Ethics & Bioethics (in Central Europe), 2017, 7 (3–4), 127–144 DOI:10.

1515/ebce-2017-0018

Egalitarian sexism: Kant’s defense of monogamy

and its implications for the future evolution of marriage II

Stephen R. Palmquist
Abstract
This second part of a two-part series exploring implications of the natural differences between the sexes for the
cultural evolution of marriage considers how the institution of marriage might evolve, if Kant’s reasons for
defending monogamy are extended and applied to a future culture. After summarizing the philosophical
framework for making cross-cultural ethical assessments that was introduced in Part I and then explaining Kant’s
portrayal of marriage as an antidote to the objectifying tendencies of sex, I summarize Kant’s reasons for
rejecting polygamy and for viewing monogamy as the only ethically acceptable form of marriage. Finally, I
argue that if we apply Kantian principles to the real situation of marriage in many modern cultures, and if we
wish to maintain a legitimate place for marriage in the future evolution of human culture, then the future
evolution of marriage laws must recognize polyfidelity (i.e., plural marriages for both men and women) as being
just as legitimate as monogamy.

Keywords: Immanuel Kant; sexism, marriage law, egalitarian ethics, cross-cultural assessments, monogamy,
polygamy, polyfidelity

Kant on marriage as an antidote to the objectifying tendencies of sex

Part I of this two-part series (Palmquist, 2017) examined two key issues relating to Kant’s
various claims about women, many of which are likely to offend twenty-first century readers.
First, I examined whether, as some critics have claimed, these claims necessarily contradict
the egalitarian ethics that Kant so famously defends in works such as Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason. Second, I assessed whether recent
interpreters are justified in condemning Kant himself as a sexist on the basis of his
controversial claims about women.
I addressed these two topics against a background of the philosophical framework for
making cross-cultural ethical assessments, proposed in the second section of Part I. This new
framework revolves around the following key definitions and distinctions, which are
presupposed here in Part II: (1) a sexist is a person who believes there are significant natural
differences between males and females, whereas a non-sexist rejects this claim; (2) claims
about natural differences (or differences in nature) may be limited to biologically based
characteristics about the sexes or they may extend to include culturally conditioned
(especially social–psychological) differences as well;1 (3) sexism can be either domineering
1
Feminist scholars have differing views on whether nature predisposes men and women to be essentially
different. Whereas many (especially early) feminists sought to downplay or even reject the idea that our
biological nature gives rise to any essential social–psychological differences, so that any de facto differences in
the latter realm ought to be opposed and eventually eliminated in the search for absolute equality (see e.g., Denis,
2001, pp. 20–21), some have actually emphasized and sought to increase awareness of such differences. Among
those feminists who, like Kant, see real equality between the sexes as integrally bound up with an accurate
awareness of how women are naturally different from men, Luce Irigaray is among the most influential. She
challenges Kant’s notion that everyone unavoidably experiences self-love, claiming that men and women
experience self-love in very different ways. But in discussing this point, La Caze notes that for Irigaray, “sexual
difference is more fundamental than all other differences” (La Caze, 2005, p. 105) – a point Kant would affirm,
though of course the two had very different theories of how ethics and law must take this difference into
consideration in order to create a society of justice and equality. Irigaray “argues that women and men cannot
truly love where women are oppressed” (La Caze, 2005, pp. 106–107); that is, they must be “in a relationship
that is not submissive to one gender” but wherein the rights of both sexes are protected by being “written into the

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or egalitarian, where the former refers to the blameworthy belief that the allegedly natural
differences between the sexes justify a person in controlling persons of the opposite sex,
while the latter refers to the innocent belief that these differences are relevant only insofar as
one’s society must consider them in order to introduce cultural norms in an effort to create
equality between the sexes; and (4) when making ethical assessments of persons from other
cultures, we must judge such persons according their cultural context, not according to our
own.
On the basis of this framework, Part I concluded that Kant was a sexist, but an egalitarian,
not a domineering one, and that persons from other cultures (including, for example, everyone
reading this series of articles) are therefore not justified in accusing Kant of being
objectionably sexist merely because many of his comments and views would be inappropriate
and/or offensive if they were expressed by someone in our cultural context. Part II now
applies this framework to broader ethical issues by exploring the evolution of marriage
through a series of four Kant–inspired examples of cross-cultural ethical assessment. Part I
dubbed these paradigmatic examples “culture-k” (for the society of Kant’s day, in which
Christian ethics typically set the norms), “culture-p” (for a pre-Kantian society such as those
depicted in the Old Testament, in which polygamy is allowed), “culture-m” (for modern day
cultures in which marriage is legally defined as monogamous), and “culture-f” (for a proposed
future society, where cultural norms will have evolved still further).
In the remainder of this section I explain how Kant’s theory of marriage serves as an
antidote to the objectifying tendencies of sex. As I briefly noted in the prequel, when
discussing Kant’s overall view of the nature of women, his theory is often derided as an
outmoded expression of his personal sexism. Taking this theory of marriage as a basis for
culture-k, the next section examines Kant’s assessment of the pre-Kantian tradition of
polygamous marriage (i.e., culture-p), which he regarded as an expression of an objectionable
(domineering) form of sexism on the part of males toward females, then employs Kant’s way
of reasoning as the basis for questioning the continued value of anti-polygamy laws in the
advanced stages of culture-m. The third and fourth sections then come full circle by arguing
that the preference for monogamy in culture-m can itself promote domineering sexism,
especially when viewed from the standpoint of a presumed future culture wherein plural
marriage by either sex is both legal and culturally acceptable.
In his Conjectural Beginning of Human History Kant interprets the biblical story of Adam
and Eve as an illustration of the conflict all human beings experience between nature and
freedom. Nature, in the form of biological instinct, gives us certain desires that are essentially
good. However, human imagination creates “artificial desires” that present us with options
that give birth to our rational capacity for free choice. The story of the Fall uses hunger for the
“forbidden fruit” as a symbol of these desires, but the lesson applies to all appetites, including
the human sex drive. Once Adam’s capacity for free choice is activated, according to Kant’s
reading of the story (Kant, 1963, pp. 111–112), he “discovered in himself a power of choosing
for himself a way of life, of not being bound without alternative to a single way, like the
animals.” In terms of the aforementioned framework for making cross-cultural assessments of
ethical situations, Kant is here describing the origin of what I previously referred to as the
distinction between “biological nature” and “social–psychological nature”.2 That is, our free

legal code” (La Caze, 2005, p. 107, quoting Irigaray’s Sexes and Genealogies, p. 4). Interestingly, Irigaray (like
Kant) does not want these rights to be identical, but rather claims they should be “sexuate” rights, “rights
particular to each sex” (La Caze, 2005, p. 107, quoting Irigaray, p. 133), for only by taking our sexual nature into
account can laws be constructed that will encourage genuine equality. This (Kantian!) claim will play a key role
in the argument I advance in the second half of this article.
2
In Part I of this series, I define “biological nature” as any characteristic of one sex that applies to its members
from birth as a result of the physical make up that they did not choose; by contrast, “social–psychological
nature” refers to the deeply ingrained habits that are part of a person’s character because they were instilled into

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choices as to how we will live determine how we will cope with our natural desires, including
the desire for sex. In Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (6:26–27), he makes
essentially the same point, portraying the impulse to sex as a key aspect of our predisposition
to good, because it promotes life, but then warning that it is easily corrupted, when reason
comes into play, through our power to compare.
In nonhuman animals, the natural desire for sex poses no inherent problem; but once
human reason has been awakened, so that the ethical responsibilities accompanying freedom
must be taken into consideration (namely, our duty to respect humanity both in ourselves and
in other persons), our sex drive gives rise to a major ethical dilemma. According to Kant,
engaging in sexually pleasurable behavior necessarily entails being treated as an object of
pleasure by another person. He argues: “The desire which a man has for a woman is not
directed towards her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman; that she is a
human being is of no concern to the man; only her sex is the object of his desires. Human
nature is thus subordinated” (Kant, 1930, p. 164).3 Kant’s categorical imperative commands
us not to treat persons (including ourselves) merely as a means of self-gratification, so in
order to remain morally good, our sex drive must be moderated by some rational safeguard
that insures the persons enjoying such animal behavior will continue to uphold the rational
requirement to respect each other as persons. Kant thinks that safeguard is the socially
sanctioned, legal institution of marriage: “Sexual union in accordance with principle is
marriage … that is, the union of two persons of different sexes for lifelong possession of each
other’s sexual attributes” (Kant, 1991, p. 277).
The key to Kant’s definition of marriage is that it forces sexual union to conform to a
rational principle. Lara Denis (2001, p. 10) isolates five basic aspects of Kant’s principle of
marriage: “(a) [the] partners have reciprocal use of each other as sexual objects, that (b) these
rights extend beyond control over the others [sic] sexual organs to the ‘whole person,’ and
that this relationship is (c) monogamous,4 (d) permanent, and (e) legally enforceable.” Kant’s
point in defining marriage as a sexual contract is not that procreation alone is the purpose of
marriage. Quite the contrary: procreation is nature’s purpose in giving us a sex drive (Kant,
1991, pp. 277, 424–426; Kant, 1997, p. 391; Kant, 1974, pp. 303, 310); see also Kant’s
Critique of Judgment (p. 425).; the purpose of marriage is to enable us to satisfy that natural
drive in a morally justifiable way, just as the purpose of any contract is to ensure that the
potentially conflicting desires of the contracting parties can be satisfied without one party
unduly dominating the other. Once a marriage begins, Kant sees no problem with the partners
having sex even in situations where procreation is unlikely or even impossible, because the
nature of their union is such that it could be used for procreation. Soble ignores this point
when he claims Kant “has killed his reliance on nature’s end” by allowing non-procreative
sex (Soble, 2003, p. 68). For Kant, non-procreative sex still satisfies a secondary end of nature
(i.e., happiness), as long as the partners mutually enjoy the experience (e.g., Kant, 1991, p.
62). Soble acknowledges Kant’s appeal to this second end of nature, but claims he is
inconsistent in his appeal to it. Soble points out, quite rightly, that if pleasure is accepted as an
independent end of nature, this could be used to justify homosexual marriage as well (Soble,
2003, p. 69). But because Kant tends to downplay (or even reject) uses of sex that could only
be for pleasure (i.e., uses that could never possibly end in procreation), Soble ridicules a mere
caricature of Kant’s position: “The only permissible marital sex is boring marital sex” (Soble,

him or her at an early age through explicit and/or implicit education concerning what is “proper” for his or her
sex (Palmquist, 2017).
3
Page references to translations of Kant’s writings normally refer to the pagination in the relevant volume of the
Akademie Ausgabe; only in cases where the translation does not specify the German pagination do I provide the
English page numbers, as here; I indicate the latter by putting the page number(s) in parentheses.
4
In the concluding section of this paper I explore the possibility that a marriage principle that does not require
monogamy might be rationally justifiable for some culture-f.

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2003, p. 77).
As we saw in the prequel and will examine further in the following section, Kant advances
a similar argument to defend monogamous marriage as superior to polygamy. He thought
monogamous marriage is the only morally justifiable way to overcome what he took to be the
key problem relating to sex, that in agreeing to have sex with another person, we allow
ourselves to be used as a “thing”, an object of the other person’s sexual pleasure. Whereas
marriage is traditionally conceived as an expression of one’s dutiful commitment to another
person (e.g., to love, protect, obey, etc.), Kant depicts it as providing an external (legally
binding) means of fulfilling a person’s duty to oneself, not to disrespect the humanity in one’s
own person while satisfying one’s sexual desires. It avoids this disrespect in two ways: first,
by requiring the partners to share equal ownership of all their personal property, it creates a
new “moral person”, so that in sex the marriage partners do not merely treat each other as
objects of pleasure but also express respect for the personhood of their shared identity; and
second, it encourages equality between the sexes by ensuring that each partner contributes to
the household in a manner that befits his or her nature. Contrary to the claims of critics who
deride Kant for being sexist (as discussed in Palmquist, 2017), Kant insists over and over that
the marital relation must be characterized by radical equality of rights.
Pateman interprets Kant’s pleas for equality in marriage as an “adept sleight of hand”
whereby he only pretends to be giving women such a role, inasmuch as he in fact excludes
women from the public sphere (Pateman, 1988, pp. 171–172). Against Pateman’s claim that
Kant is “inconsistent” in portraying women as freely agreeing to a marriage contract when
they lack “civil personality”, Wilson points out that Kant also viewed many males as passive
citizens and that this classification did not prevent a person from entering into contracts or
even owning property (Wilson, 2004, p. 119). Wilson follows Barbara Herman in taking
Kant’s idea of merged personality in marriage so seriously that the spouses appear to
compromise their individual autonomy (Wilson, 2004, p. 112). In this context Wilson clarifies
that Kant neglects love in his theory of the marriage contract simply because the purpose of
the latter is to provide “an external mechanism” that will guarantee equality whether or not
the couple’s emotional attachment to each other persists (Wilson, 2004, p. 113). The state’s
role in all of this is “to secure the personal space within which individuals can develop their
own moral personality” (Wilson, 2004, p. 121).
A thorough examination of Kant’s theory of sex and sexuality is beyond the scope of this
paper, though it would have to be carried out in order to present a complete assessment of the
acceptable and unacceptable aspects of Kant’s sexism. Commentators disagree, for example,
on the issue of whether Kant’s view of sex is consistent with feminist accounts – partly
because feminist writers themselves hold differing positions on the nature and purpose of sex
(see note 1, above). Mendus views Kant’s position as opposed to the common feminist
allegation that heterosexual sex specifically objectifies women. As she rightly explains: “In
Kant’s eyes, sex represents just as much an exploitation of the man by the woman as of the
woman by the man” (Mendus, 1992, p. 31). Thus de Laurentius observes that “Kant’s
conception of sex in marriage has more in common with the generic feminist claim … than
expected, though he extends this conception to both parties involved” (de Laurentius, 2000,
299n). Kant’s view of sex, in this sense, may be more egalitarian than that of the many recent
writers who, in their efforts to combat sexism, tend to view sexual objectification as an
exclusively male vice. In any case, for our purposes we may give Kant the benefit of the doubt
and assume he is right that sex objectifies both parties. As such, a key aim of this article is to
answer the question: if Kant is right about the objectifying nature of sex, then can we glean
anything from his theory of marriage as the solution to this problem that will be instructive for
culture-m?
Although many today would disagree with Kant’s claim that to engage in sex is to allow

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oneself to be treated as a “thing”, or that in marriage the partners exchange ownership of their
sexual organs, we must accept this assumption as his basic starting–point, if we are to assess
whether his view of women constitutes a domineering and thus objectionable form of sexism.
A rare exception to the tendency merely to ridicule Kant’s theory of sex instead of rationally
assessing it is Denis, who acknowledges its continuing relevance even today: “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 enjoyment for her” (Denis,
2001, p. 9n).
Significantly, Kant does not actually say the marriage contract gives spouses ownership of
each other’s persons. This would contradict what he says in The Metaphysics of Morals: “So a
man can be his own master (sui iuris) but cannot be the owner of himself (sui dominus)…, let
alone be the owner of other human beings, because he is accountable to humanity in his own
person” (Kant, 1991, p. 270). De Laurentius (2000, p. 308) thinks Kant simply forgot about
this principle when he described the nature of the marriage contract as one whereby the
spouses “possess each other in respect of their whole moral disposition [Gesinnung]” (Kant,
1997, p. 27:677). However, neither Kant’s claim that spouses exchange ownership of certain
body parts, nor his view that they somehow possess each other’s moral Gesinnung, needs to
be read as contradicting his claim that we cannot totally surrender our moral accountability as
persons; for in both cases the spouse – unlike the unmarried sexual partner – has publically
promised to return what he or she has given away.
To appreciate the plausibility such a position had for Kant, we must keep in mind that the
chief alternative to culture-k was not culture-m but culture-p. That is, for all its disadvantages
when viewed from the perspective of our modern ethical presuppositions, Kant’s
understanding of sex had the advantage of providing a solid foundation for upholding the
superiority of monogamy over polygamy, its chief competitor in human history. With that in
mind, let us therefore turn to examine Kant’s reasons for regarding only monogamy and not
polygamy as an ethically acceptable form of marriage.

Kant’s rejection of polygamy and its implications for culture-m

Anyone nowadays who portrays the practice of polygamy in culture-p as a direct result of a
genuine natural difference, one that culture-m tends to neglect at its peril, runs the risk of
being labeled a domineering sexist by those who treat monogamy as the highest possible stage
in the evolution of marriage. Nevertheless, there may be a biological (evolutionary)
explanation for why most ancient cultures allowed men to have multiple wives but not vice
versa. It was not merely a matter of men selfishly desiring political and social–psychological
domination over women – though a tendency to condone domineering sexism was undeniably
a by-product of the patriarchy that shaped many concrete historical expressions of culture-p.
Such practices arose in nearly every ancient and primitive culture because nature predisposes
men to be more likely than women to seek out multiple sexual partners. One of several
possible ways of justifying this controversial claim5 relates to the example of biological nature
cited in the first article in this series: the fact that a fertile man produces millions of sperm
each day, whereas a fertile woman produces only one ovum per month means that one man
could potentially father hundreds of children in a year, whereas one woman can have no more
than one full term pregnancy in one year. The tendency of males to be polygamous and

5
For a more detailed discussion of this point (Palmquist, 2003, especially Lecture 11|.

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females to be monogamous appears to be rooted in this “brute fact” about how members of
each sex must behave in order to realize the full potential of their sexual nature. Evolutionary
biology accepts as commonplace that the natural tendency of males to focus on “the hunt”
(e.g., for more and more women) and of females to focus on “the nest” (i.e., nurturing the
offspring) is grounded in countless millennia of behavior governed by natural selection:
polygamous behavior maximizes the survival value of the male’s biological contribution to
society, while monogamous behavior maximizes the survival value of the female’s biological
contribution.
Culture-p (e.g., the type of culture reflected throughout most of the Old Testament)
typically regards the social–psychological nature of women as inferior to that of men; as such,
women are given and taken in marriage without considering their own free choice; once
married, they are regarded as their husband’s exclusive property; husbands therefore make
most if not all key decisions for the household, often without consulting their wives, whose
proper role is to obey and follow, not to question. Polygamy is normal in culture-p, because
people believe nature (or God) predisposes men to desire multiple sexual relationships and
women to desire only one. For a man to have multiple wives is no more considered to be
ethically wrong than it would be for him to own several houses, or more than one cow.
Kant’s view of marriage is a clear advance on that of culture-p because he explains why
polygamy is morally wrong: whereas culture-p allows and even encourages men to treat
women as collectible objects, Kantian monogamy forces men to treat women as equals, as far
as their personhood is concerned. For, as Kant points out, “in polygamy the person who
surrenders herself gains only a part of the man who gets her completely, and therefore makes
herself into a mere thing” (Kant, 1991, p. 278).6 He makes the same point in his Lectures on
Ethics: “If only one partner yields to the other his person, his good or ill fortune, and all his
circumstances, to have right over them, and does not receive in turn a corresponding identical
right over the person of the other, then there is an inequality here” (Kant, 1997, p. 388).
Polygamy is wrong, according to Kant, because it confers fundamentally unequal rights onto
the spouses. It positively encourages domineering sexism, whereas monogamy as Kant
portrays it encourages an egalitarian relationship that is achieved by assigning roles for the
partners that aim to compensate for the differences in their sexual nature.
By the standards of both culture-k and culture-m, culture-p is blatantly guilty of
domineering sexism; yet a fair assessment of the moral status of an individual polygamous
man living within culture-p would require a prior understanding of how his culture would
distinguish between domineering sexism and egalitarian sexism. (Of course, the term
“sexism” is a recent invention, first coming into common usage in the late 1960s [Shapiro,
1985]. When I refer to domineering sexism and/or egalitarian sexism as existing in cultures
prior to culture-m, I am therefore referring to the view people in such a culture would have
held, had they formed a clear concept of sexism.) Gaining such an understanding in the case
of a biblical character such as, say, King David, would require an examination of the various
Mosaic laws whose purpose was to remind men that, in spite of (or perhaps even because of)
the lower place women had, presumably by virtue of their nature, males must take care to
respect females and not treat them improperly. The Torah contains an elaborate set of laws
requiring, for example, that: a man is not to engage in sexual intercourse with another man’s
wife; a man who rapes an unmarried woman must subsequently marry her; a brother, even if

6
In what follows, Kant criticizes not only polygamy, but several other marriage traditions that wrongly build
inequality into the very nature of the contract (Kant, 1991, pp. 278–279). For substantial textual evidence that
Kant saw the objectifying tendency of sex as a problem for both sexes, not only for the woman, so that marriage
must solve the problem for both sexes equally (Wilson, 2004, pp. 106–118). Wilson points out that Kant’s
rejection of polygamy, by contrast, focuses only on “a concern with the status of women in relationships of these
sorts” (Wilson, 2004, p. 120).

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already married, must marry the wife of his deceased brother if she has not yet given birth to
children; when taking a new wife a man is not to divorce an existing wife merely out of
disinterest but is to continue loving and supporting her along with the other(s); if divorce is
deemed necessary for legitimate reasons, a husband must provide his ex-wife with a
certificate of divorce; etc.7
These and other rules were designed to protect women against misuse by men. The charge
that the rules themselves are an institutionalized form of domineering sexism, as someone
from culture-m is likely to view them, would be incomprehensible to a person living within
culture-p. While it would be quite proper to assess culture-p as a culture that tends to tolerate
domineering sexism, it would not be right to regard every man (and certainly not every
compliant woman) living in that culture as condoning domineering sexism. We should rather
say that, within the context of culture-p, a person is guilty of domineering sexism if he or she
does not abide by the rules that define how members of one sex are to show respect to
members of the other sex, given that culture’s understanding of nature.8 These rules determine
within that culture what constitutes inappropriate domination of women by men. The mere
fact of being a polygamist, for example, would not suffice to make a man living in culture-p a
domineering sexist – even though the whole of culture-p, by virtue of its acceptance of
polygamy, may be judged to be immoral from the standpoint of culture-m. To be guilty of
domineering sexism, a man living in culture-p would have to disrespect his spouse(s) and feel
justified in doing so because a wife is merely a woman. By contrast, a man could live as an
egalitarian sexist in a culture that encourages domineering sexism, provided he employs the
rules of his culture as a means of showing respect to women, despite their presumed inferior
nature. Though his actions would not be considered “equal treatment” for someone in culture-
m, assessing his character in terms of the latter culture’s rules of equality would be unfair to
him.
Analogously, we may recognize someone as a “virtuous soldier” even if we regard the
institution of war as always wrong. A pacifist may legitimately blame the soldier’s culture for
perpetrating the false notion that war is acceptable, while still honoring the soldier for being
courageous, self-sacrificing, etc. However, a person who recognizes the wrongness of all war
would probably make a bad soldier and can maintain virtue only by refusing to fight.
Likewise, those who live in culture-m may be guilty of domineering sexism if they engage in
the same activities that were acceptable for those who live in culture-p, because we can expect
their awareness of what constitutes proper respect and equal treatment between the sexes to be
greater. The range of attitudes and actions that can make a person in culture-m guilty of
domineering sexism is far broader than the range for a person living in culture-p.
Were Kant to evaluate the moral status of someone such as King David, a polygamist
living in culture-p, he would not cite culture-k’s ban on polygamy as a rationale for accusing
him of unfair treatment of women. A Kantian evaluation of such a person must be based on
more fundamental principles, most notably, the categorical imperative. Thus, we must attempt
to assess whether the man gave due respect to women as human beings, or treated them
merely as a means to his own ends. What constitutes “due respect,” however, will differ
markedly between different cultures. Kant demonstrates his sensitivity to cultural evolution
when he describes an Indian wife who, living in a rather peculiar version of culture-p,
expected her husband to beat her and therefore took offense at a foreigner who attempted to
intervene (Kant, 1974, p. 304n). Kant’s use of this story as an example of culturally

7
For examples, respectively, of biblical texts where these ethical rules are found, see: Deut. 22:22–25; Deut.
22:28–29; Deut. 25:5; Ex. 21:10; and Deut. 24:1–3.
8
For a culture that takes its cues from the Old Testament, the natural differences between the sexes might be
defined in terms of God’s plan in creating Adam and Eve. But we need not explore here the details of how such a
culture might describe those differences.

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inappropriate ethical assessment suggests he would not argue as follows: polygamy is always
wrong because it necessarily entails domineering sexism; King David was a polygamist;
therefore he was guilty of domineering sexism. Rather, Kant’s illustration indicates he
requires cross-cultural assessments to respect the cultural norms of the person being assessed.
A modern Kantian wishing to condemn David as a sexist would therefore need to look for
signs of disrespect (unfair dominance) that were recognizable even within his culture-p.
In King David’s case, as the well-known story relates, he did procure one of his wives
through illicit means. Seeing the beautiful (but married) Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop, he
lusted after her, sent her husband to the front lines of battle, then married her once he was
killed. To the unknowing observer, everything seemed proper. But the Bible relates how the
judge and prophet, Samuel, subsequently brought David to an inward awareness of his own
guilt: even though he had obeyed the letter of the law, by not having sex with Bathsheba until
she was no longer married, he had broken the spirit of the law (in this case, both the norms of
his culture and the categorical imperative) by treating another person (Bathsheba’s husband)
merely as a means to his selfish end.9 Although Samuel’s accusation focuses primarily on
David’s disrespect towards the deceased husband, the fact that David was willing to use such
a means to procure another wife is evidence that he was guilty of domineering sexism, even
within the expectations of culture-p: his desire to possess Bathsheba’s body did not show due
respect to her prior commitment to another man. Of course, more evidence would be needed
in order to make a fully informed character assessment of King David; but this is only a
passing illustration.
Our main purpose in this section is not to evaluate whether the Bible portrays this story as
illustrating domineering sexism, but to evaluate the charge that Kant’s way of defending
monogamy over polygamy makes him guilty of such a charge. Keeping in mind the
foregoing, Kant–inspired account of how we can condemn a cultural norm without necessarily
condemning those who follow it with good intentions, let us therefore return now to the
question of whether Kant can be exonerated from the feminist-led charge of domineering
sexism. An aspect of Kant’s alleged sexism that we have not yet considered is at one and the
same time regarded by many commentators as his worst offense (supposedly showing that his
other sexist claims did encourage men to dominate women after all) and yet ironically may
also provide the basis for a rather surprising (Kantian) assessment of culture-m as it relates to
the future cultural evolution of marriage.
Kant distinguishes at several points between active citizens (who have the right to vote)
and passive citizens (who depend on others for their livelihood and therefore should not be
allowed an independent voice in matters of public concern). In several offhand remarks, Kant
seems to imply that being male is an absolute requirement for being a full or “active” citizen.
For example, in 1793 Kant writes: “The quality requisite to this [i.e., to being a citizen], apart
from the natural one (of not being a child or a woman), is only that of being one’s own master
(sui iuris)” (Kant, 1996, p. 295). 10 Gangavane claims that with such comments Kant
absolutely “excludes women from the category of active citizens” (Gangavane, 2004, p. 367).
Likewise, Cash says: “[W]omen are automatically excluded from active citizenship…. [T]he
first qualification Kant makes is that an active citizen must be an adult male” (Cash, 2002, p.
128). 11 But such uncharitable interpretations are far from being necessary; it is just as
plausible to read Kant as merely saying that this was the de facto situation in culture-k – a
claim whose accuracy nobody disputes: women did not normally participate in politics in
Kant’s day. Unfortunately, like most interpreters, Mendus reads into Kant’s passing

9
The fullest account of this episode in King David’s life can be found in 2 Sam. 11–12. Psalm 51 is traditionally
read as David’s reflections on his guilt following this incident.
10
See also Kant (1991, p. 126)
11
For a thorough discussion of Kant’s position on the citizenship of women (Mendus, 1992, pp. 23–30).

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comments a view he never actually defends, that women are “by definition, incapable of
independence” (Mendus, 1992, p. 30). She claims “it is undeniable” that in Kant’s view of
women “the contingent facts of eighteenth-century German society are elevated to the status
of eternal truths” (Mendus, 1992, p. 30). Kant is supposedly insisting on “the elevation of
contingent practices to the status of requirements of reason” and is denying the possibility of
“anything other than the status quo” (Mendus, 1992, p. 39). One of the main purposes of this
two-part series is to provide a viable alternative to such uncharitable readings of Kant’s
remarks about women.
Such offhand remarks need not be interpreted as prescriptive, especially since many of
Kant’s other claims about civil society imply that women must be given the opportunity to
raise themselves up to a position where they are qualified to take on the responsibilities of full
citizenship. He insists, for example, that in a culture that distinguishes between active and
passive citizens, “everyone be able to work up from this passive status to an active status”
(Kant, 1991, p. 315). His offhand comments about women do not imply that women will
never be able to do this, just as the same comments do not imply that male children will never
be able to do so. As Mosser puts it: “Kant’s remarks about the dependence and passivity of
women are in some sense politically accurate, given his era’s de jure and de facto denial to
women of their own, independent identities” (Mosser, 1999, p. 345). Kant’s position reflects
primarily that, up to that point, the vast majority of women had not in fact done so, and
perhaps also that most people in culture-k would not understand why a woman would even
want to do so, for it would seem to many as if she were choosing to lower her status by
becoming like a man.
Within the context of a culture that does not allow women to vote, Kant’s insistence on
monogamy makes perfect sense, as a necessary equalizing force for women. Kant himself
emphasizes this when he encourages women not to shy away from marriage, reminding them
that without a marital commitment, sex will inevitably end up putting women in a “degraded”
position, as “a mere means for satisfying man’s desires”, and adding: “[I]t is by marriage that
woman becomes free: man loses his freedom by it” (Kant, 1974, p. 309). 12 This might seem
like a bad joke to readers in culture-m, or a sinister way of keeping women in domestic chains
so they would not attempt to procure genuine external freedom by fully participating in public
life; but Kant appears to have taken it seriously. A monogamous marital commitment eclipses
a man’s freedom to fulfill his natural biological predisposition to seek out multiple sexual
relationships, as Kant assumes a typical man will have done (or at least would want to do)
prior to marriage, whereas it enhances a woman’s natural biological predisposition to nurture
and care for a family by providing her with financial protection (Kant, 1974, p. 309).
Moreover, marriage limits a man’s freedom to express his own social–psychological nature as
an independent participant in public life by requiring him to consider the interests of his wife,
whereas it provides a woman (through her proper role as ruler over her husband’s
inclinations) with access to a realm of public freedom that would otherwise be closed to her in

12
Mendus and Gangavane argue that Kant’s emphasis on reciprocity between husband and wife is not enough to
guarantee true equality (Mendus, 1992, p. 32; Gangavane, 2004, p. 366). As long as Kant denies women a fully
equal status in public life (Gangavane, 2004, p. 366), this inevitably “leads to inequality within the family, as the
wife never receives a right over the person of the husband in the identical manner in which the husband has right
over the wife.” While Kant would fully agree that the reciprocal rights are not “identical”, he justifies his
position by appealing to the natural differences between the sexes, claiming that true equality can come only
when the social–psychological roles assigned to each are appropriate reflections of their respective biological
natures. Thus he argues that juridical law must not contradict “the equality of the partners”, so any provisions it
makes for the husband’s “dominance” must be “based only on the natural superiority of the husband to the wife
in his capacity to promote the common interest of the household” (Kant, 1991, p. 279). What happens to the
institution of marriage when a culture denies any such natural difference between the sexes, or decides that the
woman is actually more capable in some respects than the man, will be discussed below.

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culture-k, for the Kantian husband must regard himself as casting his vote on behalf of his
wife, as her public proxy.
From the standpoint of culture-m, all of this seems disingenuous. Why not just give women
direct access to citizenship and public life on their own? This, of course, is exactly what has
happened in the transition from culture-k to culture-m. Indeed, emboldened by the newfound
status of women as fully equal to men in their right to vote and to participate in public life,
some feminists have sought to go beyond equality by promoting a kind of reverse sexism – as
is aptly evidenced by the many writers nowadays who regularly employ a new set of sexist
pronouns, “she/her/hers” as substitutes for the old sexist language whereby “he/him/his”
referred to both sexes. Thus, for example, Robin May Schott describes the project of
“philosophical feminism” as that of taking “women’s experience rather than men’s to select
the objects and methods of investigation” (Schott, 1998, p. 40).13 If this emphasis is regarded
merely as an attempt to balance an equal and opposite “masculinist” agenda, then it may be an
acceptable strategy, at least until women have fully attained the goal of equal power and
influence in a given culture. However, it must be viewed not as an ethical norm that is
somehow “absolutely” true, but as a necessary step in the long-term process of cultural
evolution – just as Kant regarded his own theory. In both cases, to justify the theory by
demonstrating its a priori relation to the categorical imperative shows only that it can be
regarded as an ethical norm, not that it must forever be regarded as such. What the more
radical feminist approaches tend to neglect (and the reason we must look forward to a future
culture that corrects this neglect) is that the version of the marriage principle Kant took as
self-evident, as a result of the assumptions generally accepted by culture-k, may no longer be
appropriate on Kantian terms, once culture-m develops to the point where women have
obtained full political equality to men.
Contrary to the way many feminists read Kant, we need not read his view of women as “a
categorical denial … that anything other than the status-quo [i.e., the norms of culture-k]
might be either feasible or permissible” (Gangavane, 2004, p. 371); rather, Kant’s open
acknowledgment that ethical norms evolve looks forward to future changes in the way
nature’s end might manifest itself in human culture. The question that ought therefore to be
obvious (yet is almost never raised) is: if monogamy, as the principle of marriage necessary to
render sexual relations moral in Kant’s day, worked by promoting a view of wives as
subordinate to (i.e., fully free only through their private influence over) their husbands, then
when culture evolves to the point where it abandons this view of the indirect role of women in
public life, how does that affect the rational principle that ought to define the nature of
marriage? If the unquestionable faith many in culture-m put in the absolute normative
superiority of monogamy turns out to carry with it a new form of (typically hidden)
domineering sexism, then culture-m may be making the same error many accuse Kant of
making, namely that of “justifying the present injustice in the name of a just society which is
supposed to emerge in some remote future” (Gangavane, 2004, p. 371).14 To conclude this
13
She goes on to cite numerous examples of western dualisms that favor males (Schott, 1998, p. 42) and points
out “that the prevailing psychological theories of moral development display a distinctly masculine bias” by
focusing “on justice and rights” while devaluing the more feminine values of “care and responsibility” (Schott,
1998, p.43). The allegation that Kant’s philosophy supports such a devaluing has been challenged by Sedgwick
and others (Palmquist 2017, note 35). For those who make such allegations are confirming Kant’s basic claim
that the natural differences between men and women must be taken into consideration in any concrete
application of ethical principles such as marriage. The claim that feminine psychology focuses not on “justice
and rights” but on “care and responsibility” is ironically reminiscent of Kant’s supposedly offensive
generalization that “women’s philosophy is ‘not to reason, but to sense’” (45, quoting Kant, 1960, p. 230[79]).
14
Gangavane adds: “If both men and women are being used by nature to serve its own purpose, there is no
reason for [society] to put unjust restrictions on women and to deny her [sic] the opportunity for moral
development” (Gangavane, 2004, p. 373). Precisely this rationale, but applied to men, lies at the root of my
prediction, in the remainder of this article, as to how marriage norms will evolve in the future.

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study we shall therefore turn our attention to this possibility – i.e., to an assessment of the
view upheld by culture-m, that an ethically justifiable marriage must be monogamous.

Polyfidelity as an antidote to the domineering sexism in anti-polygamy laws

If asked why polygamy is (and ought to continue to be) illegal, a common response of many
people in culture-m would be that such a law protects women from the dangers of
domineering sexism. 15 This was quite true and proper in the context of culture-k, where
women were still typically regarded as subordinate to men, due to the influence nature was
believed to have on the proper social–psychological roles played by the sexes. Any culture
that portrays nature as having given women more of an ornamental value than an independent
power of choice needs to have laws preventing men from taking advantage of this situation by
merely collecting women for their own enjoyment, lest it institutionalize domineering sexism.
The imposition of such increasingly effective laws is a major factor that justifies the claim
that culture-k is morally superior to culture-p and so also, that culture-m is morally superior to
culture-k.
Kant pushed culture-k beyond its previous comfort zone, providing the philosophical
foundations for the transition from culture-k to culture-m. He did this, as I argued in Part I, by
developing a moral philosophy that completely ignored the natural differences between the
sexes and a cultural anthropology that viewed these differences as complementary functions
that can work together for the good of the whole, rather than as functions that justify members
of one sex in disrespecting members of the other sex. Once Kant’s philosophy has had its full
effect, once culture-m reaches the level of maturity whereby all or the vast majority of its
members agree that men and women (whether or not they have different natures) must be
accorded equal levels of respect and freedom, the types of laws that will be appropriate to
guarantee the further growth and development of the human race in that future culture will
need to be revised accordingly.
The foregoing speculation raises a fascinating question: is it possible that, even though
most people today may be unaware of condoning a form of oppression, culture-m has
institutionalized a new and very different kind of sexism?16 Kant, of course, would not see
culture-m in this way, for he defended monogamous marriage as fulfilling “the end of
humanity in respect of sexuality” (i.e., “to preserve the species” through procreation) “without
debasing the person” (Kant, 1930, p. 170). Legalized polygamy debased the humanity in
women because it sanctioned an imbalanced relationship: the husband receives the whole
woman but only gives her part of himself. Monogamy corrected this imbalance by regarding
the wife as an equal even though strictly speaking (i.e., in terms of her legal status as a
citizen) she was not. But once women obtain the same legal status as men, as they now have
in most parts of the world, does the principle of monogamy still fulfill the sexuality of both
persons in a manner that preserves equality and thus avoids debasing either partner? If Kant
was right in claiming that the biological nature of men and women is fundamentally different,
15
In the USA anti-polygamy laws were introduced as a direct response to Mormonism, first by President Lincoln
in 1862 and then more forcefully by President Arthur in 1882. While these laws were probably also motivated by
economic and political concerns, the explicit rationale given was that Mormon plural marriage was oppressive to
the women involved.
16
Along these lines, Mendus concludes her harsh critique of Kant’s sexism by warning that “to abandon
eighteenth-century German values for twentieth-century British values is not necessarily an improvement,
particularly if the philosophical model underpinning both is faulty” (Mendus, 1992, p. 41). Similarly, Elam
argues that an open-minded interpretation of Kant’s notion of a “beautiful woman” in the third Critique “can
give feminism, for all its sophisticated assessment of the status of women in modernity, additional insight into
how its own practices can avoid repeating the very injustices it has tried to redress” (Elam, 2010, p. 119) The
beautiful woman’s body, Kant says in §17, presents in visible form “the moral ideas that rule men inwardly”.
Elam does not relate this passage to Kant’s theory of the evolution of marriage, but it seems obviously consistent
with his view that women’s rule over men has a moralizing effect on them (Palmquist, 2017, p. 52).

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and if the nature of women no longer calls for special consideration because they have
obtained equality under the law, then a principle of union that continues to give their nature
special consideration risks debasing the male sexually (though not politically and financially,
as polygamy did to women in culture-p). If nature inclines the typical woman to be devoted to
one partner, while the typical man is naturally inclined to seek out multiple partners, then in
cultures where women enjoy absolute legal equality with men, what is the rationale for giving
preference to feminine nature in the legal definition of marriage? As one moderate feminist
says, “all rights should be ‘sexuate’ in the sense that they should serve, directly or indirectly,
to secure for women and men the all-important ability to enhance their sexuation through
culture” (La Caze, 2005, p. 112).17 Does legally enforced monogamy still accomplish this
goal at the most mature stage in the development of culture-m?
Commentators on Kant’s theory of marriage have noted, often disapprovingly, that he
treats friendship, not marriage, as the highest expression of love.18 He does so because true
friendship as he conceives it is a relation between equals, partners who learn to balance the
opposing forces of love and respect. Given the lower status of women in culture-k, Kant (like
Aristotle) assumed true friendship, if it occurs at all, would be between persons of the same
sex. Now that women have gained legal equality with men, this restriction is no longer
applicable. We may therefore be able to enrich Kant’s conception of marriage by
incorporating into it aspects of his theory of friendship. One such aspect is that friendships are
not exclusive:19 a person can have committed friendships with more than one person without
offending any moral principle. This could not apply to marriage in culture-k because the law
forced marriage partners who viewed each other as naturally unequal to act as if they were
equal. But once the law does give women and men equal rights, monogamy serves no such
purpose; instead, it unduly favors the feminine side of a sexual relationship, thus in effect
debasing male sexuality by eclipsing the man’s natural tendency to prefer multiple concurrent
sexual commitments.
The transformation of culture-m into culture-f will occur as people change their view of
what laws can best protect both men and women from social–psychological abuse in their
sexual interactions with each other. This change is already in the process of happening in
many places, with an emphasis on the possibility of same-sex marriages for a minority of the
population, but needs to be taken considerably further before its full implications for society
in general become evident. Just as men in a fully matured culture-k agreed to sacrifice an
aspect of their nature in order to promote greater equality between the sexes, women in a fully
matured culture-m will need to agree to sacrifice their preference for viewing marriage as

17
La Caze quoting Alison Stone, “The sex of nature: A reinterpretation of Irigaray’s metaphysics and political
thought”, Hypatia 18.3 (2003): 76, second emphasis added; cf. note 1, above.
18
See, for example, Denis (2001). In Part Four of Palmquist (2003) I make the same claim about friendship.
19
Denis shows how a richer, “ideal” view of marriage, one that is far more palatable to the modern reader, can
be gleaned from Kant’s writings by incorporating key elements of his view of friendship into his theory of
marriage (Denis, 2001, p. 26). However, Denis never mentions the possibility of extending this incorporation to
the criterion of inclusivity. Instead, she emphasizes monogamy as a crucial aspect of Kant’s theory of marriage
(Denis, 2001, pp. 10–13, 27) without acknowledging how friendship differs. Similarly, Cash argues that the
duties Kant associates with marriage point not to his theory of spousal dominance and submission, but rather to a
“unity of will … something like the way Kant sees it achieved in friendship” (Cash, 2002, p. 125), where love
and respect are ideally balanced in perfect unity, much as attraction and repulsion function as balancing forces in
the physical world (cf. Kant, 1991, pp.469–70[261]). The reason this suggestion appeals so much to us today but
did not even occur to Kant is that Kant assumed ideal friendship can be approximated only by persons of the
same sex, whereas today (now that women have achieved political equality with men) the idea of male–female
friendship causes no problem to anyone who has fully taken on the (allegedly non-sexist) values of culture-m.
Once the significance of this enormous step in the post-Kantian evolution of human culture is taken into
consideration, we can no longer blame Kant for not attempting to incorporate friendship into marriage. For a
good account of Kant’s theory of the need for a balance between love and respect (La Caze, 2005, pp. 92–114).

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exclusive in order to reflect the reality of their equal status with men in the public realm. The
new principle of marriage as polyfidelitous 20 will still require some sacrifice from men,
inasmuch as it requires them to be faithful to any partner with whom they have a sexual
relationship – a trait Kant associates with feminine nature. But in culture-f, marriage law will
accurately reflect the fully equal legal status of men and women by not assuming the old-
fashioned view that having multiple concurrent sexual commitments necessarily debases
women. Guarding against the tendency of sex to objectify and thus debase both partners
equally, the new law will accord rights of shared personhood to any sexual partners who
choose to be ethically responsible by committing themselves fully to the person(s) with whom
they have sex. As such, the law will avoid one of the chief disadvantages that polygamy has
for men (namely, that of making fewer women available for less advantaged men to choose
from), inasmuch as it will allow females as well as males to have multiple legally binding
commitments; neither sex will be protected more than the other. In other words, the law will
be fully egalitarian, giving both women and men an identical right to make such multiple
concurrent marital commitments for partners who mutually agree to such an arrangement. Of
course, the law will not require plural marriage; many in culture-f will continue to find
fulfillment in monogamy, while others may choose to continue what has already become the
new standard in culture-m, which is simply to ignore the idea that sex partners ought to be
married before they cohabitate, rear children, etc. The main point of my argument is that the
growing tendency to marginalize the significance of marriage – a direct result of the failure of
marriage to fulfill its proper functions in culture-m – can be reversed only by changing, in the
not-so-distant future, the definition of what counts as a legal marriage.
How would polyfidelity (i.e., egalitarian plural marriage) be possible if, as Kant claims, a
marriage contract requires me to “hand over my whole person to the other”? Kant himself
provides the basis for an answer when he notes that, by “obtain[ing] the person of the other…,
I get myself back again, and have thereby regained possession of myself” (Kant, 1997, p.
388). Having obtained myself in return, and within the context of a fully matured culture-m
wherein women have equal political and financial power, why should the law prevent me and
my spouse from agreeing together that one (or both) of us may also make a similar legally
binding exchange with someone else? The only additional requirement in order to conform
plural marriage to Kantian ethics, in a culture that treats men and women as fully equal under
the law, is that both (or all) current spouses must freely agree to the addition of a new spousal

20
For a discussion of this concept within the context of a more general philosophy of love, see Palmquist (2003),
especially Chapter IX. A polyfidelitous marriage is a lifelong (marital) commitment to sexual fidelity between
two persons that does not prevent either person from making a similar lifelong commitment with another person.
It is fundamentally different from polygamy, because the option of making a second, concurrent commitment is
equally open to both sexes. Another important distinction is between polyfidelity and promiscuity, the two being
virtual opposites: the former is rule-governed, based on commitment and mutual respect for persons (and
therefore consistent with Kantian principles of right), while the latter is governed only by personal pleasure and
whim. At present, most versions of culture-m manifested throughout the world still treat polyfidelity, like
polygamy, as both morally unacceptable and illegal; yet in many cases they ironically go easy on mutually
agreed promiscuity.
The well-publicized conviction in Utah of the Mormon, Tom Green, on four counts of polygamy in 2001 is a
case in point. More recently, the trial of Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints, has attracted similar attention to the continued harsh treatment culture-m has on anyone who
continues to promote polygamy. Feminists with views of nature like those described in my text (Palmquist, 2017,
note 12), tend to approve of such prosecutions, as ridding culture-m of the last vestiges of culture-p. My
argument here should not be construed as an approval of such remaining vestiges of polygamy, for they are
indeed often motivated by attitudes and beliefs characteristic of domineering sexism. Rather, my argument is that
when a culture emerges wherein both sexes have reached full maturity, anti-polygamy laws will become both
unnecessary, because women will be able to look after themselves without depending on a special law that favors
their nature, and undesirable, because such laws will be seen to promote a very different (but no less real) kind of
sexism.

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commitment. This effectively resolves Kant’s ethical concerns over the one-sidedness of
polygamy and its tendency to encourage over-indulgence by males in oppressing females.
The evolutionary theory of marriage I have sketched up to now can be summarized in
terms of the way each cultural stage in the evolutionary process would answer two questions:
(1) does the law promote egalitarian rather than domineering marriages? and (2) is marriage
law non-sexist, ignoring any natural differences? Culture-p and culture-m both answer the
first question negatively, while culture-k and culture-f answer affirmatively. The second
question is negated by culture-p and culture-k but affirmed by culture-m and culture-f. This
enables us to distinguish clearly between the main features of these four evolutionary stages:
culture-p makes no effort to be egalitarian, nor does it shy away from sexism, being openly
grounded in natural differences that make polygamy seem normal; culture-k affirms Kant’s
thoroughly egalitarian principles, thus rejecting polygamy, but justifies monogamy on the
basis of a need to build sexual difference into the law in order to compensate for the lower
status of women; culture-m insists that marriage law be non-sexist, yet preserves monogamy
as the only legal option, thereby inadvertently exhibiting a domineering tendency in favor of
feminine nature in sexual relationships; and culture-f, recognizing the inconsistency and
potential injustice of culture-m, restores a fully egalitarian legal system by allowing multiple
concurrent marital commitments as a legal option, thus refusing to favor the feminine
preference for exclusivity.

The role of women in the transformation to culture-f

The change from culture-p to culture-k and from there to culture-m has been exceedingly
valuable for the moral development of the human race. Whether willingly or by the collective
force of their culture’s influence on their nature, men (males) now regularly sacrifice (or at
least, believe they ought to sacrifice) their inbuilt desire to realize their full natural potential
by submitting to a culture that has instituted monogamy into its laws; those who would dare to
challenge this relatively recent status quo run the risk of being labeled as domineering sexists.
Why have men in culture-k and culture-m freely assented to the eclipsing of their nature in
this way? They have done so because they quite properly realized the importance of allowing
women equal access to freedom of choice and an equal right to have their side of nature
properly respected. If Kant is correct in his aforementioned claim (Kant, 1974, pp. 303–311)
that (at least in culture-k) women are primarily responsible for the enculturation of men (and
so also of the whole human race, through their greater role in nurturing children of both sexes
during their formative years), then ironically, women may have been more fundamentally
responsible for effecting these developmental stages in the evolution of cultures than men.
That is, even though men generally believe (and the history of human sexuality officially tells
us) that the increased freedom of women has, by and large, come about because men have
eventually agreed to women’s demand that men “share” what used to be regarded as primarily
theirs by nature, a more accurate explanation may be that mothers have “re-encultured” their
children (especially the boys) at an early age to view females in new ways.
Whether or not we accept Kant’s claims about the role of women in moral education does
not affect my main argument in this concluding section, which is about the future of anti-
polygamy laws. Significantly, one of the outcomes of culture-m has been that it tends to give
men an increasingly active role in the moral up-bringing of children than they had in culture-k
or culture-p. As this trend increases, children are being brought up to be more and more
sensitive to a hidden tendency of culture-m to condone what might be called “domineering
non-sexism”; as more and more of these children become adults, they will increasingly
challenge this implication of culture-m and will eventually revise the law. The hidden
tendency of culture-m to be domineering lies in the simple fact that the legal system favors
the biological nature of one sex: institutionalized monogamy imposes norms that may result in

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real biological and social–psychological abuse being done to anyone whose sexual nature
points them in another direction.
Aside from the new child-rearing practices that tend to arise in culture-m, two crucial
factors are likely to influence the transition to culture-f. First, natural biological differences
will become increasingly less important, due to improvements in technological methods of
overcoming our biological limitations. Indeed, this factor is already giving men and women a
real choice as to whether they will produce babies according to the means nature has provided
or through various artificial means – or not at all. A parallel factor, relating to natural social–
psychological differences, is the acceptance by common citizens in culture-m of those
twentieth century psychological systems that portray all humans as having aspects of both
masculinity and femininity within them.21 This insight reveals domineering sexism to be a
ludicrous approach to relationships with the opposite sex, for it implies that one who adopts
this disposition is, at least symbolically, oppressing oneself, treating oneself unfairly,
preventing a part of oneself from maximizing freedom. When the implications of such
insights are fully digested, how will the resulting culture-f assesses our culture-m assumptions
about marriage?
Anti-polygamy laws were not needed in culture-k (see note 16, above), because marital
arrangements such as the one Kant describes give men a sense that they have a duty to
sacrifice their natural desire for multiple committed sexual relationships in exchange for the
sacrifice of political and economic freedom being made by their spouse. Such laws became
necessary only when culture-k began its transformation into culture-m, where they have
served a good and proper purpose by preventing men from re-subjugating women as they
gradually sought and obtained political and economic equality. But as women have gradually
gained such equality in culture-m, with the right to vote and the expectation that they will
contribute to the workforce and play key roles in government, these laws have been a major
factor contributing to the huge increase in the divorce rate, which now threatens a virtual
collapse of marriage as a reliable context for raising healthy children for the next generation.
Obviously, the laws have not changed the biological nature of the sexes. Instead, they have
merely ignored this important difference, imposing naturally feminine norms onto males, just
as culture-p imposed naturally masculine norms onto females. As women living in culture-m
become more and more accustomed to the increasingly equal access culture-m gives them to
freedom and mutual respect, and as men begin to take up more and more responsibilities for
childcare, two changes will gradually take place. First, women – especially those who have
been raised and undergone moral education principally from their fathers – will (indeed, are
already beginning to) insist that they are not “the same” as men after all, on the basis of an
informed consideration of the natural differences that do exist between the sexes. That is, an
acknowledgement of sexual difference will come to be seen not as a dangerous, “slippery
slope” leading to domineering sexism, but as the only reliable safeguard against it. The
tendency of well-meaning anti-sexists to label all forms of sexism as domineering on the
grounds that no real natural differences exist (so that anyone who affirms such differences
must thereby be objectionably sexist) will then be seen for the fiction it is.
The second change should now be self-evident. As a given society in the transition from
culture-m to culture-f accepts the reality of natural sexual differences more and more widely,
and refines its understanding of these differences through more and more sophisticated
scientific research, the inequitable, domineering nature of laws defining marriage as
necessarily monogamous will become more and more obvious. Women will then begin to
recognize that such laws are no longer in their best interest. For some women, this may come

21
Among the most profound of these psychological theories is Carl Jung’s theory of the “anima” and “animus”
as unconscious representations of a person’s opposite sex characteristics. For a detailed discussion of this and
other features of Jung’s psychology (Palmquist, 2008).

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in the form of a desire for polyfidelity, recognizing it is possible for them simultaneously to
live a life of legally binding, committed sexual love with two or more husbands. But for most,
it will come as a result of recognizing that such laws, in most if not all examples of culture-m
around the world, are now contributing to the heartache of divorce and broken homes that
hampers the moral and psychological development of children. In other words, the very laws
that were originally established to protect women from being oppressed by men in culture-m
have, for some time now, been causing a considerable degree of heartache and oppression to
both sexes. For a man in culture-m who, sincerely wishing to develop the capacities of his
nature to their fullest by committing himself in genuine sexual love to more than one person,
is told he must choose, even if his masculine way of understanding such natural differences
does not require such a choice. As culture-m develops and such natural differences become
less evident in our social interactions and psychological self-understandings, more and more
women (though still a minority) are finding that they, too, may become aware of their ability
to be committed to multiple partners. That is, laws banning multiple marriage actually reduce
the freedom of both (or all) parties in such situations, eliminating a viable option that some
persons (though probably always only a minority) would want to choose.
My suggestion here is that the only way to combat the hidden tendency of culture-m to
oppress masculine sexuality is to work towards a culture-f that will do for males in culture-m
what culture-k did for females in culture-p. Worried feminists might ask: What will prevent
the relaxation of anti-polygamy laws from causing culture-f to fall back into the repressive,
domineering sexist ways that were all–too–characteristic of culture-p? The answer is quite
simple: enlightened, empowered women will not allow it. Until women in a sufficiently
mature manifestation of culture-m have collectively reached this stage, through real political
and financial equality (i.e., genuinely equal rights and equal pay), the existing anti-polygamy
laws should therefore remain in place to protect them, thus forcing polyfidelitous individuals
in that culture to continue accepting the burden of forced monogamy. Perhaps no
manifestation of culture-m has reached this stage yet. But once the women in a given society
are self-confident enough to accept them, the new laws will distribute the access to free
choice in forming marital unions equally between men and women. Women will be as free to
have multiple husbands (polyandry) as men will be to have multiple wives (polygamy),
though they may not wish to take advantage of this option as often as men (because of their
biological nature) are likely to do. In this way, the chief moral objection to culture-p, when
assessed from the standpoint of culture-k or culture-m – that it allowed for an unfair
distribution of access to freedom, thus effectively institutionalizing the male domination of
women – will be abolished, yet without surreptitiously imposing onto men essentially the
same unequal distribution of access to freedom, as culture-m currently does, with its tendency
to ignore the natural differences between the sexes.
I do not claim here to have conclusively demonstrated that a culture allowing
polyfidelitous marriage is morally superior to a culture that disallows such (currently
unlawful) marital commitments. Rather, my mode of argument here has been more like a
speculative prediction of what is most likely to come next in the cultural evolution of
humanity’s attempt to use marriage to render sexual relationships morally acceptable. If I am
right, then persons living in culture-f will tend to look back at many of us in culture-m and
shake their heads, accusing us of culturally institutionalized domineering sexism (ironically
appearing under the guise of non-sexist ideals), because we established laws that forced many
people to break heartfelt sexual commitments they longed not to break and felt no moral
obligation to break, yet had to break because of our culture’s failure to make proper
allowances for the existence of natural differences between the sexes. While proudly
proclaiming its freedom from all taint of sexism, culture-m hides a domineering tendency that
is just as real as that of culture-p, but is more difficult to oppose, since it is hidden under the

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veil of a desire to stamp out all sexism.22 What I hope to have accomplished in this two-part
series is the construction of a philosophical framework for making ethical assessments across
cultures, a framework that exonerates Kant from the charge of domineering sexism and
preserves the integrity of his egalitarian ethics. For his specific theory of marriage represents
but a stage in an evolutionary process that cannot reach its natural end until the law gives both
women and men the freedom to develop their natural sexuality in ethically sound (i.e.,
committed, non-promiscuous) marriages that do not unilaterally impose the norms favored by
one sex onto the other.23

Stephen R. Palmquist (D.Phil., Oxford University) is Professor of Religion and Philosophy

at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he has taught since 1987. He has over 180
publications (translated into at least 12 languages), which include about 100 refereed articles
and book chapters, published in more than 25 countries. Among his 11 books are The Tree of
Philosophy (Philopsychy Press, 1992/2000), Kant’s System of Perspectives (University Press
of America, 1993), Kant’s Critical Religion (Ashgate, 2000), Cultivating Personhood: Kant
and Asian Philosophy (Walter de Gruyter, 2010), Comprehensive Commentary on Kant’s
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), and Baring All in
Reason’s Light: An Exposition and Defense of Kant’s Critical Mysticism (Noesis Press,
2018). In 1999 he founded the Hong Kong Philosophy Café, now comprising four branches
and over 900 members.

Corresponding author:
Stephen R. Palmquist, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist
University, 224 Waterloo Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR (China)
Email: [email protected]

References
CASH, M. (2002): Distancing Kantian Ethics and Politics from Kant’s Views on Women. In:
Minerva, 6, pp. 103–150.
DENIS, L. (2001): From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant. In: Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 63(1), pp.1–28.
ELAM, D. (2010): Women on the Edge of Modernity. In: Women: A Cultural Review,
11(1/2), pp. 118–130.

22
I am not claiming that all feminist scholars in culture-m are guilty of this domineering disposition; there
are far too many varieties of feminist philosophy to make such a claim plausible. Moreover, one of the basic
principles guiding the framework for cross-cultural ethical assessments that I have defended is that we can be
properly judged only according to the standard we choose to adopt to judge ourselves and others. I take this to be
the essential meaning not only of Kant’s categorical imperative, but also of Jesus’ corresponding maxim, in
Matthew 7:1-2: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be
judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”. For a discussion of the relation between these
two moral principles (Palmquist, 1991).
23
This pair of articles began as a much shorter paper, presented in May of 2004 at the Beijing International
Symposium on Kant’s Moral Philosophy in Contemporary Perspectives, organized by the Institute of Foreign
Philosophy and the Department of Philosophy at Peking University. I would like to thank the organizers of that
conference and all who provided feedback on that first occasion, as well as the countless anonymous reviewers
from many of the nine journals that rejected successive versions of this project since that time. Many of those
reviewers offered incisive feedback and helpful suggestions for further development, though for each submission
one reviewer, unable to stomach the thought of accepting a paper that questioned the basic myth of culture-m
(i.e., the moral superiority of monogamy), advised the editors that the essay should never be published. Thanks
also to Mark Sun, for assisting me in deciding how best to respond to the latest batch of reviews, and to Vasil
Gluchman, for his courage in allowing this project to be disseminated to the general public at last.

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