Better wed than read

marriage as a paradigm case for the theory of documentality

Richard Davies

pp. 52-73

in: A partire da Documentalità, Rivista di estetica 50, 2012.

Abstract

In Documentalità, Maurizio Ferraris presents marriage as a paradigmatic instance of a social object whose essence is constituted by the generation of documents. This claim appears to hold good for some of the standard forms of matrimony recognised within the Roman Law tradition. The case is put for saying that, nevertheless, the appeal to documents puts the cart before the horse: the validity of a marriage depends, if anything, on the behaviour of the participants in it as much before as after any supposed document-generating ceremony.

Cited authors

Ferraris Maurizio