The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk by Iddo Landau (University of Haifa) on Should Marital Relations be Non-Hierarchical? Issues in Distributive Justice and Love 4.30 PM, Tuesday, 19 February 2008, Gellner room (9. Nádor str. 1st floor) ABSTRACT The paper examines whether there is a justification for an egalitarian norm widely accepted today, which I call the Marital Non-Hierarchy Standard (MNHS). According to this standard, marital relationships should be non-hierarchical; neither partner may be more dominant than the other. If I want to spend our vacation on the hillside, and you prefer the beach, we should find an alternative that satisfies us both equally. The MNHS is exceptional: hierarchies are widely believed to be morally legitimate, within certain limits, in almost all associations, including many financial, professional, educational and recreational ones, in almost all spheres of life. How might the MNHS be justified? It might be suggested that marital relations should be based on love, and love requires that lovers will have the same degree of power. However, philosophical analyses of love by, e.g., Solomon, Fisher, Kolodny, Soble or Newton-Smith, which present various characteristics as essential or typical of love, do not show that love excludes hierarchy. One can value one's partner, promote her interests, be attracted, committed, or dedicated to her, etc. while having unequal power to the loved one. Common experience, and the comparison of marital love to other types of love (e.g., parental, filial), also suggest that love does not exclude hierarchy. It might also be suggested that justice requires that lovers will have equal power. However, theories of distributive justice such as Rawls's, Sen's, Dworkin's, Miller's, Nozick's, and almost all others do not justify the MNHS, because they stipulate proportional equality while the MNHS stipulates strict equality in actual power. Thus, both the "love requirement" and almost all theories of distributive justice do not show that it is morally wrong to have non-MNHS relationships. Until other justifications of the MNHS are presented, it is unclear why it should be accepted. Kriszta Biber Department Coordinator Philosophy Department Tel: 36-1-327-3806 Fax: 36-1-327-3072 E-mail: biberk(a)ceu.hu