each other equally and that their
union is complete (MS 278). Marriage must be a contract for permanent,
reciprocal possession of each other, for otherwise, Kant worries, marriage
would degenerate into a contract of mere sexual use of a person (MS 278-79;
V 639-41). Such a relationship of mere use reduces a person to an object of
consumption, such that "as soon as the person is possessed, and the appetite
sated, they are thrown away, as one throws away a lemon after sucking the
juice from it" (C 384).
The fact that marriage is a legal, public institution gives the partners
rights to each other as though they were things (MS 276-80). Each partner
has a legal right to the possession of the other person. If one of the partners
leaves, the other can demand that she return (MS 278). The legal nature of the
union and the security in possession that it brings with it gives each partner
the assurance that the other cannot simply use her and then leave. The legal
nature of the bond also ensures that each partner recognizes the other as a
rational being prior to, and as a condition of, entering a sexual relationship; it
places the sexual aspect of marriage in a context of rights. If marriage were
based merely on feelings, partners would lack security of possession. They
would have no guarantee that their partners recognized them as anything other
than objects of desire. Even if marriage were a morally binding relationship,
based on duty rather than feeling, without legal sanction to back it up, part-
ners would lack the security and the implicit recognition of equality that legal
marriage provides.17 Of course, marriage's legality, permanence, exclusivity,
equality, and reciprocity are not sufficient for making sex morally safe;
Kant's view does not imply that they are. Even within marriage there is room
for such degrading practices as rape. Moreover, many people now will not
agree with Kant that marriage is necessary for permissible sex. But for the
sake of simplicity, and because I think that marriage is the strongest candidate
for a morally safe context for sex, I will assume the truth of Kant's concep-
tion of marriage as necessary (though not sufficient) for other- and self-
respecting sex.
To sum up, in Kant's view of marriage, the partners are joined perma-
nently to each other and to their shared well-being. Marriage presupposes
equality between husband and wife as rational agents-for if they were not
17 For a discussion of Kant's use of the legal institution of marriage to solve the moral
problem of sexual degradation, see Barbara Herman, "Could It Be Worth Thinking
About Kant on Sex and Marriage?" in A Mind of One's Own, ed. L. M. Antony and C.
Witt (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993).
12 LARA DENIS
both rational agents, marriage would be neither necessary nor possible.
Moreover, marriage must contain only two people, each possessing the other,
and possessing the other equally, as whole beings (C 388-89; MS 278-79).
So there are ways in which the relationship between marriage partners resem-
bles that between friends. In his account of both, Kant stresses the reciprocity
of the give and take between the parties, the possession of each by the other,
the union between them, and the status of each as rational beings.
Yet there are key differences between marriage and friendship, as Kant
understands them-differences which make marriage look morally impover-
ished by comparison. I will discuss six differences here. First, marriage seems
to have a weaker, more sensuous basis than friendship. Marriage exists so
that people can have sex without degrading themselves. Marriage is a permis-
sible context for the expression of sexual love. But sexual love is an appetite.
Even within marriage, sex is "merely an animal union" (MS 425). And we
can see from Kant's dismissal of friendships of taste and need that Kant does
not see such feelings as the foundation for a solid moral relationship:
The communal possession of one person by the other, or reciprocal possession, i.e., union of
their person as to moral disposition [is a feature of friendship]. It is somewhat the same as in
marriage. This reciprocal possession [in friendship] is founded, however, on moral principles
and a mutual love derived from that, and is thus an intellectual or moral possession. It cannot
therefore be sought in the likeness or affinity of inclinations, which frequently have physical or
sensory need as their basis, e.g., pleasure in playing together, whether it be chess, cards,
music, or other pastimes. (V 677)
Kant sees marriage as a union founded on sexual desire and on the moral
requirement not to degrade oneself in giving way to that desire; the partners
possess each other as sexual objects, (and, derivatively, because of the legal
response to the moral requirements of respect, as whole people). Marriage
partners are bound to each other not by choice alone, but by law. And they
depend on each other for the satisfaction of many of their day to day needs.
Thus, the nature of the union and the mutual possession in marriage seems
less pure, less moral, and less intellectual, than the union and the mutual
possession of a genuine friendship. Marriage seems more akin to friendships
based on inclination or need.
Second, Kant thinks that marriage requires one person to dominate the
other. "If a union is to be harmonious and indissoluble it is not enough for
two persons to associate as they please; one partner must be subject to the
other and, reciprocally, one must be superior to the other in some way, in
order to be able to rule and govern him" (Ant 303). In particular, the husband
should-subtly and tactfully-rule the wife (And 309-10).18 Kant does not
18 It is amusing that Kant and Rousseau use the same analogy for the marital relation,
although they switch the roles. Kant says: "the woman should reign and the man govern;
for inclination reigns and understanding governs.... [The husband] will be like a minister
think that this sort of dominance by one party over the other denies the wife
her equality as a rational being, or renders the marriage objectionably unequal:
If the question is...posed, whether it is...in conflict with the equality of the partners for the law
to say of the husband's relation to the wife, he is to be your master (he is the party to direct;
she to obey): This cannot be regarded as conflicting with the natural equality of a couple if this
dominance is based only on the natural superiority of the husband to his wife in his capacity to
promote the common interest of the household, and the right to direct that is based on this can
be derived from the very duty of unity and equality with respect to the end. (MS 279)
Despite his attempts to explain the existence of a kind of equality in this rela-
tionship, however, Kant elsewhere makes clear that his position on the nature
of marriage as involving rule by the husband prevents there being a high
degree of equality. Kant says, "[r]eciprocal possession of each other is more
perfect and more equal in friendship than in marriage, for because women are
inferior they need men's guidance and protection" (V 683). Thus, marriage
does not require or even permit the kind of equality to which friendship
aspires, and which allows friendships to foster mutual love and esteem.
Husbands have far more responsibility and authority than wives.19
Third, as the preceding passages make clear, Kant not only thinks that
there has to be a ruler in the marriage, and that that ruler is the husband, but
he thinks this because he sees women as inferior to men. Women's inferior-
ity does not hold in every sphere of life. Kant thinks that women are better at
certain things than men are. In particular, Kant thinks that women are far
more discerning about people and how to influence them-especially men
(Ant 303-4; Obs 79-80). In Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and
the Sublime, after explaining that women are aligned with the beautiful, and
men with the sublime, Kant declares: "In matrimonial life the united pair
should, as it were, constitute as single moral person, which is animated and
governed by the understanding of the man and the taste of the wife" (Obs 95).
It is men who have charge of the serious deliberations and who have the last
word on matters that affect the family. And they have this authority largely
because women are not capable in such matters. Thus, in marriage it seems
to his monarch who thinks only of amusement.... [T]he monarch can do all that he wills,
but on one condition: that his minister lets him know what his will is" (Ant 309-10).
Rousseau says: "[a woman] ought to reign in the home as a minister does in a state-by
getting herself commanded [by the husband (monarch)] to do what she wants to do"
(Emile, op. cit., p. 408).
9 Many feminist critics of Kant have noted that he thinks that no women are fit to be
citizens (MS 314-15). Many men do not qualify to be citizens on Kant's account, either.
Nevertheless, if a woman is married to a man who is a citizen, there is an obvious differ-
ence in social power between them. For two such feminist criticisms of Kant on women
and marriage, see Susan Mendus, "Kant: 'An Honest but Narrow-Minded Bourgeois?"'
in Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. Howard L. Williams (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992); and Hannelore Schr6der, "Kant's Patriarchal Order," trans. R.
Gircour, in Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, op. cit.
14 LARA DENIS
foolish even to strive for an equal balance of love and respect, or to hope that
love and esteem will be felt equally by both parties. Kant says that, given the
differences in the qualities of men and women, spouses who understand and
live up to the natural ends of their gender will be in the position such that
"the man, confident in his merits, will be able to say: 'Even if you do not
love me, I will constrain you to esteem me,' and the woman, secure in the
might of her charms, will answer: 'Even if you do not inwardly admire me, I
will constrain you to love me"' (Obs 95).
Fourth, the particular ways in which women are different from, and
inferior to, men make it unlikely that a husband could enjoy the kind of
mutual disclosure, reciprocal correcting of judgment, and formation of princi-
ples with a wife that he could with a male friend.20 For one thing, while men
and women, according to Kant, have equal degrees of understanding, their
understandings are of different kinds: women's is a "beautiful" understanding,
men's a "sublime" (Obs 76-78). This difference is significant enough that
Kant thinks education of male and female children should take it into account.
Characteristic of the beautiful understanding is an abhorrence of duty and

obligation, as well as of abstract or deep reasoning-affinities for which are
features of the sublime understanding. Given the disparities in the nature of
their understandings, it seems unlikely that a woman and a man could have
the kind of shared outlook and principles necessary for genuine friendship.
For another thing, Kant thinks that, while women are extremely eloquent,
they are also loquacious to a degree that renders them poor at keeping secrets
(Ant 304). Since mutual self-disclosure is an important part of friendship, and
since among the virtues one seeks in a friend are the prudence and trustwor-
thiness to keep secrets, women would not seem to make good friends. And
finally, Kant thinks that, given women's dependence on their husbands and
their delicate emotional constitution, men should not share with their wives
many concerns of which they might want to unburden themselves: "A man
must never tell his wife if he risks a part of his fortune on behalf of a friend.
Why should he fetter her merry talkativeness by burdening her mind with a
weighty secret whose keeping lies solely upon him?" (Obs 81-82). The fact
that his fortune is, given Kant's account of marriage, also her fortune
provides one obvious answer. But the point is that if women are poor confi-
dants for their husbands, they are poor friends for them as well.
Fifth, it is doubtful that, in marriage, the partners could maintain the kind
of distance from each other that prevents erosion of respect. This is not to say
that spouses could not observe rules about being cautious in correcting each
20 Given Kant's understanding of moral (and on my account, ideal) friendships as founded

on shared principles, and his doubts about women's ability to act on principles, it seems
unlikely that women could form genuine friendships. They might be left with friendships
of taste, since Kant claims that even women's objections to wrongness have to do with
their sense of beauty (Obs 81).
other and in not degrading each other. But since they are living together and
having sex, they are privy to many aspects of human existence that Kant
seems to regard as shameful. Moreover, a spouse's intellectual, moral, and
physical frailties would become increasingly clear as the couple live their
lives together.
Sixth, and most ironic, Kant portrays friendship as more loving than
marriage. Kant, remember, conceives of friendship as "the maximum of
mutual love" (C 423). And while it is primarily practical love that Kant has
in mind, he suggests that inclination and feeling will also bind friends
together (MS 401-2, 452; C 384, 417-18). We can assume, for example,
that friends will develop a particularly intense form of what Kant calls
"human affection," "the love that wishes well, is amicably disposed,
promotes the happiness of others and rejoices in it" (C 384). Kant assumes
that sexual love is part of most marriages, at least at first. But sexual love is
distinct from both human affection and practical love. Human affection, Kant
says, makes no distinction among types of persons-for example, between
young and old (C 384). Sexual love, on the other hand, is an appetite for
another that we have precisely because of the other's sexual attributes (C
384-85). Indeed, Kant says that sexual love "cannot be classed with either the
love that is mere delight or the love of benevolence...and this ardor has noth-
ing in common with moral love properly speaking" (MS 426). Finally, love
and esteem are what keep friends together; those attitudes characterize the
bond. Kant characterizes marriage in terms of its role as a morally safe
context for sex, as a legally binding relationship, and as a socially appropriate
environment for raising children. Love is not among the first things that
come to mind when one considers Kant's conception of marriage. Of course,
marriage promises partners some measure of practical love. Even apart from
moral requirements to care for the well-being of one's spouse, prudence
advises them to take care of each other: since the partners are inextricably
linked, much of what benefits one will benefit the other. And treating each
other well out of duty or self-interest is likely to give rise to the inclination
to do so (MS 401-2; C 417-18). Nevertheless, neither practical love nor
human affection seem as central to Kant's notion of marriage as they do to
friendship.
So from Kant's point of view, marriage is not on par with friendship with
regard to reciprocal love and respect. Marriage exists as a means for express-
ing sexual love without degrading oneself. Spouses may love each other, but
human affection and practical love seem less integral to the notion of
marriage than to that of friendship. A man will not find someone whom he
can respect in a wife to the degree he will in a friend. He will not find some-
one with whom he can share the tasks of married life equally. And spouses do
not enjoy the sort of distance from each other so crucial in maintaining
respect for oneself and for the other.
16 LARA DENIS
3. Revising Kant's conception of marriage
The concerns about marriage raised at the end of the preceding section are
disconcerting if one believes that marriage has the potential to be a morally
rich relationship. But the aspects of Kant's account of marriage from which
these objections spring do not exhaust the potential for a Kantian conception
of marriage. By looking more deeply into what Kant does and does not say
about marriage, by correcting some of Kant's dubious assumptions, and by
taking friendship as our model, we can forge a conception of marriage that
embodies many of the morally valuable aspects of friendship. This process
will also highlight aspects of Kant's picture of friendship that are unreason-
able or undesirable.
The first concern about marriage was that its basis in sexual desire made it
seem like a less deep, less genuine union than that of friendship. It is true
that, for Kant, people must unite through the legal institution of marriage if
they are to have sex without degrading themselves. Of course, some of us
may not share this view of marriage-especially if we do not think that sex
is as morally dangerous as Kant does. One may instead think of marriage
primarily as a stable context in which to raise children, or as a way of
expressing and solidifying one's commitment to one's lover. But even if we
agree with Kant that marriage is necessary for self-respecting sex, there are
two reasons why this fact does not entail that marriage cannot aspire to a pure
basis and deep union like that of friendship. In the first place, there is a differ-
ence between the justification for the existence of marriage as a legal institu-
tion and the motivation of people who enter particular marriages. Just
because sex and the self-regarding danger of sex grounds the necessity of the
institution of marriage, it need not explain why any two people choose to
marry each other-or why they should. That marriage is necessary because of
the nature of sex does not mean that the foundation of all marriages is sex.
The foundation of a particular marriage might be mutual respect and love,
with sexual desire playing a minor role in the couple's reasons for marrying.
If Kant is right that respect, human affection, and practical love are essential
to stable, fulfilling interpersonal unions, we should encourage people to form
marriages in which those features are foundational, prominent, and secure. In
the second place, there is a difference between what motivates people to begin
a romantic relationship-and possibly to marry-and what ends up constitut-
ing the foundation of the relationship. Even if sexual desire initially draws
two people together into a marriage, it need not constitute the basis of their
marriage. Kant notes:
Love from inclination can indeed make a start for people, e.g., the love of the male and female
sexes normally begins from pathological love...but this love from inclination must not deter-
mine [the husband]; his respect, rather, must be based on a principle of duty. This does not
fade away, should the instinctual attractions, such as beauty and talent, disappear. (V 671)
People may initially join together because of sexual love. But their relation-
ship can-and Kant thinks, should-nevertheless develop a distinctly moral
foundation. So individual marriages may have a firm moral foundation, even
if they are initiated because of sexual attraction, and even if the nature of
sexual love makes marriage necessary.
The second concern about Kant's notion of marriage suggested that essen-
tial to the nature of marriage is an inequality of authority and responsibility
that makes impossible the sort of mutual respect that Kant takes to be impor-
tant in friendship. This concern stemmed from Kant's claim that in marriage,
one party must rule over the other, and that it was invariably the husband
who should do the ruling. This claim seems unwarranted on both counts. In
the first place, as Carole Pateman and John Stuart Mill have both noted, such
dominance of one of two supposedly equal parties is not necessary in friend-
ships or business partnerships. It is far from obvious why that sort of
inequality is necessary in marriage.21 Kant claims that the ruler-ruled dynamic
is necessary for a union to be "harmonious and indissoluble" (Ant 303). But
this seems false. Kant himself undercuts the claim about harmony by
acknowledging that "this [marital] inequality may lead to antagonism"
between spouses (V 683). And it is difficult to see how unequal authority
sustains a marriage with regard to its duration (especially if it tends to foster
antagonism). For a marriage to function harmoniously and to endure, a
couple may well need to divide their labor, each having routine control over
certain areas of their life together. And it is conceivable that, in particular
couples, one partner will tend to take the dominant role in most decisions
facing them, or in the larger decisions facing the family. (Perhaps the other
partner is indecisive, poor at long-term planning, or nervous about making
big decisions.) Many such arrangements will be unobjectionable.22 But
acknowledging these sorts of relationships as permissible possibilities is far
from endorsing a general policy of dominance and subservience as the rule.
Indeed, a motivation far more believable than an interest in the harmony and
indissolubility of marriage for advocating a dynamic of inequality between
spouses is the conviction that one of them is far more fit to run the family
than the other. So let us turn to the aspect of Kant's claim that asserts that
husbands are naturally fit to rule.
In the second place, then, it is implausible to suppose that, if one party
has to rule the other, the male would always be naturally more fit to rule. Of
21 See Pateman's discussion of Mill's On the Subjection of Women in The Sexual Contract
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 160-63.
22 Such arrangements could be objectionable as well, of course-for example, if one
partner worked to make the other less confident about her decision-making capacities in
order to maintain dominance, if one partner refused to acknowledge the worth of the
other partner's contribution to the marriage, or if one partner used the other to avoid
realizing her autonomy.
18 LARA DENIS
course, if women's education and social position were enfeebled in the way
that Kant seemed to think appropriate, it would be rare to find a woman capa-
ble of running the household and being the ruling party in a marriage. But
even in Kant's day, it would not have been impossible. Kant's derogatory
remarks about educated women suggest that some existed; and he does not
hesitate to admit the existence of a multitude of foolish men (Ant 307; Obs
78-81, 55-56). That men have a natural superiority over women adequate to
justify general statements of their being the solely adequate rulers of the
family is widely dismissed in Western nations.23 While prejudices may often
make it easier for a man to negotiate such things as car purchases, such prej-
udices are hardly self-validating. Nor does their existence prevent a wife from
taking an equal or dominant role in determining her husband's position in
such discussions, should the couple decide that he will serve as the family
negotiator. We should omit Kant's presupposition of a ruling and a ruled
party from our revised picture of a Kantian marriage. This revision shows
marriage to be better able to foster reciprocal respect between spouses than
Kant's own account suggests.
The third worry was that because marriage unites two people of unequal
abilities, it cannot aspire to that balance of love and respect for the other
within either individual, or between the two of them, that Kant saw as mark-
ing friendship as such a noble relationship. If, however, we assert, contra
Kant, that men and women are in principle equally able to command respect
and esteem, we leave open the possibility that there may well be individual
marriages that bind together two people of roughly equal merits, virtues, and
abilities. It may be a challenge for people to take seriously the value of equal-
ity and the balance of love and respect in the face of attraction. But if equality
is important to maintaining respect, and if respect is important, people
should strive for this.
Of course, we may doubt that either marriage or friendship requires the

high degree of equality that Kant calls for-which includes equality in rank
and fortune. A vast inequality in financial means between friends could put a
strain on the friendship. This would not happen only if, for example, the
wealthier friend flaunted his assets or the poorer one regularly availed himself
of his friend's generosity. It could happen simply because one friend realized
she could never help her friend in the ways that her friend could help her-or
the other way around. And a substantial difference of fortune or rank between
potential marriage partners could cause trouble in a marriage. Even if the
better-off person had no reason to suspect the intent of her mate, the sense
that one spouse materially benefited from the match while the other did not
23 Many in the United States who assert that men are uniquely qualified to head a household
appeal not to observable differences in capacities or desires of women and men, but to
certain religious or cultural traditions.
might make it hard for the two to feel like equal partners in the marriage, at
least at first. But some inequality in these areas seems irrelevant to the qual-
ity of these relationships. And even where the inequality is non-trivial, the
friends or spouses can prevent unequal or unbalanced respect in a number of
ways-for example, friends being, as Kant suggests, sparing in their reliance
on each other for material help, friends and spouses considering the ways that
their ranks and fortunes could rise or fall independently of their relationships,
and friends and spouses recognizing the superficiality and contingency of such
things as money and social status. Fundamental to friendship is the character
of the friends and their dedication to each other. Rough equality of virtue and
approximately equal investment in the relationship are what seem essential to
securing respect from oneself and from one's friend or mate.24
This brings us to the fourth concern about marriage: that women are so
constituted that they would not be suitable for a husband's sharing of his
thoughts and worries, let alone for the mutual correction of judgment and
forging of principles. Let us assume that Kant is wrong about women's
being intrinsically worse at keeping secrets and bearing anxiety than men, and
about their being less able to form and to act on principles. If our assump-
tions are correct, then it is possible for men to find wives to whom they can
unburden themselves with the same ease as male friends, who would be capa-
ble of correcting their judgment, helping them to refine their principles, and
so on-all the things that constitute the intellectual and moral possession of
one person by the other that Kant sees as so wonderful in friendship. Indeed,
it would be a morally important goal for a man to strive for those features in
a wife. If we take more seriously than Kant tends to do-at least in his writ-
ings on practical anthropology-the idea of women as moral agents, then we
can see that women, also, should strive to locate morally good men as
husbands.25 Once we get rid of the unfounded notions of gender differences
24 People's financial fortunes change, and so are not a stable criterion for compatibility
between friends or lovers. About compatibility between potential marriage partners,
Rousseau writes: "Do not unite people who suit each other only in a given condition and
who will no longer suit one another if this condition happens to change; instead, unite
people who will suit one another in whatever situation they find themselves" (Emile, op.
cit., p. 406).
25 This seems to contradict Kant's actual view about how women should behave prior to
marriage: "It is never a woman's concern to spy out the moral qualities in a man before
the wedding, especially if he is young. She thinks she can improve him. But as a rule she
finds herself most lamentably deceived in this judgment" (Ant 309). It may appear
ambiguous from this translation whether Kant's statement in the first sentence is norma-
tive or merely descriptive. Another translation of the same passage suggests it is norma-
tive: "To make a point of detecting the moral properties in a man...before the wedding, is
never the proper business of a woman" (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View,
trans. V.L. Dowdell (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press,
1978), p. 223).
20 LARA DENIS
that Kant assumes, we see that one should seek a virtuous spouse just as one
should seek a virtuous friend.
The fifth concern about marriage cannot be resolved by rejecting Kant's

own views about the nature of the sexes. This concern was that, from living
together, sharing their material goods and prospects, and having sex, spouses
could not maintain the kind and amount of distance that Kant advocates
between friends. A few things need to be said about this concern. First, Kant
is right that distance is important in friendship. If we get too close to others,
we may embarrass them by our knowledge of their weaknesses, find ourselves
disappointed in them, or find it difficult to recognize their distinctness from
us, their autonomy. Second, it is true that married people will have a much
better view of each other's frailties than others, that their living together
makes them dependent on each other physically, emotionally, and financially,
and that their sexual relationship shows them aspects of each other that might
at first be embarrassing or disconcerting. But third, Kant exaggerates the
distance needed between friends. Too much information about the inner lives,
idiosyncrasies, and shortcomings of our friends may erode our respect for
them, as may their heavy and continual reliance on us. But surely part of
being a friend is recognizing the other as a human being like oneself: flawed,
but with dignity and various good traits of character. If one's friend has the
virtues of trustworthiness, honesty, conscientiousness, and the like, his
weaknesses should not be grounds for our loss of respect or for pessimism
about the human race. Moreover, one must learn how to be close to one's
friend without trying to make him act as one thinks he should act, rather than
as he determines himself. Similarly, to maintain respect in marriage, one
must take a charitable attitude towards one's spouse, remember one's own
imperfections, and take care not to infringe unduly on the individuality or
privacy of one's mate. It seems possible, and indeed a duty, to find ways
within marriage to keep the kinds of distance necessary for respect, regardless
of how close one is to the other physically, legally, and emotionally.
The sixth concern, that marriage has mainly to do with sexual love and
has less than friendship to do with practical love or human affection can be
answered in part in the same way as the first concern (i.e., about the appar-
ently superficial basis of marriage). Kant rarely talks of marriage as a moral
ideal. He often talks about it as a legal institution. But if we take seriously
the value of friendship as an ideal of maximal reciprocal love and respect, we
can imagine striving for a marriage that also has love and respect balanced.
Just because this balance of love and respect is not what Kant sees as essen-
tial to the very nature of marriage does not mean that it is not a feature of
what we might call a "moral marriage."26 Spouses can surely strive to see
26 I do not mean that this marriage is the equivalent of moral as opposed to ideal friendship.
I call it "moral marriage" to emphasize its moral basis and its role as a moral ideal. It
beyond their sexual love for each other in order to value and promote the hap-
piness of their partner. Moreover, Kant acknowledges that the same apprecia-
tion for each other that characterizes the love of well-liking between friends
should ideally be present in marriage as well: "For love, be it for one's
spouse or for a friend presupposes the same mutual esteem for the other's
character, without which it is no more than a very perishable, sensual delu-
sion" (KPC 188). Thus, though practical and human love are not as central to
Kant's conception of marriage as they are to his notion of friendship, Kant
implies that they are features of marriage to which people may aspire.
We may reasonably object, however, that Kant does not pay enough atten-
tion to the role that the emotion of love plays in either friendship or
marriage. Perhaps Kant does not think that emotional love deserves discus-
sion in the context of friendship. It seems obvious that friends will love each
other. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a psychologically healthy person not
feeling love for someone with whom she feels reciprocal possession, mutual
self-surrender, and shared sympathies (MS 471). Yet Kant may think that
emotional love deserves no discussion as such not because he takes that feel-
ing for granted so much as because of his ambivalence about emotions. Kant
views emotions as potentially dangerous and as unstable bases for relation-
ships. If an emotion becomes what Kant calls "an affect," it can impede the
agent's judgment (MS 407; Ant 252-54). And a friendship based on feelings
ungrounded by considered judgments has a foundation that may collapse at
any time (MS 471; KPC 188). But Kant himself acknowledges that feelings
of love and sympathy can be extremely morally useful, that feelings need not
rise to the level of affects, and that we are capable of a great measure of
emotional self-control (MS 408, 456-58; Ant 254; C 368). Thus, Kant
should not think that emotions are out of place in a friendship.27 Moreover,
the emotional warmth that we feel for our friends is part of what makes the
experience of friendship stand apart from that of less intimate relationships
with people who share our principles.
It is still clearer why Kant downplays feelings of love in his discussion of
marriage. Even when he speaks of marriage as a moral as well as a legal
relationship, he is interested in highlighting the importance of respect and
duty. Feelings can be fleeting-and will be, if they are poorly grounded. And
yet without feelings of love for one's spouse, a marriage is not likely to be
fulfilling; as human beings, we need to love others (V 682). There is a differ-
ence between defining marriage in such a way that it stands or falls based on
the strength of the partners' romantic passions, and recognizing that both
would be misleading to call it "ideal marriage," for an ideal marriage would seem to
include all sorts of features beyond those under discussion here-e.g., sexual attraction
and compatibility.
27 I discuss Kant's views of sympathy and emotional self-control in "Kant's Cold Sage and
the Sublimity of Apathy," Kantian Review 4 (2000): 48-73.
22 LARA DENIS
partners need affection, are in good positions to give it to each other, and may
well suffer from the lack of it within that relationship. Once we recognize the
importance of marital love for the happiness of oneself and one's partner, we
see that it would be both foolish and cruel to marry someone for whom one
did not feel that one could sustain love or who could not continually love
one; fostering feelings of affection for one's spouse is nothing short of a
marital duty, as is striving to be worthy of his or her love. Thus, we should
highlight the role of the feeling of love in friendship and marriage, even
though Kant does not. And we should also recognize that there is no reason
for marriage to offer less reciprocal love than friendship.
In sum, we can respond to each of the concerns generated by features of
Kant's discussion of marriage that make marriage seem less morally fruitful
than friendship. Recognizing that many of Kant's discussions of marriage
focus on marriage as a necessary legal institution helps us to see that Kant
himself leaves open the possibility of reciprocal love and respect in marriage
even though he does not discuss it much. Recognizing Kant's false assump-
tions about men, women, and the necessity of inequality in marriage allows
us to make room in marriage for many more of the features of friendship that
Kant so values: the freedom to share one's thoughts, the ability to correct
each other's judgment, the commonality of fundamental principles and
perspectives, and so on. Our reflection on marriage also allows us to be criti-
cal of Kant on friendship. Kant is right that equality and distance are impor-
tant for maintaining respect in a friendship (or marriage). But equality of rank
and financial status seems of little importance. And a relationship hardly
seems to qualify as a friendship if it is so fragile that we risk losing it should
our friend see our weaknesses as clearly as we see them ourselves. Indeed,
both friendship and marriage seem to call for more emotional closeness and
warmth than Kant acknowledges. Rethinking friendship and marriage in these
ways suggests that marriage should be able to offer the reciprocity of respect
and love-both practical and emotional-that friendships can. If marriage
promises more of a challenge in some respects, that only suggests that it
calls for even more virtue and prudence, and so perhaps offers even more
potential for moral growth.
4. Objections to a "friendship model" of marriage

The preceding section begins to sketch a revised Kantian ideal of "moral
marriage," one that uses Kantian friendship, albeit itself somewhat revised, as
its model (and so can be said to follow a "friendship model" of marriage). A
main motivation for doing this was to see whether we could identify and
dispute some of Kant's assumptions about love, respect, women, friendship,
and marriage that constitute his reasons for portraying marriage as a less
morally fulfilling relationship than friendship. But one might object to this
project and its motivation. Two main sorts of objection come to mind. First,
one might object to trying to elevate the status of marriage relative to that of
friendship. Why not let friendship enjoy the special place Kant attributes to
it? Second, one might note that marriage and friendship necessarily differ in
nature and structure such that it is unreasonable to try to model one on the
other. For one thing, the relationship between husband and wife differs signif-
icantly from that between friends. Spouses commit to a permanent and
legally binding relationship. As a rule, marriage partners, unlike friends, live
together day to day, share material resources, unite their families of origin,
and share sexual intimacy and all the emotions that go along with it.
Marriages often give rise to children to be raised within them. And people
depend on their spouses in times of illness or disaster more directly than they
do on their friends. It is, according to this objection, unreasonable to expect
people in a marital relationship to stand in the same relation to each other
that friends do, or even to seek in a spouse what one would seek in a friend.
For another thing, the purposes of marriage and friendship are different.
Friendship exists in large part for the sharing of thoughts and sentiments, the
formation of principles, and the communion of two people as intellectual and
moral beings. Marriage, on the other hand, must provide a context in which
people can have sex without degradation, and in which children can be raised.
It is unreasonable, according to this objection, to expect marriage not only to
provide a morally appropriate context for sexual expression and child-rearing,
but also to do provide the moral and intellectual communion that friendships
do. (One would not, after all, expect a friend to provide one with sex and
shared parenting.)
The first objection misunderstands the motivation for drawing on friend-
ship for the revision of Kant's, conception of marriage. The motivation is not
to make marriage equal to or better than friendship, or to prevent friendship
from being a unique type of relationship. In revising Kant's notion of
marriage, however, one wants to do the best one can for marriage. Given the
similarities between marriage and friendship, and the high praise that Kant
gives friendship, it seems natural to see how far one can incorporate into
marriage the morally valuable elements of friendship. No matter how far one
succeeds in bringing the best of friendship to marriage, most people will still
want the kind of intimate, non-sexual, non-familial bond that only a close
friendship can provide. Rendering friendship obsolete in the face of a friend-
ship model of marriage seems neither a reasonable nor a desirable goal.
The second objection is more formidable. Marriage and friendship differ in
nature and structure. In proposing a friendship model of marriage, it is impor-
tant not to negate or obscure this fact. On the other hand, not all of the
purported or traditional differences between marriage and friendship are neces-
sary or worth preserving. So although we need to be careful not to ignore the
differences that obtain in the relationships between spouses and friends and in
the purposes of marriage and friendship, that caution should not preclude
24 LARA DENIS
considering whether one of those relationships, as conceived by Kant, could
be better constructed by drawing on some aspects of the other. Let us first
turn to the concern that a friendship model of marriage would fail to do
justice to the nature of the spousal relationship. We will then take up the
issue of the different purposes of marriage and friendship.
Given the nature of the spousal relationship-all that the husband and
wife share with each other, their interdependence, their intimacy, the perma-
nence of their relationship-the features of friendship that make it so praise-
worthy in Kant's eyes seem as though they would be essential to a good
marriage. Salient in friendship are reciprocal love and respect (held in
balance), equality, shared principles, the ability to trust each other with one's
thoughts and feelings, the assurance that each would help the other in case of
need, esteem for each other, and a recognition that even in the closest of rela-
tionships, some distance is required by respect. To get along day after day and
year after year, marriage partners have to balance a willingness to do things
for each other with an awareness of each other's independence; and spouses
need to be able to help each other without unduly humbling each other. If one
is going to plan a future and raise children together, shared principles, and the
ability to forge these principles together, are essential. Since spouses are
privy to so much information about each other, they must be able to trust
each other. It would be foolish to marry someone whom one does not think
well of, and who does not seem capable of giving as much love and respect as
she receives: if one does, one risks spending one's life correcting, compensat-
ing for, or trying not to be corrupted by the other person, and not getting
one's own needs for respect and consideration met within the relationship.
Sexual passion is not enough for building a stable home. And even sexual
intimacy seems to call for some of the virtues that one finds exemplified in
friendship. Along with sexual love come all sorts of powerful emotions:
sexual jealousy; desires to be together all the time, to merge completely, to
know each other entirely; and so on. Consciousness of the other's autonomy,
faith in her goodness and trustworthiness, recognition of the need for some
distance between two persons, all seem necessary for allowing people to fit
sexuality into a functional, respectful, ongoing relationship.
Granting the importance of the features of friendship to a marriage, many
of the traits that make a good friend make a good spouse: being charitable,
respectful, trustworthy, loving, and virtuous. Of course, one will want addi-
tional features in one's spouse (e.g., sexual attractiveness). Certainly some
people who make good friends would not be good to live with; there are
certain kinds of compatibility that may not be important in friendship that are
crucial for marriage. But the point of the friendship model is not that we
should think of a spouse as friend with whom you live and have sex. The
point is rather that insofar as certain features of friendship make that relation-
ship morally desirable and seem capable of bringing moral richness to
marriage, we should try to include those features in marital relationships.
Now let us consider whether the special purposes of marriage undermine
the friendship model. This objection suggests that a marriage is doing all we
may reasonably ask of it as long as a couple have a stable, abuse-free home
environment, raise their children to be healthy adults, take decent care of each
other, and provide for each other's sexual needs; moreover, it is not the job of
a marriage to provide friendship. I want to make three points in response to
this objection. First, I am not arguing that a marriage that does not substan-
tially realize all the elements of friendship is a bad marriage (or no marriage
at all). I am arguing that spouses can, within their marriage, enjoy much of
what Kant often suggests is the province of friendship alone. If this is right, I
want to suggest that we consider a marriage with these features an ideal worth
pursuing. So I am raising our hopes about how morally fulfilling a marriage
can be; I am not raising the bar for what constitutes a morally permissible
marriage. Second, I am not arguing that a marriage in which the couple feels
that they have a good friendship is necessarily a good marriage. If the sex is
unsatisfying, the children are not cared for, the couple is running themselves
into debt, and they seem incapable of planning a future together, we may well
conclude that the marriage is a poor one. Now I am not at all sure how bad a
marriage could be if it truly contained the key elements that characterize a
friendship. As I have suggested, those elements seem important to a good
marriage, also; they seem to be traits that, if present, would be conducive to
general marital stability. Nevertheless, I do want to acknowledge that the
specific tasks of marriage entail that a marriage can fail for lacking things
that one would not expect a friendship to provide. Third, for Kant, friendship
is such a noteworthy relationship largely because it best embodies features
that all human relationships should have, particularly the interplay of
reciprocal love and respect. Friends' treatment of each other reflects FH's
demands to treat oneself and others as ends in themselves: to refuse to degrade
oneself, to pursue one's one perfection, to respect others, and to promote
their happiness and moral development.28 Thus, in so far as we emphasize the
importance of love and respect in marriage, the ideal that we set up is not a
narrow sort of friendship model. It is a model of marriage that takes seriously
FH's command to treat all rational beings as ends in themselves, and looks to
friendship as a relationship that Kant thinks does that well. So the friendship
model is best understood not as aiming to make marriage like friendship per
se, but as aiming to allow marriage to contain much of the moral richness
28 Although Kant often says that we ought to help others-especially those close to us-
improve themselves, he resists acknowledging the perfection of others as an obligatory
end. See my "Kant on the Perfection of Others," Southern Journal of Philosophy 37 (1)
(1999): 21-41.
26 LARA DENIS
that any interpersonal relationship should aspire to, and that the best friend-
ships have.
In short, then, although there may well be friendship models of marriage,
or reasons for proposing such models, that obscure the differences between
marriage and friendship, the revised Kantian model discussed here is not one
of them. I do not offer this model out of an interest in portraying marriage as
a relationship that can fulfill all interpersonal needs, thus rendering friendship
superfluous for married people. More importantly, this friendship-based
sketch of Kantian marriage gains rather than loses support from the differ-
ences between marriage and friendship: the nature of the spouses' relation-
ship, their responsibility for their children and each other, the task of main-
taining a permanent relationship, and so on, call for the love and respect,
shared principles, and mutual trust that are embodied in Kantian friendship
with far more urgency than any other relationship could call for them.
5. Conclusion
Just as friendship comes in different varieties, so does marriage. The best

friendships involve some commonality of taste, assume a commitment to
help one another, are solidly grounded in shared principles and a commitment
to virtue, and aspire to maximal reciprocal love and respect. I propose that we
draw on this conception of friendship, and on FH (on which it is substan-
tially based), to forge a Kantian ideal of what we may call "moral marriage."29
This notion of marriage would combine features of marriage as a permanent,
monogamous, legal union of two persons who are sexually involved with
each other, with the features that Kant admires in friendship. Having such an
ideal of marriage will allow us to distinguish between the legal institution of
marriage, which Kant claims people must enter so as not to violate a duty to
themselves by having sex, from marriage as a kind of moral union that
people may aspire to within the legal union. The ideal of moral marriage is
not the final word on marriage, however. Marriages may be better or worse
depending on the presence or absence of features not explicitly addressed by
this ideal (sexual compatibility, for example). Nevertheless, this ideal points
the way to a morally rich relationship, which is a significant part of what a
marriage should be.
Moral marriage is marked by equal mutual respect and esteem, and by
reciprocal practical love and human affection. In moral marriage, spouses can
trust each other with their thoughts and feelings, while also respecting each
other's privacy. They keep their spouse's confidences and do not use the
information they receive through disclosure or observation to demean or to
manipulate each other. Nor do they confuse helping one's spouse improve
29 I do not mean to imply that it is an unrealizable ideal, just that it is something for which to
strive.
herself with making the spouse into what one desires her to be. Spouses
balance their recognition of joint governance of their shared future with
recognition of their individual goals. Spouses aim to be worthy of love and
to bestow love on each other. They are united most fundamentally by their
moral principles and world views. In such a marriage, the partners would
express the attitudes toward self and others that FH requires no less than they
would in the best friendship.
Just as few friendships are moral friendships, and few approach the
reciprocity and equal love and respect that characterize perfect friendship, few
marriages will realize the ideal of moral marriage. It is often difficult to show
the respect and love for others that FH requires; it can be especially challeng-
ing to devote much of our practical love to one particular person, day after
day, and to maintain the respect of someone who sees us at our most vulner-
able. Whether or not the ideal of a moral marriage can be realized, however, it
is an honorable duty to strive for its realization: if one decides to marry, one
should seek in one's spouse qualities that suit her for a moral marriage with
oneself; if one is already married, one must try to give one's marriage a foun-
dation in shared principles, whatever feelings or interests initially brought
one together with one's spouse.
Thus, while much of Kant's account of marriage suggests it is not so
perfect a union of love and respect as friendship, we can nevertheless draw on
Kant's notion of friendship to form the ideal of marriage that would be such a
union. Not everyone must marry; frPndships may be sufficient for some
people's happiness and moral fulfillment. And married people may certainly
have friends other than their mates. But our revised account of Kantian
marriage does suggest that one should strive for much in one's marital rela-
tionship that one strives for in friendship, and that one might indeed find in
one's spouse one's closest friend. Such an ideal of marriage might seem too
familiar-perhaps even too generally desirable-to strike us as noteworthy or
as distinctively Kantian. Its roots in FH, its central focus on respect and prac-
tical love, and its resemblance to Kant's morally rich ideal of friendship,
however, clearly identify it as Kantian. And in light of the many criticisms of
Kant's views about women and personal relationships, (views which, I agree,
are not entirely above criticism), the fact that such a compelling conception
of marriage emerges from Kant's work is definitely noteworthy.30
30 Thanks to Barbara Herman, Penelope Maddy, Roger Wertheimer, Allen Wood, and an
anonymous referee for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
28 LARA DENIS

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International Phenomenological Society

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant

International Phenomenological Society, Wiley, Philosophy and Phenomenological

From Friendship to Marriage:

University of California, Irvine

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 1

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 3

Anytime we take it upon ourselves to be loving toward another, we must be

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 5

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 7

and intellectual being with his friend.

2. Marriage and its lesser status

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 9

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 11

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 13

Characteristic of the beautiful understanding is an abhorrence of duty and

20 Given Kant's understanding of moral (and on my account, ideal) friendships as founded

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 15

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 17

Of course, we may doubt that either marriage or friendship requires the

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 19

The fifth concern about marriage cannot be resolved by rejecting Kant's

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 21

4. Objections to a "friendship model" of marriage

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 23

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 25

Just as friendship comes in different varieties, so does marriage. The best

FROM FRIENDSHIP TO MARRIAGE: REVISING KANT 27

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