what is to be thought?
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ity, victory, nobility, strength, beauty, and other goods. People are free to range among these goods, so these goods do not appear to be created arbitrarily or posited merely by the will. Ranging among them leaves plenty of room for argument (and even for difference) about which good is most essential or highest. At their noblest, free human beings strive to investigate these peaks of existence. Striving requires that we recognize the range of goods on which human beings are dependent and for which they aspire. Striving is common to diverse human beings, and deliberation consists in considering the world in relation to these goods. People are drawn to lives dedicated to pleasure, lives dedicated to honor, lives dedicated to practical arts, lives of moral excellence, political life, family life, lives of religious devotion, and philosophic life. These ways of life are not necessarily inconsistent with one another, nor are they necessarily opposed to one another. Either out of frustration at our inability to discover for certain which of these goods is the highest, truest, or best, or from a desire to expunge the goods associated with Christianity, modern thinkers embark on a project emphasizing independence and human creativity. Seeing man increasingly as a historical being, modern thinkers see human striving as a desire for sovereignty or autonomy. This aspiration is self-defeating, however. It is best to realize that our freedom is not so constrained, yet also constrained, by our concern for goodness or happiness. This view brings with it more quiescence about revolutionary change, because we desire to preserve the freedom of others to range among these goods to find their own. Marriage and family life are competitors among these human goods because they implicate one of the great, if also one of the greatly disputed, human goods: love. Lovers are dependent on a beloved, and unified family life necessarily entails a range of dependencies. Instead of denying that marriage and family life involve dependencies, I would acknowledge and embrace that reality. Family life entails the dependencies of love. More than a few feminist critics of marriage and family life put love in the dock as a “pivot of women’s oppression.”14 This is true in a sense and false in another. Love is “oppressive” (if that is the right word) or dependency making; it makes claims on our being; it involves changing our identity; it points to our lack of self-sufficiency. It is false, however, in that love’s chains are neither arbitrary social constructions, nor unchosen, nor unworthy of choosing. Love resembles a universal language; its experience knows no boundaries, nor is it consigned to a particular era. Marriage is founded in consent; it forms a loving, mutually dependent relation that supersedes the point of view of contract. Consent leads