Maverick Philosopher

Melanie Phillips on the Anti-Family Left

Melanie Phillips is a former lefty who wised up, illustrating my aphorism  that

                                                The only good leftist is a former leftist.

Polygyny?

Tony H asks:

Your procreation argument for heterosexual marriage is consistent with polygyny, so if it is sound, it may rule out homosexual marriages, but be of great use to defending polygynists since it maximizes procreation and the perpetuation of the state quantitatively. What is the state's interest in monogamy?

I was afraid my argument could be misinterpreted as promoting increased procreation.  But I took no stand on that.  My argument does not "maximize procreation." It says nothing about whether there should be more procreation or less.  Here is what I wrote: "The state has a legitimate interest in its own perpetuation  and maintenance via the production of children, their socializing, their protection, and their transformation into productive citizens who will contribute to the common good."  Let me break that down paratactically.

We collectively need some offspring; they need to be socialized and instructed in the rudiments of our culture; they need to be protected; they need to be educated to the point where they can function as productive citizens.  No one of those coordinate clauses, or their logical conjunction, entails that levels of procreation should be increased, let alone that the state should have a hand in such an increase.

Is my argument logically consistent with countenancing polygyny?  I suppose it is as it stands; but that is only because my argument was restricted to only one aspect of this multi-faceted issue.  I was just assuming that marriage is dyadic in order to focus on the question of why the state shouuld recognize opposite-sexed dyadic unions but not same-sexed dyadic unions.   The issue of the 'adicity' of marital and quasi-marital unions was not on the table.  One cannot talk about everything at once.

Why should the state have an interest in monogamy over polygamy (whether polyandry or polygyny)?  I have no answer to that at the moment.  I have only started thinking hard about these questions recently and I have an open mind on them.

As a conservative, I of course subscribe to the quite general principle that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things.  But I am open to the possibility that the presumption in favor of traditional marriage (dyadic, between humans only, permanent, exclusive, opposite-sexed, open to procreation) can be defeated.  For while I am a conservative, I am also a philosopher, and you can't be a philosopher (in the strict sense!) if you simply assume dogmatically this or that.

I should also add that I play for a draw, not for a win.  It sufficies to 'neutralize' the liberal-left arguments.  All I have to do is show that they are not compelling.  I don't have to refute them.  There are precious few refutations in philosophy, and none of them pertain to 'hairy' issues like same-sex 'marriage.' 

James Anderson on POMO Marriage

James N. Anderson writes,

To grant that marriage could be redefined is to capitulate to a postmodernist anti-realism according to which all social structures and institutions are mere human conventions and there is really no such thing as human nature, understood in traditional metaphysical terms. We must insist that marriage is not something that can be defined and redefined as we see fit. Marriage is a divine institution, not a human social construction like chess or money that we invented for our own purposes. There wasn’t a point in time at which humans ‘defined’ marriage in the way that, say, a foot was once defined as 12 inches. Marriage was bestowed upon us, not created by us.

1. It is certainly true that if marriage is a divine institution, as Professor Anderson says, then it has a nature not subject to human definition or redefinition.  For if  there are natures, then they are what they are whatever we say about them or think about them.  They are what they are whether we frame definitions of them or fail to do so, or do so accurately or  inaccurately.  But that marriage is a divine institution is a premise that won't be granted by many and perhaps most of the participants in the current debate over same-sex marriage.  It is therefore futile to use this premise in the current debate.  Or as the pugnacious Irishman Bill O'Reilly said the other night, "No Bible-thumping."  Defenders of marriage ought to invoke only those premises that secularists could accept, assuming that the goal is either to persuade them that the traditonal concept of marriage ought not be revised, or to show them that traditionalists have a principled stand that does not arise from biogotry or a desire to discriminate unjustly.

Suppose I want to convince you of something.  I must use premises that you accept.  For if I mount an argument sporting one or more premises that you do not accept, you will point to that premise or those premises and pronounce my argument unsound no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning. I am not saying that marriage is not divinely ordained; I am saying that the claim that it is has no place in a discussion in which the goal is to work out an agreement that will be acceptable to a large group of people, including theists and atheists. (Not that I am sanguine that any such agreement is in the offing.)

2. Whether or not marriage is a divine institution, it can have a nature.  That is: the question whether marriage has a nature, and the question whether there are natures at all, are logically independent of the question whether God is the ultimate ontological ground of natures.  Or at least this is prima facie the case.  Jean-Paul Sartre famously maintained that man cannot have a nature because there is no God to give him one; but it is not at all clear that a godless universe must be one bereft of natures.  Aristotle believed in natures even though his Prime Mover was neither the creator nor the  ontological ground of natures.

3. Let's assume that there is no God, and that therefore marriage is not divinely instituted, but that some things have natures and some things do not.  Water, to coin an example, has a nature, and it took natural philosophers a long time to figure out what it is.  Chess, by contrast, does not have a nature.  It is a tissue of conventions, an invention of man.   

4. Does marriage have a nature?  If it has a nature, and that nature requires that marriage be between exactly one man and exactly one woman, then there can be no question of redefining 'marriage' so as to include same-sex 'marriages.'  If marriage has the nature just specified, then it is impossible that  there be such a thing as same-sex marriage.  And if same-sex 'marriage' is impossible, then one cannot sensibly be for it or against it.  'I am for same-sex marriage' would then be on a par with 'I am for carnivorous rabbits.' 

'Should homosexuals be allowed to marry?' for traditionalists is like 'Should cats be allowed to philosophize?'  The nature of cats is such as to rule out their doing any such thing.  Similary, on the traditionalist understanding, marriage has a nature, and its nature is such as to rule out tlhe very possibility of same-sex 'marriage.'

5. Any talk of redefining 'marriage' therefore begs the crucial question as to whether or not marriage has a nature.  Such talk presupposes that it does not. 

6.  If the same-sexer goes POMO on us and adopts antirealism across the board, then he opens himself up to a crapstorm of powerful objections.  But needn't go that route.  If Anderson is suggesting that the same-sexer must, then I disagree with him.  The same-sexer need not embrace antirealism along the lines of a Goodmaniacal worldmaking constructivism; he might simply claim that while there are natures, and some things have them, marriage is not one of those things.

7.  Can I show that marriage has a nature?  Well, there is very little that one can SHOW in philosophy,  so let's retreat a bit.  Can I make a plausible case that marriage has a nature?  Well, man has a nature and certain powers grounded in that nature, one of them being the power to procreate.  The powers of human beings are not like the 'powers' of the chess pieces. It is by arbitrary human stipulation that the bishops move along diagonals only, capture in the same way they move, etc.  But the power of a man and woman to produce offspring is not a power that derives from arbitrary human stipulation.  It is a a power grounded in the nature of human beings.

Now if 'marriage' refers to what has traditionally been called marriage, i.e., to that the definition of which the  same-sexer revisionists want to revise so as to include same-sex unions, then 'marriage' refers to a relation between opposite-sexed human animals that is oriented toward procreation.  Of course there are social and cultural factors in addition to this natural substratum.  There is more to human marriage than animal mating and care of offspring.  But if you grant that human beings have a nature and a procreative power grounded in this nature, then it seems you have to grant that 'marriage' refers to a union between opposite-sexed human beings, a union that has a specific nature.  If so, then it is senseless to want to revise the definition of 'marriage.' Marriage is what it is; it has a nature, and that's the end of it. 

UPDATE (4/26): Professor Anderson responds here.

Related articles

Matt J. Salmon on Same-Sex Marriage

Marriage and Admiration

The Infertility Argument for Same-Sex Marriage

Why Not Just 'Privatize' Marriage?

The Infertility Argument for Same-Sex Marriage

Suppose two 70-year-olds decide to marry.  They can do so, and their marriage will be recognized as valid under the law.  And this despite the fact that such elderly couples cannot procreate.  But in many places the law does not recognize marriage between same-sex couples who also, obviously, cannot procreate.  What is the difference between the opposite-sex and same-sex cases? What is the difference that justifies a difference in legal recognition?  (Bear in mind that we are discussing legal recognition of marriage; the issue is not so-called civil unions.)  Let us assume that both types of union, the opposite-sex and the same-sex,  are guided by the following norms: monogamy, permanence, and exclusivity.  So, for the space of this discussion, we assume that the infertile heterosexual union and the homosexual union  are both monogamous, permanent, exclusive, and non-procreative. 

What then is the difference between the two cases that justifies a difference in treatment?  If the  only difference is that the one type of union is opposite-sex and the other same-sex, then that is a difference but not one that justifies a difference in treatment.  To say that the one is opposite-sex and the other same-sex is to tell us what we already know; it is not to justify differential treatment.

Here is a relevant difference.  It is biologically impossible that homosexual unions produce offspring.  It is biologically possible, and indeed biologically likely, that heterosexual unions produce offspring.  That is a very deep difference grounded in a biological fact and not in the law or in anything conventional.  This is the underlying fact that both justifies the state's interest in and regulation of marriage, and justifies the state's restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples.

There are two points here and both need to be discussed.

The first concerns the justification of the state's involvement in marriage in the first place.  It is obvious, I hope, that the state ought not be involved in every form of human association.  State involvement in any particular type of human association must therefore be justified.  We want as much government as we need, but no more.  The state is coercive by its very nature, as it must be if it is to be able to enforce its mandates and exercise its legitimate functions, and is therefore at odds with the liberty and autonomy of citizens.  It is not obvious that the government should be in the marriage business at all.  The burden is on the state to justify its intervention and regulation.  But there is a reason for the state to be involved.  The state has a legitimate interest in its own perpetuation  and maintenance via the production of children, their socializing, their protection, and their transformation into productive citizens who will contribute to the common good.  (My use of 'the state' needn't involve an illict hypostatization.)  It is this interest that justifies the state's recognition  and regulation of marriage as a union of exactly one man and exactly one woman. 

I have just specified a reason for state involvement in marriage.  But this justification is absent in the case of same-sex couples since they are not and cannot be productive of children.  So here we have a reason why the state ought not recognize same-sex marriage.   One and the same biological fact both justifies state regulation and recognition of marriage and justifies the restriction of such recognition to opposite-sex couples.  The fact, again, is that only heterosexuals can procreate. 

Proponents of same-sex 'marriage'  will not be satisfied with the foregoing.  They will continue to feel that there is something unfair and 'discriminatory,' i.e., unjustly discriminatory, about the state's recognition of the union of infertile heterosexuals as valid marriage but not of homosexual unions.  (Obviously, not all discrimination is unjust.)  Consider the following argument which is suggested by a recent article by William Saletan entitled Homosexuality as Infertility.  Saletan writes, "People who oppose gay marriage can come to accept it as moral, once they understand homosexuality as a kind of infertility."

The issue is not whether same-sex marriage is moral, but whether it ought to be legally recognized as marriage.  That quibble aside, Saletan's piece suggests the following argument:

1. Homosexual couples are infertile just like infertile heterosexual couples are infertile: there is no difference in point of infertility.
2. Infertile heterosexual couples are allowed by law to marry.
3. Like cases ought to be treated in a like manner.
Therefore
4. Homosexual couples ought to be allowed  by law to marry.

One can see why people would be tempted to accept this argument, but it is  unsound: the first premise is false. 

To show this I will first concede something that perhaps ought not be conceded, namely, that the predicate 'infertile' can be correctly applied to same-sex couples.  Justification for this concession would be the proposition that anything not F, even if it cannot be F, is non-F.  Thus anything not fertile, even if not possibly fertile,  is infertile.  So same-sex couples are infertile in the same way that numbers and ball bearings and thoughts are infertile. 

But even given this concession, there is an important difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples.  The former are essentially infertile while the opposite-sex infertile couples are only accidentally infertile.  What the latter means is that there is nothing in the nature of opposite-sex unions to rule out the possibility of procreation.  But in the case of same-sex unions, the very nature of the union rules out the possibility of procreation.  So (1) in the argument above is false.  Homosexual couples are not infertile in the same way that infertile heterosexual couples are.  The former are infertile by their very nature, while the latter are not.  This difference is what justifies a difference in treatment.

We must of course treat like cases in a like manner.  What I have just shown, however, is that the two cases are not alike.

The point is even more clear if we take the view that 'fertile' and 'infertile' are predicates that can be meaningfully applied only to that whose nature includes the power to procreate.  Accordingly, same-sex couples are no more infertile than hammers and nails are dead.  

We have two interpretive options, and both supply a difference that justifies a difference in treatment.

Option A.  Anything that is not fertile is infertile; hence, same-sex unons are infertile.  But they are not infertile in the same way that opposite-sex unions are.  Same-sex unions are essentially infertile, infertile by their very nature, while opposite-sex unions, when infertile, are only accidentally infertile.  (This is why infertile opposite-sex couples can sometimes become fertile through medical intervention.)

Option B.  If x is either fertile or infertile, then x has a nature that includes the power to procreate.  Hence same-sex couples are neither fertile not infertile.

On either option, Saletan's  "Homosexuality is a kind of infertility" is false.  This is also clear from the consideration that a couple is called 'infertile' because one of both of the partners is infertile or impotent.  But a union of two homosexuals is in most cases a union of two fertile women or of two potent men.  To call a homosexual couple 'infertile' is therefore to use 'infertile' in a different way than the way it is used when we call a heterosexual couple 'infertile.'  Homosexual couples are infertile because, to put it bluntly, dildos or fingers in vaginas and penises in anuses do not lead to procreation -- and not because of some defect or abnormality or age-induced impairment in the partners.

I have just shown that the (1)-(4) argument for extending the legal recognition of marriage to same-sex unions is not compelling.  Nevertheless, some will still feel that there is something unfair about, say, two opposite-sexed 70-year-olds being allowed to marry when homosexuals are not.  It may seem irrelevant that the nature of the opposite-sex union does not rule out procreation in the way the same-sex union does.  Why do the 70-year-olds get to have their union recognized as marriage by the state when it cannot be productive of offspring?

At this point I would remind the reader that the law  cannot cater to individual cases or even to unusual classes of cases.  Consider laws regulating driving age.  If the legal driving age is 16, this is unfair to all the 13-16 year-olds who are competent drivers.  (E.g., farm boys and girls who learned to operate safely heavy machinery before the age of 16.)  If the law were to cater to these cases, the law would become excessively complex and its application and enforcement much more difficult.  Practical legislation must issue in demarcations that are clear and easily recognized, and therefore 'unfair' to some.

But a better analogy is voting.  One is allowed to vote if one satisfies quite minimal requirements of age, residency, etc.  Thus the voting law countenances a situation in which the well-informed and thoughtful votes of mature, successful, and productive members of society are given the same weight as the votes of people who for various reasons have no business in a voting booth.  We don't, for example, prevent  the senile elderly from voting even though they are living in the past out of touch with the issues of the day and incapable of thinking coherently about them.  We don't exclude them or other groups for a very good reason: it would complicate the voting law enormously and in highly contentious ways.  (Picture armies of gray panthers with plenty of time on their hands roaming the corridors of Congress armed with pitchforks.)  Now there is a certain unfairness in this permissiveness: it is unfair to thoughtful and competent voters that their votes be cancelled out by the votes of the thoughtless and incompetent.  But we of the thoughtful and competent tribe must simply 'eat' (i.e., accept) the unfairness as an unavoidable byproduct of workable voting laws.

In the same way, whatever residual unfairness to homosexuals there is in allowing infertile oldsters to marry (after my foregoing arguments have been duly digested) is an unfairness that simply must be accepted if there are to be workable marriage laws.

To sum up.  The right place to start this debate is with the logically prior question: What justifies the state's involvement in marriage?  The only good answer is that state involvement is justified because of the state's interest in its own perpetuation via the production of children  and their development into productive citizens.  (There is also, secondarily, the protection of those upon whom the burden of procreation mainly falls, women.)  It is the possibility of procreation that justifies the states' recognition and regulation of marriage. But there is no possibility of procreation in same-sex unions.  Therefore, same-sex unions do not deserve to be recognized by the state as marriage.  This is not to oppose civil unions that make possible the transfer of social security benefits, etc.

The infertility argument for the extension of legal recognition to same-sex unions has been neutralized above. 

Related articles

Why Not Just 'Privatize' Marriage?

Why Not Just 'Privatize' Marriage?

In the nearly nine years I have been posting my thoughts on this weblog I don't believe I have said anything about so-called same-sex marriage, except for a non-substantive swipe at Matt Salmon a few days ago.  There are some entries in my Marriage category, but nothing about same-sex marriage.  It is high time for me to get clear about this issue.  (The elite readers I attract will have noticed the pun in the preceding sentence: 'marriage' in German is Hochzeit, high time.)

Being a conservative, I advocate limited government.  Big government leads to big trouble as we fight endlessly, acrimoniously, and fruitlessly over all sorts of issues that we really ought not be fighting over.  As one of my slogans has it, "The bigger the government, the more to fight over."  The final clause of the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution enshrines the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."  So the more the government does things that grieve us, by intruding into our lives and limiting our liberties, the more we will petition, lobby, and generally raise hell with the government and with our political opponents.  If you try to tell me how much soda I can buy at a pop, or how capacious my ammo mags must be, or how I must speak to assuage the tender sensitivities of the Pee Cee, or if you try to stop me from home-schooling my kids, or force me to buy health insurance, then you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.  Think of how much time, energy, and money we waste battling our political enemies, working to undo what we take to be their damage, the damage of ObamaCare being a prime example.

So if you want less contention, work for smaller government.  The smaller the government, the less to fight over.

Along these lines, one might think it wise to sidestep the acrimony of the marriage debate by simply privatizing marriage.  But this would be a mistake.  There are certain legitimate functions of government, and regulating marriage is one of them.  Here is an argument from an important paper entitled "What is Marriage?" by Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson.  (I thank Peter Lupu for bringing this article to my attention.)

Although some libertarians propose to “privatize” marriage, treating marriages the way we treat baptisms and bar mitzvahs, supporters of limited government should recognize that marriage privatization would be a catastrophe for limited government.  In the absence of a flourishing marriage culture, families often fail to form, or to achieve and maintain stability. As absentee fathers and out-of‐wedlock births become common, a train of social pathologies follows.  Naturally, the demand for governmental policing and social services grows. According to a Brookings Institute study, $229 billion in welfare expenditures between 1970 and 1996 can be attributed to the breakdown of the marriage culture and the resulting exacerbation of social ills: teen pregnancy, poverty, crime, drug abuse, and health problems. Sociologists David Popenoe and Alan Wolfe have conducted research on Scandinavian countries that supports the conclusion that as marriage culture declines, state spending rises. (270, footnotes omitted.)

A very interesting argument the gist of which is that the cause of limited government is best served by keeping in place government regulation of marriage.  A libertarian hard-ass might say, well, just let the victims and perpetrators  of the social pathologies perish.  But of course we won't let that happen.  The pressure will be on for  more and more government programs to deal with the drug-addicted, the criminally incorrigible, and the terminally unemployable.  So, somewhat paradoxically, if you want a government limited to essential functions, there is one function that the government ought to perform, namely, the regulation of  marriage.

Related articles

Matt J. Salmon on Same-Sex Marriage

Marriage and Admiration

Should government get out of the marriage business?

Gay Marriage: The Libertarian Solution

Ten Q&A on Same-Sex Marriage Canards and Evasions

Matt J. Salmon on Same-Sex Marriage

Here:

In an interview aired over the weekend, Rep. Matt J. Salmon (R-Ariz.) told a local news station that his son’s homosexuality has not led him to change his position on gay marriage.

“I don’t support the gay marriage,” the congressman said. But Salmon emphasized that he loved and respected his son and did not consider homosexuality a choice.

“My son is by far one of the most important people in my life. I love him more than I can say,” an emotional Salmon told 3TV. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t have respect, it doesn’t mean that I don’t sympathize with some of the issues. It just means I haven’t evolved to that stage.”

This is nauseating.  First of all, parents naturally love their children,  so there is no need to gush like a liberal over how much you love your son.  Thank you for 'sharing,' congressman, but politics is about governance and problem-solving , not about squishy, bien-pensant feel-goodism. 

And then Salmon tells us that he hasn't "evolved to the stage" of accepting same-sex marriage.  In other words, he is apologizing for being a conservative Neanderthal stuck at a lower level of evolutionary development, and hinting at the possibility of his 'evolving' beyond this retarded stage. 

With all due respect, congressman, you are a joke.  Man up, take your testosterone, and learn how to ARGUE the conservative case on marriage.  That means: no Bible-thumping and no bare assertions. And no more gushing about how much you love your son. 

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'The Wrong Side of History'

Marriage and Admiration

What makes for a good marriage?  It is not enough to like your spouse.  It is not enough to love her.  The partners must also admire one another.  There has to be some attribute  in your spouse that you don't find in yourself (or not in the same measure) and that you aspire to possess or possess more fully.  Must I add that we are not talking mainly about physical attributes?

What is admiration?

To love is not to admire.  If God exists, he loves us.  But he certainly doesn't admire us.  For what does he lack?  He doesn't aspire to possess any attribute that we have and that he lacks.  Closer to the ground, one can easily love a sentient being, whether animal or human, without admiration. 

To value is not to admire.  Prudence is a valuable attribute; so if you are prudent, I will value you in respect of your prudence; but if I am as prudent as you, then I don't admire you in respect of your prudence.  Admiration is for attributes the admirer does not possess, or does not possess in the measure the admired possesses them.

To respect is not to admire.  I can and ethically must respect the rights of those who are inferior to me in respect of admirable attributes.

My suggestion, then, is that a necessary though not sufficient condition of a good marriage is that it be a two-membered mutual admiration society.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marital Advice

Before you even think of getting married, make sure you have plenty of Money.  Then Shop Around.  Consider who will become your Mother-in-Law.  If you want to be happy,  don't worry too much about physical beauty.  If she has a cheatin' heart, hit the road, Jack.

But then again you might be better off without a wife.

I Married an Animal!

You are and you marry both a person and a member of a zoological species.  And so you must be concerned not only with person-to-person compatibility but with  animal-to-animal as well.  Can she stand your smell, and you hers?

A Test for Marital Compatibility: Travelling Together

I just heard Dennis Prager say on his nationally syndicated radio show that travelling  together is a good test for marital compatibility. Sage advice.

Long before I had heard of Prager I subjected my bride-to-be to such a test.  I got the idea from the delightful 1982 movie The Diner.  One of the guys who hung out at the diner tested for marital suitability by administering a football quiz to his fiance.  That gave me the idea of taking my future wife on a cross-country trip from Cleveland, Ohio to Los Angeles, California in my Volkswagen bus.  This was not a camper bus, but a stripped-down model, so the amenities were meager-to-nonexistent.  I threw a mattress in the back, made some curtains, and hit the road.  That was in the summer of '82. The soundtrack from The Diner was one of the tapes we listened to on the way. I recall reading the Stephen King novel Cujo about the dog from hell when my inamorata drove.

We slept mainly at rest stops.  I had an old .38 Special with me for protection, which fortunately proved unnecessary.  What did we do for showers?  I don't think we took any.  We cleaned up at the rest stop facilities like true vagabundos and moved on.

One dark and starry night I pulled off Interstate 10 in  some desolate stretch of the Mojave desert. Wifey-to-be was scared but it was a memorable moonless star-studded night.  We made it to L. A., saw family and friends, then headed up old U. S. 395 along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada to Bishop, Cal,  where we visited some more of my people, then north to Reno, Nevada where we hooked up with I-80 and  pointed the old bus East.

Dear one took the rigors of that  trip 30 years ago like a trouper, and passed the test with flying colors.  We got married the following summer and remain happily married 29 summers later.

When I told the story to a feminazi some years back she gave me a hard and disapproving look.  She didn't like that I imposed a marital compatibility test upon my lady love.  Bitch!  So here's another bit of free and friendly advice. Marry an angel, never a bitch.  Life's enough of a bitch. You don't need to marry one.  Does your belllicosity need an outlet?  Fight outside the home.  Home should be an oasis of peace and tranquillity.

So once again I agree with Prager.  Check her or him out on the road before heading for the altar. 

An Ideal Spouse

My opinion of Maureen Dodd went up a notch when I read this NYT column in which she quotes a Catholic priest.  He proffers good advice about marriage one piece of which is:

     Don't marry a problem character thinking you will change him.
 
Excellent advice, Schopenhauerian advice. You will remember his riff on the unalterability of character. It is true as a general rule: people do not change. What you are characterologically at twenty you are for life. If you catch your inamorata lying to you or engaging in any sort of duplicity, know that you have been vouchsafed an insight into an underlying mendacity that will manifest itself time and time again. If one time she racks up a credit card bill that she cannot pay in full at the end of the month, she will do it a thousand times. And so on down the line. Enter into matrimony with such a person if you must, but do it with eyes open and thoughts clear.

My wife has a wide range of virtues and no vices to speak of. But in point of punctuality, she falls down. I am by contrast punctual to a fault. So 29 years ago I tried to change her, to make her punctual like me, but soon realized my folly and changed myself instead. I simply gave up making precise dates with her, rather than courting vexation at her nonshowing at appointed exact times. Instead of: Meet me at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth at the stroke of high noon, this: I'll be at the Sufficient Grounds coffee house from 2 PM on writing and playing chess; fall by when you get a chance.

I also realized that part of her being such a sweet and agreeable person is her not being hung up on precision.  And I furthermore bore in mind Plato's point in the Symposium, namely, and to put it in my own way, that a partner should be a complement, not a copy.

As a rule of thumb: You can't change others, but you can change yourself. And you should. A bit more precisely: character is largely invariant but attitude admits of adjustment.  

The Marriage Killer

My angelic wife doesn't nag, so I don't have this problem.  But you might.  She doesn't nag, but she becomes inordinately happy when I do any work around the house.  Curiously irrational but delightful nonetheless.  Women are unduly attuned to the values of domestic order and cleanliness.  Not that these aren't values; but in a sound axiological hierarchy they must be assigned a position well below the values of, say, playing chess and writing philosophy, hiking and biking, acquiring and reading more books, building bookshelves to house them . . . .

Does a Full-Time Homemaker Swap Her Mind for a Mop?

Dennis Prager's latest column.  It put me in mind of Lydia McGrew. 

Al-Ghazzali on Choosing a Wife

Here are the attributes al-Ghazzali recommends seeking in a prospective wife. (Alchemy of Happiness, p. 96 ff.)

1. Chastity
2. Good disposition
3. Beauty ("See a woman before marrying her.")
4. The sum paid by the husband should be moderate
5. She should not be barren
6. Of good stock
7. Not previously married
8. Not too nearly related to her husband.

The importance of #3 is contested, however, by Jimmy Soul inter alia.   Otherwise, it is pretty good advice.

For My Divorced Friends

A little poem by Dorothy Parker:

Comment
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania. 

(From the front matter of Joseph Epstein, Divorced in America:
Marriage in an Age of Possibility, E. P. Dutton, 1974.)

Thoughts on Marriage

Dennis Prager and Michael Medved are my favorite AM band talk jocks. Both intelligent and wise, they raise the level of the general culture unlike toxin-merchants such as Howard Stern who lower it. He's no star in my firmament. Prager and Medved know that they have a moral obligation not to add to the cultural pollution. And they have the intellect and good sense to make a positive contribution. Intellect is important, but wisdom and good judgment are even more important.  Rare commodities these, not to be found on the Left with its adolescent querulousness, snarkiness, and the mindless incantation of the SIXHIRB litany:  sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted. (That particular list from Prager.)

But my topic is marriage.

Prager a while back cited respect and liking as two of the factors most important for a successful marriage. He placed love much lower on the list. Prager's remark struck me as astute. Do you like this person? Can you put up with her morning and night through good times and bad? Do you respect this person? These are important questions to ask before doing something rash. The nature of her endowments fore and aft will no doubt come into consideration, and ought to. But leave that for later in the logical, if not the temporal, order of considerations. A wise man knows which of his heads is for thinking, and which for linking. He thinks with the big one.

Brain, heart, penis/vagina, in that (logical) order. I trust my meaning is clear.

It helps if one can admire one's partner for attributes and skills one does not possess oneself. Marriage is a quest for completion, for the other half with which to make a whole, to cop a riff from Plato's Symposium. In a good marriage, the partners do not compete with one another, they complete one another. One does well to consider whether it is wise to marry someone in the same line of work. Would I want to be married to a female equivalent of myself? I need completion, not duplication.  One of me is enough.

Nietzsche somewhere says that marriage is a long conversation.  But how would he know?  Marriage is better described as a long wordless understanding.  It's deeper than words.  In any case you will be talked out soon enough.  So there had better be something deeper for the relation to rest upon.

There must be both sameness and difference. Sameness for compatibility, difference for complementarity. But here is the hard part: the ways in which the partners are similar must be conducive to their getting along, and the ways in which they are different must also be conducive to their getting along.

Example. Don't marry someone with different views about money. If you are frugal, you would be insane to marry a person who thinks of Nirvana as a charge card with an unlimited line of credit. But if you are sharp about money, you may want to think twice about marrying someone who is also sharp about it, for you may come into conflict on how best to save and invest, spend and lend. The sameness and the difference must be balanced. The partners need to have the same general view about money, but one of the partners should keep the books, leaving the other to perform tasks more suitable for him or her. There will of course be exceptions to this rule of thumb.

Not Uxorious, but Appreciative

Having paid tribute to WD-40, the least I can do is pay tribute, once again, to my wife. She may not be a solvent, but she contributes mightily to my being solvent.

As for marriage, it is a good thing if one enters into it for the right reasons, at the right time, and after due consideration. Bear in mind that every man has two heads. The big one is for thinking, the little one for linking. Understand their offices and respective spheres of operation. To cerebrate with the organ of copulation is Clintonian and not conducive unto happiness. Even in the question of marriage, the big head must be the ruling element.