Musonius Rufus, Lectures 14.9

It is clear, therefore, that it is fitting for a philosopher to concern himself with marriage and having children.

And if this is fitting, how, my young friend, could that argument of yours that marriage is a handicap for a philosopher ever be sound? For manifestly the study of philosophy is nothing else than to search out by reason what is right and proper, and by deeds to put it into practice.

Such, then, were the words he spoke at that time.

Some of us don’t just think that marriage and family get in the way of the “job” of philosophy; we will foolishly think that marriage and family get in the way of any and all professions.

In Athens and Rome, the philosophers, especially the Stoics, were annoyances, but they were at least revered annoyances. Many of them grew their hair long, begged for food, and yelled inconvenient truths at you when you passed them on the street. Still, it was understood that they were necessary.

Now the term of “philosopher” has been narrowed to be just another path of employment, really no different at all from being a lawyer, or a doctor, or a stockbroker.

Imagine if Socrates, or Musonius, or Epictetus had bickered about getting a promotion, or winning the corner office. Imagine if Marcus Aurelius had bothered about sleeping on a feather bed, instead of on a cot or on the floor.

If philosophers behaved like real philosophers, we’d probably call them useless bums.

“Get a job, you loser!”

Maybe some of them have rather important jobs, however, and we just don’t see it, having abandoned our human values?

That is a deep tragedy. “Have you gotten tenure yet? Did you present at the Chicago conference this year?”

Perhaps I think that my career requires me to give up the trivialities of human love. All I have done, in that case, is actually surrender my very humanity for the trivialities of Fortune. What I have lost is far greater than what I believe I have gained.

It won’t be enough if I add a family as some sort of further accessory to my social status, as if they were merely an afterthought. I might praise my children for being so bright and full of potential, but I will do them no good if I only prepare them for worldly success, if I fail to attend first and foremost to the health of their souls.

Where is the true brightness in my life, where is the real potential? Do I wish to make my children slaves to circumstances, as I myself was for far too long?

If I really want to be a good man, then the calling to a life of wisdom and virtue is the only profession that matters. This, in turn, will find its practical expression in how I go about loving those closest to me. All the rest of it is accidental.

Marriage and children make quite a bit of sense to someone who lives by love, first and foremost. Otherwise they are just vanities, more objects to be bought and sold.

Be a philosopher before you marry. Be a philosopher, and you can then be happy to marry.

Written in 1/2000