La philosophie du mariage chez Plutarque

Abstract

In Plutarch’s writings, we fi nd a very original conception of marriage. Much more than a harmonious living together, full success concerning marriage, as regards physical pleasure, sentiments, and intellectual connivance, looks like a real symbiosis, the paradigm of which is provided by physics through the integral mixing, namely crasis. Carrying out such an union of male and female principles, in Plutarch’s opinion, requires from the wife a philosophical being in sympathy with her husband’s views about the world and, to Plutarch’s mind, reaches nearly a mystic level.