Gilboa argues that a genuinely liberal society should allow for same-sex marital ceremonies but would not be discriminating against same-sex couples by denying them the benefits and protections of the marriage license.  (I review Jeremy Garrett’s response to this paper, in the same issue, elsewhere on Philosopher’s Digest.)

Gilboa distinguishes between the right to marry a person of the same sex (by, e.g., having a wedding ceremony) and the right to obtain public recognition of such a marriage (by, e.g., obtaining a marriage license).  He argues that liberalism should admit the former, but not for the reasons typically given.  And he argues that liberalism can deny the latter without unjustly discriminating against same-sex couples.

The idea that liberalism should allow for same-sex wedding ceremonies is uncontroversial, claims Gilboa.  But two reasons that he thinks are typically given for this idea are inadequate: (1) marriage is essentially about love, commitment, or intimacy (Gilboa counters that such essentialism about the institution of marriage is dubious, and, more importantly, avoidable, since we should focus instead on the marriage ceremony as a private service); (2) bans on same-sex marriage treat homosexuals and heterosexuals unequally before the law because only the latter can marry those they find sexually attractive (Gilboa counters that it is sometimes permissible for the law to exclude a group of people based on the uniqueness of the people’s preferences).  Gilboa’s own reason for accepting the idea that liberalism should allow for same-sex wedding ceremonies is that liberalism guarantees the freedoms of speech, assembly, and religious expression.

The idea that it is not discriminatory to deny same-sex couples the legal rights and benefits of marriage is given two defenses by Gilboa.  The first is based on a definition of “discrimination”; the second, on an understanding of “non-discriminatory reasons.”

Gilboa’s definitional argument runs as follows.  Since “to discriminate against a person is to deny a legitimate claim of that person for equal access to public resources, including legal rights and benefits, because the person is a member of a protected group,” and since the denial of the legal rights and benefits of marriage to same-sex couples does not do this, the denial does not discriminate.  He supports his definition of discrimination with examples of behavior that is non-discriminatory in the relevant sense: failure to give a girl a spot on the high school football team (it’s not because she’s a girl), failure to invite the one Jewish family in the neighborhood to a party at your house (it’s not a public resource), and failure to provide hearing impaired people hearing aids at the symphony (it’s not a legitimate claim).  He supports his claim that denying same-sex couples the legal rights and benefits of marriage does not satisfy his definition of ‘discrimination’ using an analogy with public education.   Equal access to public education is not denied when a person who prefers private education foregoes the public subsidy of the service, even though the state does not subsidize their private education.  Likewise, equal access to marriage is not denied when a person who prefers same-sex marriage foregoes the public support of opposite-sex marriage, even though the state does not support their same-sex marriage.  In either case, Gilboa argues, to suppose that equal access has been denied is to implicitly alter the nature or definition of the kind of resource that the public elects to provide.

Gilboa’s second argument for his claim that it is not discriminatory to deny same-sex couples the legal rights and benefits of marriage is that two common reasons for this denial are non-discriminatory reasons: (1) the belief that homosexual acts are morally wrong, and (2) a concern for the social consequences of the public recognition of same-sex marriage.

Regarding (1), Gilboa argues that even if homosexual acts are in fact morally permissible, a failure to recognize same-sex marriage that is genuinely due to moral disapprobation of such acts is not the same as targeting homosexuals for exclusion.  He considers an objection: such moral disapprobation cannot be fruitfully distinguished from bias against homosexuals as a group.  His reply is that in general, there is a perfectly valid distinction between moral disapprobation of certain things that members of a social group would like to do and bias against the group as a whole.  Another objection: what if bans on interracial marriages were based on a belief that interracial sex was morally wrong? Gilboa’s reply here is that there are significant differences in the background conditions of homosexuals now and interracial couples during the time of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States: for example, while it is unbelievable for moral disapprobation of interracial sex back then to have been isolatable from comprehensive bias and hostility against African-Americans, it is believable for moral disapprobation of homosexual sex nowadays to be isolated from a comprehensive bias and hostility against homosexuals.

Regarding (2), Gilboa considers the argument that the consequences of giving public support to same-sex marriage might be negative, since such public support might dislodge the good effects of legally privileging heterosexual monogamy over other forms of union, thereby opening the door to (for example) polygamy.  While he gives a favorable gloss to this argument, Gilboa insists that it can only legitimately be employed to deny public support to same-sex marriage, but cannot be used to ban the practice of homosexual wedding ceremonies or revive anti-sodomy laws.

In his conclusion, Gilboa argues that, even though it would not be discriminatory for the state to fail to support same-sex marriages, such failure to support same-sex marriages might lead to injustices of other kinds.  In that case, he argues, it would be appropriate for states to create domestic partnership arrangements which would allow same-sex couples to obtain some, or even all, of the legal rights and benefits of civil marriages.

Originally published in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy volume 2, number 2 (2007), pages 1-27.

Main authors discussed: Daniel Haybron

In this essay, Daniel Haybron discusses what he calls “Aristotelian perfectionism,” which he takes to be a central feature of Aristotelian theories of well-being, i.e., a life that is good for the person living it. This is the thesis that “well-being consists, non-derivatively, at least partly in perfection: excellence of virtue—or, in the Aristotelian case, excellent or virtuous activity,” where such perfection is “the perfection of one’s nature: being a good specimen of one’s kind, for instance, or fulfilling one’s capacities well” (156).

Haybron’s thesis is that “perfection, excellence, or virtue probably forms no fundamental part of well-being.  …Or, alternatively, if perfection is fundamental to well-being, then it plays a smaller and very different role from that posited by Aristotelian accounts” (168). He makes the following 5 main points about perfectionism in support of this thesis.

1. Perfection and virtue often seem to have nothing to do with well-being (159-63). His arguments here are largely by example: the successful southern slaveholder, e.g., or the bloodthirsty Genghis Khan are rather poor specimens of human virtue and perfection, but intuitively this should not be bad news from the point of view of their well-being. Or consider an aging diplomat choosing between retiring a few years early to a relaxing life in Tuscany and staying on in her career long enough to take on one more, important, assignment. It seems clear, Haybron says, that there would be more virtue and a higher degree of human functioning involved in taking the assignment, but that retiring to Tuscany would make her better off. However, this is just what the perfectionist cannot say, insofar as perfectionism takes a life of greater virtue and higher functioning to be the same thing as a life of greater well-being (161-3).

2. There are cases where perfection and virtue pull apart from each other (163-8). Here Haybron considers the example of a man who assumes care of an autistic child, thereby showing “greater virtue” and making his life “more admirable.” Even so, Haybron says, this fellow now has to spend more time caring for the child than developing his own capacities, interests, and talents. As a result, his new life “involves a lesser exercise of his human capacities: his functioning is sharply constrained and inhibited” (164).

3. The perfectionist cannot give the right explanation of the importance of pleasure (165-8). While the perfectionist may make pleasure important for well-being as some species of perfection, it struggles to capture its importance for well-being as a kind of experience for the agent. Even worse, perfectionism cannot attach much importance to pleasure in the first place, since it takes pleasure to be more or less worthless as compared with virtue.

4. Even if perfectionists distinguish prudential value from perfectionist value, they are mistaken in thinking that one achieves the former by achieving the latter (168-70). Perfectionist value, unlike prudential value, “bears no necessary connection to anything that can plausibly be viewed as an organism’s goals” (169).

5. In many cases anyway, perfectionism seems to be based on a failure to disambiguate the question “How ought I to live?” (170-4). This could be either a question about what is a good and admirable way to live, or a question about what would make one well off. As a result, the question “What is well-being?” becomes conflated with the very different question “What is a good (admirable) life?”

Haybron concludes by suggesting that the motivating idea behind perfectionism is probably “welfare externalism,” the weaker thesis that well-being consists in the fulfillment of one’s nature as a human. Welfare externalism has not been the target of the above arguments against perfectionism, as Haybron notes, and should be given its own separate treatment elsewhere. (He does so in chapter 9, “Happiness, the Self, and Human Flourishing,” reviewed here.)

To my mind, Haybron’s objections are successful on the whole—successful, that is, against the perfectionist thesis that he targets. However, one may also wonder what is Aristotelian about so-called Aristotelian perfectionism. Haybron dismisses the question; he wants to address the perfectionist thesis itself without worrying about who has or has not held it (156, 158). Fair enough, but some readers who think of themselves as Aristotelians may not recognize Haybron’s targeted perfectionism as anything they believe. Whether he likes it or not, Haybron has opened that door.

This is not the place for a full-blown discussion of that question, so let the following observations suffice for the purposes of this review. Aristotelian eudaimonism is not just a theory about well-being, but a theory about well-being given the role that well-being plays in practical reasoning. As Aristotle puts it, eudaimonia is the “final end” (telos) in the sense that it is the only thing we seek for its own sake and never for the sake of anything further. In that way, it brings deliberation to a halt by giving a terminus to an otherwise unlimited series of “for the sake of” relations (Nicomachean Ethics I.1-2). In other words, eudaimonia is in the first instance supposed to give a way of connecting our various goals with the ultimate goal of well-being.

With that in mind, consider again Haybron’s objection that perfectionism “bears no necessary connection to anything that can plausibly be viewed as an organism’s goals” (169). Haybron is right: it is very difficult to see how the thought of “becoming a good specimen of my kind” could get me very far in organizing my goals for my life. However, that shows that such perfectionism is spectacularly ill-suited for the very role that eudaimonia was supposed to have played in an Aristotelian theory of practical reasoning in the first place. And that should certainly give us pause to ask whether so-called “Aristotelian perfectionism” really has had any place in the Aristotelian tradition at all, as Haybron assumes it has.

Reviewed by Daniel Russell
Wichita State University