Should Stoics Be Concerned About Others?

Over the course of Stoic Week, I created a sequence of seven videos, four of which focused on discussions of key Stoic doctrines in the works of the Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, Cicero (who was not himself a Stoic, but who did admit himself attracted to a number of their doctrines, particularly in the field of Ethics.  On one of those videos, one of my interlocutors - a very bright, young South African student and blogger, Marc Smit asked me a very important question.

I feel that Stoicism does offer relevant ideas for me as individual, in the sense that I can apply it to my own thoughts, feelings or actions bearing on things that happen to me, but how do I respond to these things when then happen to others, notably friends or loved ones?

What Does Gratitude Require?

There's a marked tendency to talk a lot about "gratitude" these days.  In fact, usually springboarding off an oft-quoted passage by Cicero, namely that "gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues, but the parent of them" -- and then never engaging with Cicero's thought again after that -- there's even quite a lot of buzz about gratitude in terms of virtue ethics, or at least what we might call "virtue-lite morality."  There's also a rising and somewhat paradoxical tendency to focus on the positive effects of gratitude on the life, the attitude, even the physical health of the grateful person.

I wonder myself at times whether we really ought to include "gratitude" among the virtues, or whether --  as I've argued elsewhere about forgiveness -- we ought instead better regard it as something connected with and flowing from virtues, but not actually a virtue in its own right.  That's a topic on which I admittedly need to do more thinking.  But, one thing I have been reflecting upon quite a bit lately, is what gratitude ought to look like.  Or, you might say, how far it ought to extend in attitude and action, if it is really to be gratitude.

A Few Reflections on Gratitude

Another Thanksgiving day has come and gone,bringing in its wake postings and platitudes, and occasionally deeper reflections and expressions of gratitude, the disposition, emotion, or attitude inextricably involved with thanks.  Thankfulness and giving thanks are important, but often overlooked, matters for ethics, a soon-or-later necessary dimension of any sustained, common, well-oriented moral life. Why do we discuss it as infrequently as we do in my field, moral theory?

I suspect for many of the same reasons it's not all that much more often discussed specifically, thematically, whether we look to other academic or professional disciplines,  or turn our gaze upon the broader spheres of ordinary activity -- we've got so much else to focus on, attend to, and talk about together.  Time runs out, seemingly more quickly each passing year -- and so paradoxically, we have to cut out and dedicate a portion of that ever-scarcer resource in order to "make the time" for giving thanks, let alone thinking about, meditating upon, pondering gratitude.  And yet, if we pay attention, it is not too difficult to discover, even stumble across philosopher and theologians who did examine and analyze this distinctively human attitude, affect, and activity.

Boethius on Mistaken Views of Happiness (part 1 of 2)

One of the essays I assign my Ethics students at the beginning of the semester is Alasdair MacIntyre's Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and Goods (included in the Macintyre Reader). One reason I use that short piece is that it introduces an important theme, the idea that we are all, whether we realize it or not, involved in the processes of asking and answering certain fundamental questions:

. . . on an Aristotelian view, the questions posed by the moral philosopher and the questions posed by the plain person are to a certain degree inseparable.  And it is with questions that each begins, for each is engaged in enquiry, the plain person often unsystematically asking"What is my good?" and "What actions will achieve it?" and the moral philosopher systematically enquiring "What is the good for human beings?" and "what kind of actions will achieve the good?"  Any persistent attempt to answer either of these sets of questions soon leads to asking the other.

In MacIntyre's view -- and I think he's right -- we are all of us committed to one or another -- some more some less consistently -- to one moral theory or another, whether explicitly, consciously, deliberately so, or whether only implicitly, accepting it perhaps as the default, following a trajectory of desire we have failed, avoided, or even not had the opportunity to think out.  When we see these sorts of moral matters from a different perspective, we imaginatively place ourselves in the perspective of another, rival moral theory.  When we leave one perspective behind and adopt another -- whether by a gradual process or a sudden conversions -- we shift our allegiance from one moral theory to another.

Cultivating Virtues: Snapshots of Students

One of the shorter assignments my students tackled this semester required them to carry out some reflection on virtues and vices in their own lives and characters, aided by study of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics (as well as many other discussions of virtue, vice, and dispositions earlier in the semester), building on some of our in-class lectures and discussions (for example, this one, this one, and this one).  I asked them to consider three questions:

• Which of the virtues which Aristotle discusses do you think you most fully possess?  Explain why Aristotle would say you do possess that virtue.  
• Which of the virtues Aristotle discusses do you think you most need to work on at the present time?  Why?
• Do you fit the descriptions of any of the vices?  Which ones? 

As I read through the responses of 41 students, I started to see some interesting patterns developing, and I was struck by the self-disclosure, reflective insight, and honest appraisals many of the students put down on paper.

Ethics Course Materials: Aristotle on Justice

A few entries back (here and here), I posted some materials I'd developed and uploaded into the course management system of which I make heavy use for both my online and my face-to-face Ethics classes.  This semester, because of all the work I'd put into creating modules on the specific lessons, texts, ideas, and thinkers last semester, much of what I've been doing has been tweaking and improving the modules I'd already designed. 

Still, there was some room for creating a few new modules from the ground up -- either filling in gaps I'd left last semester, or leading my students through texts newly added this semester.  One of those, which I teach is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics book 5 -- the place where he most intensely and intensively examines the virtue of Justice and its corresponding vice of Injustice -- and I thought it might be of some interest or value to share. So, here are -- admittedly a bit longer than my usual posts -- portions of that module:

Courage and Consolation

Earlier today, I was prompted to reflection on some material I've read and studied, taught and written upon, for years without ever really pulling back on the particular corner, turning over the ground, putting the grist into the mind's mill.  In one of my online classes, a student who suffered a terrible and harrowing experience, during the course of which their (I'm using the third person plural deliberately here) own actions -- and perhaps luck, chance, or grace -- brought them through with minor injuries, revealed this to the class, as well as what troubled that student even more:  Not all of their friends had been so fortunate.  Reading Sartre and thinking about our responsibility for who we make ourselves got the student thinking, remembering, raising feelings still not entirely processed through back to the fore, leaving them "morally rattled."

Fairly understandably, none of the other students commented on their classmate's post.  It's difficult to know how to respond to such personal revelations, particularly at the beginning of a class, when perhaps one has but the briefest of acquaintance with one's fellow learners.  I tend to think that in these sorts of situations the young find themselves more at a loss, resourcesless than do their elders -- though there are many very insightful, empathetic younger people and enough clueless older people to render that generalization not entirely reliable.  I wrote the student privately, offering condolences, a bit of my own experience, and a few suggestions about how the class and our subject matters might provide some resources for working things through.  Then I commented publicly.

In my public post, I praised the student's decision to write about the matter as "prudent," but in my private remarks, I invoked a different virtue: courage.  What was particularly striking to me was that the student's reply, thanking me for not leaving their post just hanging out there as well as for what I'd written in private, also mentioned and lauded courage, this time on my part.  Does that language, that concept, that virtue, fit this sort of situation?

Acedia, the Internet, and Social Media

A younger friend and colleague of mine recently decided to close his Facebook account.  It's striking, isn't it, that such a decision can be the object and occasion of considerable reflection?  Would that have been conceivable ten years ago -- leaving a virtual social network and its interactions behind?  Certainly conceivable, but rather within the realm of speculative fiction. And now, it's a practically conceivable, even for some pressing matter, no longer just a sheer possibility, but a thought-over necessity at times.

His case and process of decision-making -- narrated in an insightful and thought-provoking entry on his blog The Christian State of Life -- might be viewed as both entirely comprehensible and yet rather unique, off the beaten track of normality, divergently following a path less taken.  You see, he's a seminarian, in training and under discipline -- so, of course, he doesn't have the time, he's looking to higher things, living with one foot out of the secular world, detached from the worldly matters that we chatter about via the social media networks that seem to metastasize deeper and deeper into our lives, workplaces, relationships, perhaps even the cycle of liturgy and prayer.

Change of Plans

I've let Virtue Ethics Digest sit fallow over more than one winter month, while I finished out my first semester teaching Ethics and Intro to Philosophy at a new (and better) institution, then journeyed out to the Midwest to vacation with my wife, my children, my family and hers -- all currently in the process of blending -- and afterwards threw myself into preparation for several sections of Ethics this semester, rethinking and reworking material, using the course management system to begin building an extensive online environment for our little community of moral enquiry.

The semester now in full swing, and my vacation from blogging stretched out about a few as is feasible, not to say reasonable or responsible, it's now time to simply carve out the time I've been meaning, planning, desiring -- but not actually choosing or following through on -- to start writing new entries for Virtue Ethics Digest and my other main blog Orexis Dianoētikē.

NPR: Dignity Therapy for the Dying, A Chance to Rewrite Life

Can telling the story of their lives help the dying?  Yes and no, which should come as little surprise, given how varied the situations, responses, desires, and lives of those who are dying turn out to be.  It depends very much on what we mean by “help,” what the process of telling the story of one’s life is intended to do, and how involved of a process the “telling” becomes.

Virtue Ethics, by the very structure of the actual moral theories that comprise that approach — going beyond merely holding that virtues (lasting developed habitual dispositions) are good things and vices bad, and even beyond shifting from evaluating actions alone to evaluating persons and their characters — understands and teaches that one of the key questions for Ethics is generically “What is a good life?” and more specifically:  “What is a good life for me?”  “What is a good life for this or that person?”

Womens' Fashion, Mens' Sport, Goods -- but how good?

Prospero, one of the blog batches of commentators for the Economist, recently brought up several interesting points, in A Man’s Guide to a Woman’s Wardrobe.  One of these is that, although many would be tempted to write off sport and fashion as mere fluff, unworthy of the serious person, perhaps also vestiges of  gender roles and their assigned provinces, they are indeed goods — or really, whole ranges of interconnected and distinctive goods:

…  fashion is to many women what sport is to many men: a pastime, a passion, a shared language, a form of self-definition, and a temporary escape from the opposite sex, all rolled into one deeply satisfying whole.