Lecture
14: Is marriage a handicap to the pursuit
of philosophy?
Again when someone said that
marriage and living with a wife seemed to him a handicap to the pursuit of
philosophy, Musonius said that it was no handicap to Pythagoras, nor to
Socrates, nor to Crates, each of whom lived with a wife, and one could not
mention better philosophers than these.
Crates, although homeless and
completely without property or possessions, was nevertheless married;
furthermore, not having a shelter of his own, he spent his days and nights in
the public porticoes of Athens together with his wife.
For many in the current fashion, marriage is merely
a social accessory, and so what Musonius has to say here may seem quite strange.
Yet even for my parents’ or grandparents’ generations, where marriage was seen as
being far more fundamental, his attitude would be equally baffling.
I suggest that this is because Musonius is working
from a very different moral standard, one where human worth is not determined
by convenience or utility. The Stoic sees all things through virtue, and then
estimates all other aspects of his life from that measure.
In the two previous lectures, Musonius has defined human
sexuality from the order of Nature, and so as something that goes far beyond
the desires for pleasure or profit. Male and female exist first for the sake of
perfect friendship, a total giving of self, and then by extension for the sake
of the bearing and the raising of children.
A very progressive professor of mine once told us
that marriage was really only worth it if it was “fun”. “Hey, if you’re not getting
anything out of it, it’s time to move on! Trust me, don’t waste your time on someone
who’s going to drag you down. If it’s keeping you from being you, walk away!”
This troubled me deeply, though all I knew about
love back then was in my own romantic musings. Still, I wondered how it was any
sort of commitment at all, if the commitment depended on my own sense of
gratification.
“Drop” people? “Walk away” from them? Wasn’t the “being
me” part of any friendship necessarily joined to the love of another?
I also remember how, when I was at the ripe old age
of ten or eleven, my great-grandfather gave me a talk about finding a good
wife. I should be older, he advised, well into my thirties, because a man
needed to build up some income and property before he could take on a family.
She should be younger, he added, because women acquire
a sense of responsibility long before us men can manage it, and her vitality
would be a blessing both for me and for our children.
“But what if I’m younger, and poor, and I love her?
Do I need to have money? What if she’s older, or maybe she’s sick or something?
Can I still marry her?”
He laughed, and he smiled that big smile I miss so
much, and he rolled his eyes. “Well, that’ll happen too. Then you can only make
sure it’s love, and not just your pecker talking.”
I always listened, though I was never entirely satisfied
with the options put on the table. The professor said it required satisfaction,
and Pipa said it required security. Those are certainly preferable things, but
are they necessary things for love to be present? Doesn’t character trump
conditions, at any time or in any place?
My sense of romance has taken many blows over the
years, and yet I can still somehow manage to stick with my original convictions:
Love is not love which alters
when it alteration finds.
To
have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for
poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.
Would it be easier for me if my wife was never
sick, or never despondent, or never angry? Would it be easier for her if I made
a million dollars, or was always affectionate, or managed to constantly think
of her feelings before I wallowed in my own?
Of course, it would be easier, but easier is not
the same thing as better. Put all of those circumstances into place, and we
still wouldn’t have love. Love works through the
circumstances, and it does not arise from them.
Maybe I should just avoid this whole friendship thing,
this whole love thing, this whole marriage thing. I want to be a good person
first and foremost, a kind and just person, and perhaps such things are just
distractions.
Fool, don’t you see that those are the very means by
which you will be able to become good, kind, and just? How can you be a
philosopher if you are unwilling to give of yourself completely?
Crates of Thebes, one of the Cynic philosophers, and
the teacher of Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, took his values to a
place many of us would call rather extreme. He gave away all of his money, and
he abandoned all desire for worldly gain.
And yet he married, finding love with a woman who
embraced his longing for virtue, above all else, as her own. Hipparchia of
Maroneia joined him in his vocation.
“But how can I love her, and how can she love me,
if I have nothing? What will become of us without money?”
You have all that you need to love her, and she has
all that she needs to love you. You own yourselves, and now you also possess
one another, joined together in an even greater strength. What else could ever
be required?
Most would call that a perverse sense of romance; I
am still so moved by the story that it will, in a private moment, bring me to
tears.
Written in 1/2000
IMAGE: Crates and Hipparchia
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