Why should one say that they are
the proper concern of man but not the concern of the philosopher? Can it be
because the philosopher is worse than other men? Certainly, he
ought not to be worse, but better and more just and more truly good.
Or could one say that the man who
does not take an interest in his city is not worse and more unjust than the man
who does, the man who looks out only for his own interests is not worse than
the one who looks out for the common good?
Or can it be that the man who
chooses the single life is more patriotic, more a friend and partner of his
fellow man, than the man who maintains a home and rears children and
contributes to the growth of his city, which is exactly what a married man
does?
I will sometimes find myself confused about the intersection
of being a good person, of being a philosopher, and of being married. Musonius
reminds me that these are all in perfect harmony with one another.
There are days when I want to lock up my moral
self, over in some forgotten corner, and work instead on my professional self.
There are days when I want to separate a commitment
to my job from a love for my wife and children.
There are days when I want to divide myself into scattered
bits, each having little to do with the others, and live in an ignorant
fragmentation, where I do one thing here, another thing there, and never bother
to consider the beauty of the whole.
If I want to be a good man, I will have to be a
philosopher, not as a trade, but as my most fundamental human vocation. If I
want to choose what is right, I will first have to understand what is right.
If I want to be a good man, informed by a knowledge
of true from false, I will also be called to love. Not love as gratification,
or love as preference, or love as confused with lust, but love as a complete
sharing of my own being.
Of all the ways that might be put into practice, few
could be as suitable as the love between spouses. There are times when it will
hurt like hell, and there are times when it will make me doubt myself to the
core, but there will never be a time when it fails to give me the opportunity
to become better.
“Well, that’s a bit naïve, don’t you think? I’m
committed to my career right now, and maybe a wife and kids are somewhere further
down the line, but surely I need to make something of myself first?”
Define your terms. What does it mean to make
something of yourself? Is it you with
others, or you at the expense of others?
Where is the decency, the sacrifice, or the commitment if you cannot serve
another, in absolutely every way? Where is the love, if it must always be
qualified by other goals?
If the circumstances had been only slightly
different, in the most subtle of ways, I may have found myself married to
someone for all the wrong reasons, or not even married to anyone at all. Some
of us won’t necessarily be able to choose a mate, a second self, because of
things far beyond our own power.
Yes, the good man must, in a certain sense, be a
philosopher, and the good man must, in another sense, be open to embracing
absolute love. Must every good man marry? His particular path may not take him
that way, but there’s a big difference between saying that he can’t do it and that he won’t do
it.
Put in other words, I have known many virtuous
people who have never married, but I have never known any virtuous people who
assumed that marriage was somehow a violation of their most essential humanity.
An interest in myself can never exclude an interest
in others. Family, in whatever form it may take, is the most natural vehicle
for exercising love, the one upon which every other association is built.
Written in 1/2000
IMAGE: Jan Bruegel, The Wedding Banquet (1623)
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