Uncivil Unions: The Metaphysics of Marriage in German Idealism and Romanticism by Adrian Daub (review)

Uncivil Unions is a rich exploration of concepts of marriage in philosophical and literary texts of the 1790s and beyond. As Daub argues at the outset, this book explores "the metaphysics of marriage" rather than pursuing an empirical, social history of marriage per se, because a turn away from the limitations of the empirical characterizes idealist/romantic theories of ideal interpersonal union in general, and of marriage in particular. Daub's book is a valuable contribution to studies of this period because it reveals the extent to which marriage was theorized as a model of ideal intersubjective relations—this alongside other key moments of intersubjectivity such as labor (in Hegel's master-slave dialectic), pedagogy (in various theories of Bildung), and aesthetic experience—that offers a countermodel to existent civil society. Daub's book adds additional complexity to previous accounts of this transformative time in German thought and uncovers new intellectual-historical genealogies that lead from the romantic period up to the present day in theories of intersubjectivity, the relationship of the family to the state, and the all-important politics of marriage.

Daub's book does a great service in showing how a wide range of literary texts take up the philosophical debates about marriage, exploring the deep interrelations among philosophy, aesthetics, and experiments in literary form in the period in new and rewarding ways. Daub proceeds by unfolding philosophical texts in a clear, compelling manner and by showing the ways in which literary texts engage, extend, and sometimes subvert key philosophical ideas. The book thus opens up new linkages between Kant, Fichte, and Hegel and romantic writers such as Novalis, Sophie Mereau, Schlegel, and Jean Paul. Daub convincingly shows how debates about marriage rearticulate idealist and romantic theories of the absolute; this book will serve as a valuable introduction to students new to German idealism and it is at the same time entirely captivating for scholars working on the period.

As Daub describes it, idealist/romantic thinkers explore marriage as an avenue for interpersonal self-realization, rather than a contract with state or civil society. This is the "uncivil" aspect of marriage referenced in the book's title—in opposition to Enlightenment theories of marriage as a contract embedded in concrete civic realities and sanctioned by the state, idealist/romantic thinkers approach marriage as an ideal relation based on love and mutual self-realization. Marriage is defined in a quasirevolutionary manner against the current social order, but at the same time it is an interpersonal relation that bears the potential of remaking social and political life in its own image. As Daub convincingly shows, the theory of marriage is a site where fundamental concepts of interpersonal interactivity and mediation (Vermittlung) are unfolded; in this way, this book provides a valuable new angle on the genealogy of ideas of mediation. That said, marriage is for Daub not simply a deconstructive figure for the act of writing and figuration, for poiesis writ large; rather marriage is a lived experience, a concrete instance of intersubjectivity with its specific limits and possibilities.

Daub's main interlocutors are intellectual and literary historians and philosophers. His approach often does not foreground theories of the consolidation of gender roles and identity around 1800 or social histories of the rise of the bourgeois household. Daub also does not focus much on child-rearing as a feature of marriage, deliberately taking his lead here from romantic/idealist thinkers themselves, who, as Daub argues, theorize the "product" of marriage primarily as the marriage itself rather than as offspring. Here this reviewer would have appreciated more methodological Auseinandersetzung with competing approaches that foreground other familial constellations in their accounts of figures of mediation (Vermittlung) around 1800. In particular, it seemed that the book's intellectual-historical method might well stand in more competition with certain psychoanalytically informed accounts of the period than the author let on (such as Friedrich Kittler...