Was any major philosopher better than Schopenhauer at starting with genuine insight and turning it into an untenable conclusion?
Tetragamy adjusted marriage into an institution that would make life better for men and women, Schopenhauer theorized, because it accommodated the natural sexual and reproductive capacities of humans in ways in which monogamy did not. It also addressed the material and financial needs of all parties in a more rational way. Two young men should marry a young woman, and when she outgrew her reproductive ability, and thereby lost her attractiveness to her husbands, the two men should marry another young woman who would "last until the two young men were old." The financial advantage of this type of marriage would be considerable, Schopenhauer thought. At first, when the two young men's incomes were low, they would only have to support one woman and her small children. Later, when their wealth increased, they would have the means to support two women and many children…Schopenhauer never published his musings on tetragamy…
That is from David E. Cartwright's recent Schopenhauer: A Biography.
As long as one is willing to assume away women's ability to support themselves, and that everybody's main goal in life is to reproduce rather than spend it with people they actually like, it sounds somewhat plausible.
Though I never got the impression that Schopenhauer was much impressed by realistic assumptions about humanity – especially one half of it.
Can you just imagine drawing the short staw to get babysitting duty while your husband has sex with your wife?
Try to think of any significant philosopher prior to the 20th century who was married. There was Socrates, who had a very distant relationship with his wife, and there was… Rousseau might be the closest, having had a long-time mistress he refused to marry and 17 children, all of whom he gave up to foundling houses. One of my professors in college suggested that this lack of experience with marriage and children potentially created peculiar inflections in the history of the philosophy of politics and society.
Exactly: hence "genuine insight" and "untenable conclusions." Yes his solution is silly, but so are the people who reflexively reject his reasoning.
Two men sharing a single wife does not seem that plausible if the gender ratios are about equal. But the generational shifting aspect seems quite useful, so long as younger men are willing to marry sufficiently older women to have time to start a new family after they inherit the wealth of their first wives.
In response to Norman Pfyster:
Hegel was married. Although I don't have the information handy, I would bet that the significant philosophers in the Islamic, Chinese and Indian traditions were married, as marriage was virtually universal in those societies.
Yikes!
"The image of Socrates having a distant relationship with his wife is drawn mainly from Plato, who himself was a lifelong bachelor and, judging from The Republic, a misogynist."
um, judging from Plato, Plato and Socrates were both gay.
I think the ancient world knew a fair bit about Plato's, um, inability to understand women, starting with Plato's wife. Why in her own works — Xanthippic Dialogues — she confronts Plato.
See:
http://www.staugustine.net/xanthippicdialogues.ht…
Andrew we're not buddies but we can still be friends
Interesting how in Ancient Greece homosexual behavior was apparently a function of culture yet today only an ignorant right-wing extremist would say homosexual behavior is a function of culture. What a different culture we now live in.
You can tell he is a man because he does not consider his idea from a womans point of view. What young women would want to marry even one old man let alone two, and then spend decades of her life acting as a nurse for three old people.
Schopenhauer was a strong believer in female obedience, and even used it to explain why women are more religious than men, as seen in this quote from his essay On Women:
"That woman is by nature intended to obey is shown by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of absolute independence at once attaches herself to some kind of man, by whom she is controlled and governed; this is because she requires a master. If she, is young, the man is a lover; if she is old, a priest."
Am I the first one to react to this with "Holy shi-ite, that's a great idea!", and then think, "but what am I missing?"
"your husband has sex with your wife"
I doubt this is the correct way to say it.. "
I think the term you're looking for is "brother-husband".
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