Anti-Climacus

AN ANALOGY: Which comes to mind based on the following:

"I tend to think that most things are generally done better when done thoughtfully, and marriage is no exception."

I don't wish to dissent from this line: everything is better when done thoughtfully (I wouldn't be a philosophy major if I thought otherwise). However, the thoughtful has to intersect with the practical. To refer to my field of political science, we can all generally agree that people would do best to rationally consider their interests, and to weight them accordingly. There exists some evidence to support the thesis that this is how people decide--but people don't always do this. A good theory of voting (and democracy) therefore is one which can explain how people decide, but also push them towards making more rational analyses than they currently make.

Similarly, when it comes to marriage, a good theory (it seems to me) has to balance an explanation of the way people do decide to get married with the way people ought to decide to get married.

Extra note, for the benefit of anyone who may be reading: I don't mean to suggest that trying to find a "third way," as it were, is entirely without merit; rather, it's because I see a great deal of merit in trying to bring some rationality into the idea of marriage (here being an example of a lot of people saying things which wouldn't stand up under harsher scrutiny, I think) that I think the ideas involved have to be tested out to the farthest.