Sex, Family, and the Culture Wars by Mark J. Cherry

Author:Mark J. Cherry [Cherry, Mark J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Marriage & Family
ISBN: 9781351491204
Google: gj4rDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 28133538
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

6.2 Liberty as a Side Constraint—The Family as a Face-to-Face Voluntary Association

[F]amilies are disturbing; for within a family occur transfers that upset the favored distributional pattern. Either families themselves become units to which distribution takes place, the column occupiers (on what rationale?), or loving behavior is forbidden. We should note in passing the ambivalent position of radicals towards the family. Its loving relationships are seen as a model to be emulated and extended across the whole society, at the same time that it is denounced as a suffocating institution to be broken and condemned as a focus of parochial concerns that interfere with achieving radical goals. Need we say that it is not appropriate to enforce across the wider society the relationships of love and care appropriate within a family, relationships which are voluntarily undertaken? (Nozick 1974, 167)

A deep and abiding challenge to the liberal social-constructivist approach to the family is that there is no uncontroversial content-full morality through which to ground this account’s very particular claims regarding the equal worth of liberty, the value of personal autonomy, equalities of opportunity and outcome, fair social cooperation, limits on the authority of parents, or its rational reconstruction of the best interests of children and spouses. In its sustained reaction to the illiberality of traditional cultures and religions, the liberal social-constructivist account of the family substitutes its own full-fledged moral and political ethos, seeking to trump the thoughtful moral and prudential choices of actual persons. The liberal social-constructivist account ultimately seeks to undermine any account of the family, the authority of parents, or of the appropriate relationship among men and women that does not at the same time embody this particular liberal vision of liberty and equality. There is an underlying assumption that through rational reflection experts know what is genuinely in the best interests of others, including their liberty interests, what is most appropriate for their well-being, and how they ought to live their lives, without even having asked the persons themselves, much less trusting that individuals are able to make their own judgments regarding their own best interests. Such moralistic substituted judgment uses other persons without their permission politically to achieve a particular normative view of moral propriety and social equality. It fails to respect persons as capable of making prudential judgments and moral decisions about their own fates. It denies persons the opportunity to choose how best to advantage themselves on the basis of their own judgments.

The libertarian social-constructivist account of the family avoids such difficulties in being grounded in the actual, nonrationally reconstructed consent of persons to the established family structure. Rather than appealing to what persons ideally ought to have chosen had they been fully rational choosers, given some particular theory of moral rationality, this libertarian account grounds the structure of the family in the actual choices of actual persons. As a result, the libertarian social-constructivist account of the family provides a framework that permits, without endorsing, real moral differences and lifestyles, including divergent religious and secular concepts of human goods and human flourishing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.