Several decades ago I saw a TV show in which the marrying characters vowed to remain wed “for as long as you both may love.”
Which sounds okay until you realize they’re vowing to stay together as long as they feel like it. What is the point of such a vow? A vow is only meaningful if it binds you when you don’t feel like it.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Aristotle's Ethics has been abandoned.
Aristotle's wonderful Ethics should be taught, but it doesn't have any connection to the Bible ... So it isn't.
Go figure.
While normally a champion of individuality, I concede that it is by definition impossible to establish a sense of community among individuals focused entirely on themselves.
The Relativist's response to the question of Right and Wrong is that Right consists of those acts which do no harm to Self or others. Wrong is all else ... an argument which dispenses with the need for any external absolute.
But we know it doesn't work. Because Man has proven himself incapable of judging what causes harm to others -- and even to himself. We are all blinded by our own pride and ambitions, and work hard to justify those things that benefit us, whatever their cost to others.
Great post - thanks.
As a “mental health professional,” and as someone who took it upon himself over a several year period to study Aristotle in depth as an adult when I realized the gaping hole left by my education, I find the tenor and content of this article nicely done.
The vows are the marriage. Everything else in the marriage changes over time, but the vows remain. They are not even just the glue that holds the marriage together - they are the marriage.
The integrity and understanding that enables a person to take the vows with the depth of clarity and resolution they require are seldom present in the young these days, and were probably only ever instilled in the young quite infrequently even the the golden ages of history.
However, with so very little societal emphasis on virtue in this era of unbridled narcissism, and indeed with an active antipathy towards virtue pressuring people from all sides, the process of ethical maturation that might lead to keeping the vows through the vicissitudes and temptations of life is all too frequently eroded and undermined.
To listen carefully to my patients, and to the vows taken and explained at the numerous weddings I’ve attended over the years, and to the words of friends and neighbors long married, and to the rich layers of thoughts and feelings that form my own mental landscape - these have impressed upon me the centrality and power and sacredness of the institution of marriage, and of the vows taken and hopefully kept. It is one of the very few recipes in life for achieving that elusive goal that our society has so cheapened with poor imitations: happiness. Happiness of the most true and deep variety.
The tax breaks for marriage and children should be dissolved. Those breaks cause an undue burden on those who are neither married or have children.
The same with the subsidy to homeowners.
All are clear violations of the 14th Amendment.