Weeds in the Garden of Moral Life

When I returned, about a week and half ago, from my summer travels, a restorative period of reconnecting face to face with friends and family, it was no surprise to find the little garden I'd cleared and planted with herbs, strawberries, and peppers , now covered over with weeds, invaded and seemingly conquered at every available inch of dirt.  After all, I basically abandoned the planted plot not only to the elements of sun, rain, wind, but also to encroachments by other plants seeded within the soil, imperfectly rooted out previously, or straying past the border of bricks.  Given the garden's diminutive scale, thoroughly weeding it anew was thankfully just a matter of an afternoon's effort -- but careful, attentive work, for the weeds had been allowed to grow, as is their wont, not only over, not only within, but intertwined with the other plants.

Culling crabgrass, bugle-weed, and other invasive species out from patches of strawberry, thyme, or rosemary, demands a gardener's eye, discerning patterns of leaf, stalk, and shoot from each other, and hands that follow, gently, teasingly until the moment for pulling, separating out the good from the bad, the desirable from that which desires to choke and supplant it.  As the hours passed, more and more soil cleared of green, except for the plants originally intended for those spots, similitudes between gardening, the husbandry of soil and seed, and the processes of moral life, practice, development suggested themselves to me, tangibly, tactilely, experimentally, as much as in concept and language.  Gardening -- like related activities of landclearing and trailblazing, berry-picking and foraging, finding and transplanting plants -- can easily turn into merely utilitarian, practical activity, but it also just as much admits room, and conduces to a readiness, for contemplation.

Boasting, Desire, and Truth about Oneself

Once again, the always expanding human capacities of natural science and technology, coupled with the queries and questions of psychologists (and other social scientists) reopen questions long ago addressed, thought not entirely resolved -- by those working in the older humanistic disciplines, particularly philosophy and theology.  This time, the news about the results and interpretation of brain scans and surveys have to do with an eminently human preoccupation -- talking about ourselves.  Apparently, talking about oneself -- that's the way the majority of the stories run -- actives the same pleasure centers in the brain as other activities, for instance  having sex.

A study by Harvard researchers concludes that found written or verbal expression about oneself -- "self-disclosure" holds “intrinsic value” for the person engaging in it, providing pleasure to them.  The study got reported, along with a lot of very interesting speculation naturally flowing from the topic, in the Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal among other places, and then spread through the internet.  Interestingly, sites and networks have highlighted different aspects of the study and its implications, some focusing on the written (generally social media) type of expression, others on self-expression in verbal communication. The tone of many has been along the lines of more or less positive "aha!  well, that's no surprise, but glad we know it now," but there have been some exceptions, for instance, Shouts From The Abyss' interpretation of the study as bearing on a phenomenon of "conversational masturbation."  On the other extreme would be the Royal Society for Public Health's conclusion that talking about oneself is a vital component of one's well being.   So, what should we make of this new research?

Anselm, Justice, and Virtue

Yesterday, I gave a guest lecture on St. Anselm's moral theory in a colleague's Medieval Philosophy class, introducing his students to some Anselmian themes beyond the "ontological argument" they recalled from their earlier Intro to Philosophy classes.  Central among those was Anselm's understanding of justice -- or the variety of goodness distinctive to humans and other rational beings -- as rectitude or uprightness of will.

What is particularly interesting about Anselm's examination of this idea -- which he plays with throughout his works, progressively developing a more and more complex picture of moral goodness and evil -- is that early on he articulates this standard of rectitude not simply in terms of the will conforming to some standards, ideals, or rules, but in a more reflexive manner.  Justice is rectitude of will kept for its own sake (rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata).

Teaching (Virtue) Ethics: Goods and Practical Reasoning

In an earlier post, I provided a peek into some of the introductory materials I provide my face-to-face or online students currently taking Ethics classes with me through Marist College.  This is the really basic, cover-in-the-first-week kind of stuff, but one of the things I like most about the discipline and the texts of Ethics is that you can keep going back to these key distinctions, concepts, objects and experiences -- because moral life is, after all rooted in the rest of our lives, and provides, you might say, the dimension without which that life would be less than human, impoverished in intelligibility, lacking a certain depth of meaning.

To push the metaphor -- which like other analogies will of course eventually exhibit its disappointing limits --  of dimension and depth, I suggest that Ethics or Moral Theory ( a great deal of which gets done outside of academic philosophy, by the way) provides the third dimension to what would otherwise be only two-dimensional, flat, restricted by its own planarity.  That not to say that everything needs to have and exhibit -- even have tacked upon it -- such a dimension of depth.  some things, like blueprints, are perfectly fine in two dimensions.  Paintings, photographs, even cartoons, though -- don't they possess the illusion of depth?  Yes -- by relying on a transfer from experienced depth and perspective -- which they don't posses but which they can mimetically evoke or represent precisely because of our experiences of that dimension in other settings.  Studying Ethics explicitly, deliberately, systematically, means devoting sustained attention -- alas for all too short an apprenticeship -- to the contours, the concealments, the criteria, even in some cases the charlatanry of those who work and warp and weft in this vital dimension of human experience. 

Neophilia: Curiosity by Another Name?

I've been meaning to comment on a New York Times piece, What’s New? Exuberance for Novelty Has Benefits, since I first saw it, since it touches on a matter that has been explored, invoked, exhibited and exemplified, condemned and praised -- whether in narrational passages, speeches, philosophical dialogues, proverbial exchanges, compilations of reflections upon life and wisdom:  Curiosity, the desire not only to know, to connect, to uncover, but also in a certain sense to contrast, to find, experience, or produce the novel.  Researchers are reevaluating and nuancing their assessment of a trait upon which they'd previously taken a more categorically negative stance, "novelty-seeking, a personality trait long associated with trouble."

Originally, employing methods focusing on genetics and the brain:

they linked this trait with problems like attention deficit disorder, compulsive spending and gambling, alcoholism, drug abuse and criminal behavior.

Now, though, after extensively tracking novelty-seekers, researchers are seeing the upside. In the right combination with other traits, it’s a crucial predictor of well-being.