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Why do philosophers make unsuitable life partners? | Jonathan Wolff | The Guardian

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I t is said that on a trip to the US in the 1920s a German sociologist was astonished at the domestic arrangements of his American colleagues. How can you get any serious work done, he asked, without servants? The duties of a spouse and parent apparently do not sit well with deep thought and research, unless eased by paid help. This makes me wonder whether “parentism” might be a problem to consider alongside sexism, at least in certain branches of academia. The two often go together, but they need not. Consider the student parlour game of puzzling over who among the major philosophical thinkers had a conventional home life. In the ancient Greek world, Socrates was married with children but never got round to writing anything down. Plato, as far as we know, never married. Aristotle did marry, and one of his major works, The Nicomachean Ethics, is named after his son. But in later centuries the record is astonishing. St Augustine (“grant me chastity, but not yet”) fathered an illegitimat

‘Plato, as far as we know, never married.’ Photograph: Alamy View image in fullscreen ‘Plato, as far as we know, never married.’ Photograph: Alamy Education This article is more than 10 years old Why do philosophers make unsuitable life partners? This article is more than 10 years old Jonathan Wolff We need a new model of academic progression that does not involve working evenings and weekends Tue 15 Mar 2016 08.00 EDT Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 19.55 EST Share I t is said that on a trip to the US in the 1920s a German sociologist was astonished at the domestic arrangements of his Americ

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