Short Piece In The Stoic - A Time to Practice Stoic Virtues

Here's my short piece recently published in The Stoic.  I plan to expand it and publish that version in my Medium publishing site in the next week or so.  For the time being, here's the current version.

Widespread Shutdowns 

At the time that I write this, midway through March, responses to COVID19 have shut down a good part of Milwaukee. As in many other places, students have been sent home from schools, colleges, and universities and classes have shifted online. Concerts and sporting events have been cancelled. Libraries, community centers, health clubs, even courthouses have been closed. Many office buildings have emptied, allowing employees to work from home.

Stores sold out of foodstuffs, cleaning items, and toilet paper, and reduced their hours. Bars, restaurants, and cafes began to close. We hosted the last show of our community radio station, WXRW, which then closed until the crisis ends. Social distancing and self-quarantining have become the order of the day for many.

Stoic Guidance 

One of Stoicism’s benefits for its practitioners is providing a systematic and consistent approach to changing conditions and challenges of life. So in times marked by illness, fear, and uncertainty, it provides us with a host of useful responses and reminders.

Epictetus articulated one of those in telling us in Enchiridion 10 that whatever we encounter, we can ask ourselves what capacities we have to deal with it, and we can employ those capacities in order not to simply respond to appearances or impressions, but to behave in a more rational way. Among the capacities that Epictetus names are self-control, fortitude, and patience, each of which is among the virtues.

We should ask ourselves: what capacities do we need in our own present situation? During this COVID-19 crisis, each of the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism is needed in specific ways, helping us deal properly with the challenges the virus poses. And not just the virus itself, but also the unusual conditions it imposes upon us, the reactions of other people, and our own emotional responses to all of these.

Wisdom 

Wisdom or prudence indicates to us what we ought or ought not do, informs our decision-making, and helps us maintain a sense of proportion. Being prudent in the time of COVID-19 means maintaining “information hygiene,” acquiring genuine and reliable information and sticking with it, drawing the right inferences from it, and resisting temptations to spread misinformation.

Justice 

Justice is another needed virtue. For the Stoics, justice is not just a matter of following the right rules, fulfilling commitments, or treating people fairly—for instance not engaging in hoarding resources, whether out of fear or greed. It equally includes kindness towards others, going beyond merely what is expected of one to actively help others in need. Looking in on one’s neighbors, while maintaining requisite distance, for example.

Temperance 

Temperance is needed as well. Living on one’s own, in voluntary quarantine, pulled out of the fabric of one’s routines and interactions requires exercising some self-control, moderation, not just frittering one’s time away, or emotionally eating through one’s stocks.

Fortitude 

And that leads us to fortitude. As Cicero points out in On Duties, while fortitude does involve choosing to do what is right, needed, or noble in the face of fear, it applies to other emotions like anger, sadness, disgust, or desire as well. Virtue is not just a temporary fix We ought to remind ourselves about the need for these virtues not just during this crisis, but after it ends, for the rest of our lives.

One Post Per Day: A Modest Commitment for National Novel Writing Month

I've never participated in National Novel Writing Month myself, but since I'm one of the hosts for Milwaukee's chapter of Shut Up And Write, I've heard plenty about it from people who have.  I'm not sure I've got a novel in me at all, let along one that I could successfully get out in draft form over the course of a month! 

That goes even more for this November, during which I'm teaching 7 classes at 4 different institutions, editing Stoicism Today, creating a host of new video content, and doing consulting, philosophical counseling, and tutorial work with more than a dozen clients.  But I did see a cool - and much more do-able - way of getting into the spirit of the month discussed by one of my Twitter connections.

Publishing at least one blog post per day in this, my main blog - that's certainly feasible, so long as I make sure to set a bit of time aside for it.  I'd intended to use this forum as a place to set down thoughts that could be further developed into longer-form essays elsewhere.  I also use it to curate and publicize some of the video and podcast work I do.  Since we've also got some cool events coming up this month - a video premiere, a chance to vote about the Worlds of Speculative Fiction series, and some Philosophy Pop-Ups, there's plenty to write about it.  It's just a matter of sticking to it and getting the posts written.

So, starting today, that's what I'm pledging to do - one post per day.  This is the first for November.  27 more to come!

Long Post Sum-Up: Don't Give Time to Jerks

As I move Orexis Dianoētikē away from longer essays, I'm shifting that writing activity to other platforms.  

These include Medium, where I published a post earlier today, Don’t Give Them Time.  It's the first in what will be a series of posts on dealing with (you almost think) deliberately difficult, and downright jerkish people in the online world.

Since this blog is now intended for updates and shorter pieces, what I'll do when I publish a longer piece is either summarize or excerpt from it here.  So, here's a passage from the crux of the essay.

[T]his is just the start of my setting down my thoughts about these matters, so I haven’t got some comprehensive, systematically worked out, debated-with-the-decent take on all of this. I do, however, have one main insight about how to handle the contentious, the tendentious, the “debate me bro!” types. 

Jerks don’t get time. 

Or if they do get time, it’s the minimum possible. 

When they do get it, time allotted to them comes after others get attended to.

The basic idea is that all too often, those of us who are devoted to online engagement in substantive conversations get suckered into the idea that we somehow owe our time (and thought, and attention, and emotions, and. . . ) to anyone who happens to come along. 

We don't.  And time is a resource that not only is always in short supply, but that we ought to devote to those who deserve it more than online jerks.  I've been making that a practice, and I'm finding it quite a useful strategy for properly using my time.

Changing Focus and Format Here

I started this blog nearly a decade ago.  Originally, it was to be a place for me to set down my thoughts in a looser and more unfinished format than my academic writing.  Then it became one of several different blogs.  As of late, I've published the occasional long blog piece - when I find the time to write it! - in between updates about series of videos and podcast episodes.

Today, as I was thinking about other virtual locations where I either already write or intend to start writing, I realized that I could be using this blog in a rather different way  Musing about how I might  address some themes and problems coming up over and over in my student papers on the Meno - as I was grading them just earlier - brought me to a resolution about Orexis Dianoētikē.

Going forward, I am going to use this space for short pieces on topics I'm particularly interested in raising, though perhaps not resolving.  A sort of virtual notepad, if you like.  I'll also be using it for sketching out projects, announcing events, posting video or podcast episode series, calling attention to guest appearances and talks, and summarizing and linking to my longer-form writings in other virtual locations.

You can expect to see much more frequent posting here, but (most of the time) rather shorter entries.  Maybe if I get ambitious enough, I'll tinker with the appearance and layout of the blog as well. 

Over 450 Videos in the Philosophy Core Concept Series

Since the beginning of the semester, I have been quite simply swamped with work!  In addition to teaching 5 different courses at 4 different academic institutions, I had my usual duties as editor of Stoicism Today - including Stoicon 2018 and Stoic Week - as well as a heavy load of speaking, meetings with clients, and consulting work.  I did manage to get some video production in there as well.

One type of video I've been routinely creating are "Philosophy Core Concepts".  These are short (10-25 minute) discussions of key ideas, arguments, or distinctions made by major philosophical thinkers.  They span the gamut from ancient philosophy down to 20th century thinkers (check out the list below).  I've produced quite a few of these.  Today, I took a look at the playlist, to see how many I'd done so far.

Over 450!  That's the number of the ones I've publicly released (my Patreon supporters get an early look at these videos before the general public does).  In fact, we hit number 451 today with the latest release, discussing the Epicurean distinction between mental and bodily pleasures.  So I thought I'd step back a bit, reflect, and write a few things about that video series (which I think will likely pass 500 videos early next year!)

As A Father of a Daughter

For several years, I've been observing an interesting dynamic take place when matters of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and other matters involving wrongs being done to women are discussed.  Many men weigh in, making clear that they are against all of that, but then they say or write the fateful phrase.

As a father of a daughter, I don't want to see her suffer. . . 

Those words - and others like them - have crystalized into something like a moral kidney stone, a source of considerable pain and aggravation.  Writing them by way of support of women inevitably draws irritated, offended, and occasionally mocking responses.  These responses don't come from the quarters one would expect - from people who claim, for example, that harassing women in the workplace is just fine, or that what others construe as "harassment" isn't actually such, or that offenders ought to get a pass - those sorts of positions. 

Instead the criticisms of these men come primarily from women who would presumably welcome allies supporting their struggles for equality, for recognition, for justice, but who instead view that identification - the father of a daughter - as evidencing the wrong sort of motivation for men lining up alongside women.

A Baker's Dozen of Interviews and Guest Appearances

I love doing interviews and putting in guest appearances, for several reasons.  Each new podcast, website, video series, or other venue that I go on expands my audience in some way.  That means that the ideas that I'm speaking about get a hearing from a wider range of people - and that's good.  It also adds potential new clients and opens up additional opportunities for the work I do, as a practical philosopher.  Going on someone else's show or site, and getting into conversations about what I do and what I'm passionate about, forces me to reexamine and improve my own skill-sets ass a communicator.

A good part of what I do involves articulating and applying resources culled from philosophy to common problems, issues, and challenges.  Some of that work focuses primarily on personal matters that impact not just academics, but also ordinary people and working professionals.  Other portions of that work bear upon institutions, organizations, and leadership.  So providing guest appearances and interviews - this is something that really struck home in the last few months - is really a natural extension of the work I'm already engaged in - putting philosophy into practice.

Since the start of 2017, I've done more than a dozen interviews or guest appearances - about a wide range of topics, issues, and philosophical ideas - appearing online in print, podcast, and video forms. I'm scheduled to go on several others later in the year, and just gave another interview yesterday with the New Acropolis. On that note, if you've got a podcast, platform, or site and would like to have me come on as a guest, reach out to me by email!

Philosophy Pop-Up Sessions

This month, I started holding a new type of online event - Philosophy Pop-Up sessions - for my viewers, subscribers, supporters, and any other sorts of fans of my work.  These are a bit experimental in nature, and we're still sorting out precisely how they're going to work.

What I had in mind was to go live and interact with the participants for about 30-40 minutes or so.  I thought I'd start by discussing a thinker or topic for a few minutes, and then see what questions or comments the viewers had for me.  As a perk for my Patreon supporters, I let them know at the start of the month when the Pop-Ups are coming up, and poll them about which thinkers and topics they'd like me to tackle.  Everybody else finds out that a Pop-Up is coming up through my various social media posts that very day that I run it - that's how it's a "pop-up" in the first place!

I'm using Facebook Live for one monthly session, and YouTube Live for the other monthly session.  There turns out to be a bit of a learning curve for both of those platforms - a bit more for the Facebook than the YouTube version.  Next time around, I should have both of those formats more or less down pat, and be ready to roll right out of the video gate!   I should add that, even though I do have the same broad topic for both sessions, what I specifically talk about - and of course the questions and comments I reply to - are entirely different from session to session.

Both of those formats do record the session, so that those who couldn't make them in the live versions can watch or listen to them if they like.  Here's the Facebook Live videorecording, where I started out by talking a bit about Heidegger and his attention to mood or affectivity:




And here's the YouTube Live videorecording - a session that went on quite a bit longer (a bit over an hour)!  In this one, I started out by talking about how we might apply Heidegger's conception of finitude to the very activity of reading philosophy.

 

Patreon Crowdfunding - Why I Created My Page

As some readers may already know, I recently made a Patreon page to support my work creating free high-quality philosophy content online.  The resources I've created - videos, blog posts, articles, handouts, even free courses, among others - have helped tens of thousands of people all over the world understand difficult philosophical ideas, thinkers, and texts.

That work demands considerable time, energy, and thought on my part - and I've been happy to devote all three of those over the last six years, not least because I see (and in many cases, read) how much of an impact resources I've developed and offered to the public for free have had on so many people's grades, minds, and even lives.

Actually, I can't take most of the credit for this impact on learners.  What allows me to create materials explaining philosophy to others is precisely the existence of those brilliant philosophers and rich texts that I focus upon!  Provided I do my own job well, it is really Plato, or Hegel, or Epictetus who is doing the heavy lifting  (as I've discussed in another post here).

Viewers, subscribers, and social media followers have been expressing gratitude for the work that I do, and some of them have been suggesting that I create a Patreon page to allow them to support that ongoing work in tangible ways.  So that's precisely what I've done - you can check it out here, or watch my video about it here.   If you enjoy my work or find it useful - and you want to give something back - or if you recognize the value it brings to many other people - and you want to help me continue and expand it - then you should consider becoming one of my Patreon supporters!

How Hard Is It To Find An Aristotelian Friend?

A thoughtful piece published last month in the Columbia Spectator, An Aristotelian Friend Is Hard To Find, brings up an issue about which I've often found myself engaged in not-entirely-satisfactory discussion:  the nature of friendship and the types of relationships.  I've taught Aristotle's classic treatment of friendship from book eight of the Nicomachean Ethics more times than I can easily tally up.  In my philosophical counseling practice - perhaps because so many people have encountered Aristotle's distinction - my clients also bring it up occasionally.

What seems to be the most problematic feature of his account for most people - and for good reasons that I'll explore below - is that the most primary and paradigmatic sort of friendship turns out to be quite rare, and requires a good bit of time and various factors coming together just right.  The other sorts of friendship, not quite so much deserving of the name, are much more common and easier to find.  So in terms of relationships, what is mediocre to decent to fairly good seems quite realizable, but what is really good to outstanding, while easy enough to imagine or conceive, appears extraordinarily difficult to realize.

The author of the piece is a young person, a college student, and she narrates and reflects upon the various kinds of relationships she has experienced amongst her fellow students in terms informed by Aristotle's distinction.  My own students have often been of the same age, as have some of the clients with whom I've worked through this distinction as they attempt to apply it within the framework of their own lives and relationships.  I've been mulling over Aristotle's theory of friendship since my own graduate school days - about two decades - and it seems like a fitting time to finally write out some of those ruminations here.

Can People Knowingly Do Wrong? Epictetus' View

When a person does something morally wrong or bad, does that person know what he or she is doing is wrong or bad?  This is one of those interesting questions in ethics and moral theory that seems very simple to ask and then turns out to be complicated to answer - at least if one wants to answer it well.  Easy, one-sided, simplistic answers are always an option, but nearly always turn out to be off-base and get in the way of doing the productive thinking that working out a more adequate answer makes possible.

I would say that, when we are focusing on Stoic philosophy, it's practically inevitable that this sort of question about motivation, reasoning, moral knowledge, and the good will arise.  We're right in the penultimate day of Stoic Week at present and in fact, one variant of this type of ethical puzzle did get brought up in a post in the Facebook Stoicism Group earlier today.  It was framed in terms of some categories that seem to be rather popular in moral discourse at present - sociopathy and psychopathy - but the general issue is a much broader one.

The question was put like this:  What would Stoics say about sociopaths or psychopaths who know what morality is, but still want to harm others?  And the answer, to start, is:  quite a bit.

One Sentence Summary on Aristotle and Anger

As the current editor of Stoicism Today, and a frequenter of various social media Stoicism-focused groups, I wind up wading into quite a few discussions bearing not only on Stoic philosophy, but on practical philosophy more generally, particularly when the conversation turns to two other matters that I do quite a bit of work on - Aristotelian philosophy, and the emotion of anger.

In the course of one of those discussions in the Facebook Stoicism Group, an interlocutor asked me if I could provide a one-sentence summary of Aristotle's position on anger.  If that was something easy to do, I would have done so right then and there.  But since it isn't I decided I'd put some thought into it and then provide an answer later.  And that's exactly what I'm doing now.

Aristotle's position on anger is that it is one of the most complex and distinctive of the human emotions, that it involves bodily, psychological, social, and moral dimensions, and that anger can and ought to be felt and acted upon in a number of right ways.

Half Hour Hegel Hits #100

One of the projects I started a bit over two years back - Half Hour Hegel - has crossed an important threshold.  The video lectures I've been creating, engaging in paragraph by paragraph commentary on G.W.F. Hegel's notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit, now number in the triple digits.

With video #100, we're now just at the beginning of a lengthy section of the work, Reason (the second-longest portion of the text). We've gone through the Preface, the Introduction, the Consciousness section, and the Self-Consciousness section (which includes the famous Master-Slave dialectic).  So, although we're still early in the project as a whole, there's a pretty substantive digital commentary publicly available - for free - to anyone who has access to an internet connection and YouTube.

There are, of course (and thankfully!) some engaged fans and supporters who financially underwrite some of the work involved, through the Patreon site I set up to crowdfund this effort (if you'd like to see what's involved in creating one of these videos, here's one that I created walking viewers through the process).

It's quite a massive commitment and undertaking, likely to take me at least another three years of hard work to see through to the very end.  But, it's not only a project I view as an enjoyable challenge, but also hope will provide a useful commentary that will assist people in studying Hegel for decades to come.

Our Move Back To Milwaukee

Three weeks ago, my wife and I (and our aging dogs) finished a long-planned move from Kingston, NY to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The trip took two very long days of driving, and some adventures (which you can hear about in this video, if you're so inclined), and moving everything into our new apartment took the entirety of a day as well.

Both Andi and I maintain some pretty heavy workloads, with a lot of deadlined projects -- and in her case, ten days away in California for her work -- so the process of unpacking and entirely settling in has taken considerably longer than we'd anticipated.  But, we are definitely back home!  I imagine that many of my readers, viewers, subscribers, and so forth, might be curious about why we moved to this particular Midwestern city, and what this move means for the future.  So there's probably no better place to write about that then here, in the longest-established of all of my blogs.

Starting the Master-Slave Dialectic

More than a year-and-a half-in, the Half-Hour Hegel project continues on strong!  I've just released the 74th installation in this video lecture series -- aimed at providing an innovative, open-access, digital commentary on G.W.F Hegel's first major work, the notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit.

I usually provide updates about the project and matters Hegel-related on the Half-Hour Hegel blog, but since the Master-Slave dialectic is a particularly popular selection from the work -- and that's what we're about to start --  I thought it would be worthwhile to mention it here in Orexis Dianoētikē.

If you're interested specifically in that section of the work here's the video lectures so far from the "Lordship and Bondage" portion:

• Phenomenology of Spirit, sec. 178-181
• Phenomenology of Spirit, sec. 182-184
• Phenomenology of Spirit, sec. 185-187  

If you'd like to see the other videos from the Self-Consciousness portion that the Master-Slave dialectic fits into, I suggest going over to this page on the Half-Hour Hegel blog, where all the video lectures are curated as soon as I shoot, edit, upload, and release them. 

Next week, you can expect to see videos specifically discussing the paragraphs in which Hegel elaborates the Master-Slave dialectic proper -- if you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, I'll announce their releases there, as well as on my YouTube channel, the Half Hour Hegel Patreon page, and the Half Hour Hegel blog.

Theology Matters Guest Appearance: The 1930s Christian Philosophy Debates

Taking up the standing invitation to come back on the weekly Theology Matters with the Pellews internet radio show, I made a guest appearance last week.  This time the topics under discussion between myself, the host, and callers were several of the main issues and ideas of my 2011 book, Reason Fulfilled by Revelation:  The Christian Philosophy Debates in France (published by Catholic University of America Press).

The notion, the problem, and the historical examples of Christian philosophy -- and those 1930s debates in particular -- are topics that I've greatly enjoyed researching, writing on, and talking about over the last decade.  So, I was quite happy to come back on the show specifically to discuss them.

For those who would like to listen to the audio of the show, minus the first portion (which featured a different guest) and the advertisements, I've put it into a podcast mp3 form, which you can download or listen to.

Half-Hour Hegel Series: Ready for Sense Certainty

For nearly a year, I've been engaged in a rather long-term and massive project which I don't think I've mentioned previously here on this blog -- the Half Hour Hegel video series.  By the end of December, I'd managed to make it to a minor milestone -- small in comparison, that is, to the amount of work that is still waiting to be done! -- I'd shot, edited, and released all of the videos for the Preface and the Introduction to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's early masterwork, the Phenomenology of Spirit.

The general idea behind the series (the motivations for which I'll discuss in more detail below) was that I would go through the entire text, paragraph by paragraph, first reading and then commenting on each paragraph (there's a from over 800 total) in turn.   The 70-odd-paragraph Preface -- famous for, among other things, asserting the impossibility of actually providing a preface to any genuinely philosophical work -- ended up taking me 31 total lectures -- around 15.5 hours.  The much shorter and more straightforward Introduction required just 7 lectures -- 3.5 hours. 

A New Critical Thinking Channel!

Last month, near the end of October, after a lot of planning and preparation, we opened the doors (metaphorically) to a new institution -- my second YouTube channel:  Critical Thinking, Logic, and Argumentation.  At present, we've released just eight 10-20 minute videos, all associated into a playlist on the informal fallacies.  But we've (and by that, I mean ReasonIO, consisting of Andi Sciacca and I) got some pretty big plans for the channel.

I picked informal fallacies to start with because they provide a relatively easy, and popular, set of topics. It's materials I've been teaching about for over a decade, and you can find discussions of these common failures in argumentation not only in Critical Thinking textbooks and classes, but in an entire range of disciplines -- Communication, English, Political Science, Civics, just to name a few.  So, focusing on them seemed like a great way to start the channel off -- provide something that students, lifelong learners, and even instructors might be able to make immediate use of.

The "Glimpses into Existence" Series So Far

Last night, I wrote a short post about a Simone de Beauvoir talk in one of my other more specialized blogs, Sadler's Existentialism Updates (SEU) -- an electronic forum originally intended for me to set down ideas about the online course on Existentialist Philosophy and Literature which I was (and admittedly still am) developing.  There's an interesting story to be told about that, of course, but it's already available over there on SEU, so no sense reposting it here -- at least not until I've actually got a course up and running.

Instead, I'd like to write a bit about the monthly series of talks on Existentialism -- the recent de Beauvoir talk being the tenth session -- that I've been providing at the Kingston Library this year.  We decided to call the talks "Glimpses into Existence," since each session would introduce a general, library-going (so educated and interested) audience to some of the main works, key ideas, and contributions, as well as the times and cultural setting of one important Existentialist thinker.  Devoting one-and-a-half to two hours of discussions to thinkers like Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Rilke, or Sartre -- well, that really is just a glimpse into their thoughts, writings, and lives.

Musings About Platonic Virtues and Forms

Last week, I traveled down to Felician College in northern New Jersey to give a talk, or more specifically, a current research workshop session, hosted by the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs -- "Just What is A Platonic Virtue?" (video of the talk and discussion is available here)

This is a topic about which I've been thinking for quite some time, and intending eventually to write an article, so given an opportunity to present my current reflections on the topic to an audience of interested philosophy majors and professional colleagues -- the latter of whom I could count on to know Plato's texts and key ideas well -- I was very happy to come down, lay out the problematic as I had come to envision it, and get some useful feedback from my peers.