Wedding vows bind future selves

Agency – the individual’s capacity to act – can perhaps explain some of the unity of self over time that a standard bundle view makes problematic. Take a long-term commitment like marriage. On a simple bundle view, wedding vows make no sense: I cannot bind my future self if that self is in a real sense not the same self as I am. But to be a person does not just mean to be whatever series of psychological connections and continuities endure; it is to commit oneself to making certain connections and continuities happen. In that sense, we can perhaps see the wedding vows as being even deeper than usually thought: it is not just that I promise to have and to hold, I promise to try to build future selves that will be able to maintain this vow. We do not so much promise to be good spouses as promise to make ourselves into good spouses.

Saved 23 April 2015

#marriage #agency #bundle-theory #future