Abstract

The following little paper has a rather large scope. No particular issue or problem has occasioned this text; rather, it presents a mini-treatise on love, marriage, and parenting. The attempted method is quasi-Hegelian: to allow one topic to engender a further topic, and this in turn to engender a third, etc., while avoiding at any stage anticipations of later topics. If reasoning in accordance with this dialectical method is successful, the result is a system of topics, but it is contingent whether or not these topics can be employed as knowledge of the historical world. Indeed, some of the topics considered below cannot be employed descriptively under present historical conditions. Thus, those who would execute this dialectical project must renounce any claim that the system of topics has more than a contingent relation to knowledge, but it would be utter misology to denigrate this project merely because it requires this renunciation.