Revisiting the Natural Institution of Marriage in the Culture of Basotho through the lens of Western Philosophy
Keywords:
Marriage, family, personalistic norm, love, human personAbstract
The institution of marriage is the basis of every society, as through marriage, a man and a woman make a contract for life with the intention of having children and thus forming a family. In Lesotho, there are civil and customary marriages. Both regimes have their positive traits as well as their problems. I critique the regimes and irregular unions based on the foundational principles of Karol Wojtyła. I argue that divorce, as permissible in civil marriage, is wrong according to the personalistic norm of Karol Wojtyła. Moreover, by permitting polygamy, customary marriage needs to be improved to accommodate only monogamous marriage, as it allows a spouse to fully donate himself to the other. I totally disagree with irregular unions, which include, inter alia, abduction, elopement, cohabitation, and unions arising out of the infidelity of married persons, such as concubinage. I make it clear that irregular unions are not legal in Lesotho, but they are practices that have to be abhorred, for they reduce a person to a status of an object.
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