Marriage and Family
Sherif Girgis | June 25 - 29
It’s hard not to take for granted our culture’s most basic assumptions about sexuality, marriage, and family—to think of them as being obvious and undeniable. Most people assume, for example, that the main value of sex is in its power to please and foster affection; that marriage and family are whatever we make of them; that seeing deeper meaning in sex, or unchosen duties in family life, would be superstitious, and maybe devastating in its effects. But these assumptions are questionable and, in historical terms, quite novel. How we think about sex and family shapes our lives in immense ways. We have every reason to haul our assumptions about both into the light, to think about them critically, and to make up our own minds. This seminar will step back from default ideas about sex, marriage, and family, and try to imagine the alternatives.
How can erotic desire be disciplined to promote rather than hinder true love?
Families today take many different shapes; are some family forms better than others?
What should one look for in a future spouse, and how can dating best prepare one for marriage?
What does sexual morality demand, and why does it matter?
What do masculinity and femininity mean today?
Meet the Instructor
Sherif Girgis
Witherspoon Institute
Sherif Girgis, a Research Scholar of the Witherspoon Institute, is completing his PhD in philosophy at Princeton and recently completed his JD at Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Last year, he was a clerk for a judge in Washington, D.C. He is coauthor of the book, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, cited by Justice Alito in United States v. Windsor, on which he has spoken at more than 70 lectures, conferences, and debates. His next book, coauthored with Ryan Anderson and John Corvino, is Debating Religious Liberty, Tolerance, and Bigotry, and is under contract with Oxford University Press. Sherif has written on social issues in academic and popular venues, including Public Discourse, National Review, Commonweal, the New York Times, the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the Wall Street Journal. He is a 2008 Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of Princeton, from which he went on to earn a master’s degree in moral, political and legal philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.