Divorce, Disorientation, and Remarriage
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Divorce, Disorientation, and Remarriage Christopher Cowley 1 Accepted: 29 September 2019/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract
This paper asks three inter-related questions, proceeding chronologically through a divorcee’s experience: (i) is it responsible and rational to make an unconditional marital vow in the first place? (ii) does divorce break that unconditional marital vow? And the main question: (iii) can the divorcee make a second unconditional marital vow in all moral seriousness? To the last question I answer yes. I argue that the divorce process is so disorienting – to use Amy Harbin’s term – as to transform the divorcee and therefore partly release her from the original vow. Arguing this will require a specific understanding of personal identity and change. Keywords Disorientation . Marriage . Divorce . Promises Let’s start with a story. A woman named Tereza, who works contentedly as a GP, gets married at the age of 30 to another doctor. At the (civil) wedding she makes the serious, sincere vow to Blove and cherish^ her husband Bas long as we both shall live.^ After seven years (Tereza is now 37), the marriage is not going well. (Neither of them wanted children, so that is not an issue.) After several weeks in marital counselling, they agree to divorce. In sober moments she accepts that there was no clear trigger for the breakdown; she can’t find serious fault in her husband, and accepts that they were both so absorbed in their jobs, and just drifted apart. They both move out of their rental flat, and Tereza sets up her new life on her own. Luckily she has always had a strong professional identity, and she throws herself back into her work with vigour. Through her work she eventually meets another man. Soon they begin an intimate relationship, and eventually move in together. After a year of living together, they decide to get married, and they
* Christopher Cowley [email protected]
1
School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
C. Cowley
start to plan the wedding day. She is 44. (I have mentioned the ages of Tereza not only to fill out the portrait, but also to make it easier to refer to the different stages of her life.)1 I have three inter-related philosophical questions about this story: the first two are preliminary questions, and the third is the main one. The first preliminary question is familiar: can it be rational and/or responsible to make unconditional promises at all? To put it another way: I can sincerely utter the words of an unconditional promise, but what do they mean? The second preliminary question is less familiar, but has been well discussed in a 2011 article by Elizabeth Brake: does Tereza’s divorce necessarily amount to the breaking of a solemn public promise? If it does, that would seem to be a bad thing precisely because of that public solemnity. And yet I am accepting the widespread view of most divorces in the modern West as cases of highly complex, opaque bad luck more than as serious moral failings – and I am taking Tereza as such a case.
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