Another Anselm Lecture

I'm finally getting around to posting this here in Orexis Dianoētikē -- I can plausibly plead as an excuse  the pressures imposed by (attempting) solid work in my ongoing classes -- a recent lecture I've given on Saint Anselm of Canterbury. 

This particular talk, with some very lively Q & A at the end, comes from the recent conference focused on the question "Must Morality Be Grounded Upon God," hosted by the Franciscan University of Steubenville (incidentally -- and this is entirely off topic -- incorporating the name of one of my long-time heroes, the Baron Von Steuben, drillmaster to the budding Continental Army during our American Revolution).



In this talk, I answer the question structuring the conference with some typically Anselmian, "let's make some distinctions. . .  and then Yes. . .  and No" -- but more Yes than No in Anselm's case.

I'm not entirely happy with the shape of the paper, some I'm loath to upload it into my usual channels like Academia.edu or GoogleDrive -- once I've reworked it, added all the references it need, and I'm satisfied with it, I'll definitely post a copy for public viewing.

There's a reason I rather tongue-in-cheek call this post "another Anselm lecture" -- I've given quite a few of them over the last five years.  Here's a representative sampling:

• A Personalist Aspect of Saint Anselm's Metaphysics
• Non Modo Verbis Sed Et Verberibus: Saint Anselm on Punishment, Violence and Coercion
• What Kind of Moral Theory Does St. Anselm Hold? 
• Freedom, Inclinations of the Will, and Virtue in Anselm’s Moral Theory 
• A Perfectly Simple God and Our Complicated Lives: The 2008 Saint Anselm Lecture 
• Justice as a Degree of Ontological Dignity: An Anselmian Problematic and Solution

All of these are supposed in one way or another to feed into the book project I started years back, specifically devoted to systematically reconstructing and setting out Anselm's moral theory.  Although I've written several chapters, work on that particular project moves slower than I'd like.  But, that -- as well as additional work on translating the De Similitudinibus and the Dicta Anselmi -- are matters to which I plan to give much attention this coming summer and fall.

Happy Birthday, Georg W. F. Hegel

Today marks what would be the 242nd birthday of one of my absolutely favorite philosophers, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, best known in our era for his early work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, but also an extraordinarily productive thinker, lecturer, and writer. He worked out two massively dense, complex, and rich Logics -- the Science of Logic and the Encylopedia Logic -- which on first read, to those used to the rather restricted, formal, sterile understanding of Logic mediated in our current classes and curricula,  seem almost like something from another world -- though they're efforts to meticulously chart out the world in which we live, permeated by dynamic intelligence, worked out through dialectical processes.  He contributed to political theory with his Philosophy of Right, and lectured brilliantly on a number of subjects, particularly religion, art and aesthetics, and historical development.

The particular image of Hegel selected above is by far my favorite representation of him, a portrait that captures certain qualities of his thought, character, and life -- not least his marked melancholy paired with an intensity, one of the mind but almost palpably material, his own hungering desire for knowledge, for understanding, for wisdom, turned not only inward, in reflection and introspection, but all the more outward, towards the world, other human beings, history, society, art, law, religion.  I think you can say metaphorically of Hegel's eyes, that as opposed to the optics that came to prevail in modernity -- in which eyes passively take in and filter the world -- they work according to the older optics conjectured by the ancients -- actively extending light and penetrating intelligibity into the phenomena appearing before them.

Revisting Conan the Barbarian

Commenting on my post back in January in which I gave mixed reviews, along explicitly Aristotelian lines (derived from the Poetics), to the recent remake of the classic (1982) version of Conan the Barbarian, James Brown brought up several very interesting points, which I'd pledged to follow up on:

I think of cinema as being primarily of a kind with the visual arts like painting, not with drama. It is, at base, moving pictures more so than filmed drama. We’re smack dab in the middle of imagery and representation where color and optical illusions sway the spectator the way eloquence and rhetoric sway the listener. . . . John Milius accomplishes what a film-maker tries to do – that is, he is able to draw the spectator into the world of images he created. Once we’re there into that world, we are then in a position to reflect upon the themes that undergird the movie, as you point out.

He goes on to explore this distinction in a bit more detail, culling out its implications for several different movies:

Self-Promotion: How Much is Too Much? (part 2 of 3)

Several weeks ago, in an earlier piece, I brought Aristotle to bear on a question which arose in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece, The Art and Science of Academic Self-Promotion. There are some real issues there -- not just matters of etiquette or prudential career moves, but genuine moral issues, comprising matters wider in scope than just the decidedly not (for anyone who has actually worked there) ivory-clean towers of academia.  We inhabit a society in which we routinely have to compete for recognition within the organizations to which we contribute, often in ways that can easily be overlooked. Oftentimes, promotions, raises, even the possibility of small perks depend on how much value we bring -- or rather, are perceived to add -- to the projects, concerns, functions of the institutions.

In addition to the demands imposed by the kind of workplaces we typically inhabit for large portions of our days, weeks, years, even lives -- a situation differing radically  not only from Aristotle's own time but even from workplaces just a few generations ago -- there's also a factor that runs as a constant across societies and cultures, down the paths of time and into any foreseeable future, since it stems from human nature -- the natural human tendency to want to talk about, to publicize in some way, our accomplishments, our qualities, our successes -- or at least what we perceive or would like ourselves or others to think of as such -- precisely why the first Aristotelian set of ideas germane to this topic, discussed in the previous post, were the virtue of truthfulness about self, and its opposed vices of boastfulness and self-deprecation.  Is there any further light Aristotle can shed on the subject, though?  Any other discussions of interest, any virtues or vices particularly relevant here?

Self-Promotion: How Much is Too Much? (part 1 of 3)

A thought-provoking piece by the equally provocatively self-titled Lesboprof in the Chronicle of Higher Education today raised but did not resolve a question, one particularly intended for academics -- but by extension, others as well --to what degree ought one engage in self-promotion?  How much -- and how precisely -- ought one to bring to or even impress upon the attention of others one's own accomplishments, successes, projects, qualities?  She doesn't provide a hard-and-fast answer, writing that:

I discussed with my friends the issue of what counts as shameless self-promotion and what is wanting to share excitement and pride in one’s accomplishments. It is difficult to clearly delineate between the two.

 As I reflected upon the matter -- well supplied for rumination on this by experience of more than a decade in the academic racket, during which I've seen many cases that crossed the line into blatant, tasteless self-promotion, as well as many other people's achievements or contributions go unrecognized, held similar conversations about how to decide and determine cases and rules for this, and even had to gradually work out my own position and practice -- it struck me not only that this would in fact be precisely the kind of topic to which Virtue Ethics could bring some needed clarity and guidance, but that in point of fact, some of the classic proponents and developers of that moral approach in fact had written relevant passages bearing on the matter.

Lessons From the Ethics in Business Education Workshop (part 2 of 2)

Back at Fayetteville State University last spring, I developed and delivered a workshop for faculty of the School of Business and Economics, titled Best Practices for Addressing Challenges in Teaching Ethics.  It was the third of a set of workshops I provided as part of the Ethics in Business Education Project, a collaboration between philosophers -- brought in as subject-matter experts in Ethics -- and business educators, the main goal being improvement of teaching and assessment of Ethics in FSU's Business courses and curriculum. 

For this particular workshop, I reflected on my years of teaching a variety of Ethics courses -- some of them straight-out theory courses, some of them various "applied" ethics courses -- as well as other courses in which ethical content either inevitably entered into components or key concepts of the course (e.g. Intro to Philosophy, Social-Political Philosophy, World Religions, and all the history of Philosophy courses) -- or where discussions involving Ethics always seemed to arise, whether I'd intended them to or not (e.g. Critical Thinking, Religion in American Culture, and other Religious Studies classes).  What I learned through experience in the classroom, thinking about what had worked and what had failed, broader-scope comparison and rumination, and redesigning courses, components, and content was that -- at least in our educational culture -- there were certain critical junctures, certain potential roadblocks, certain places in discussion where students would raise challenges, present problems, present objections, often exhibit strong emotional reactions.  These supply, to use that worn-out phrase, "teachable moments," and my goal for the workshop was to supply business educators with some tools and insights for transforming them into educational opportunities.

Dark City, Descartes, and Narrative Doubts

Over the long Labor Day weekend, my partner and wife-to-be and I watched the movie Dark City, for her first time and for perhaps my twentieth viewing.  After seeing it in the theater when it first came out in 1998, I've shown it in various Philosophy classes, and I've watched it on my own a number of times to enjoy again its semi-noir, moody, dimlit setting, its decent and entertaining play both with some philosophical concepts (or perhaps, rather, tropes), its reliably good though not outstanding acting.  A man wakes up without his memories, but possessing two advantages his fellow humans do not -- both of which reveal to him, call the attention of, set him in conflict with. . .  and make him the object of fear and fascination to, a race of thoroughly creepy aliens who nightly rearrange reality in order to progress their endless experiments with human memory, behavior, social roles

She noticed one apparent problem, a discrepancy between the stories and explanations provided by those who are "in the know" -- the Strangers and Doctor S -- and what actually does happen with the various characters.  The detective who goes mad -- what happens with him should have been impossible, or if not that, if the Strangers really were omniscient and omnipotent, if they knew that city inside and out and what was going on with all of its residents, presumably they would have nipped his madness in the bud, kept him from talking to anyone, revealing what he had learned.

Love and Human Motivation in the Republic (part 1)

Reading my way once again through a text I've been revisiting for more than two decades, Plato's Republic , I never fail -- any time I read it anew -- to be struck by some novel, or perhaps not entirely novel but at least forgotten or passed over, feature of the work and of Plato's thought.  I'm happy to be teaching it again this semester, at least portions of the grand dialogue, that is, one of Plato's best known and -- as I get old enough to benefit from traversing Plato's sizable corpus a number of times, more in some parts than others -- one of his finest on multiple philosophical levels.  Rather than allowing the task of justifying to some extent why the Republic is entitled to such a laudatory judgement -- particularly given that there are plenty of Plato scholars who'd dispute that with me, who am decidedly not a Plato scholar, just an admirer --I'll say what some of the features that struck me this time were.

In Favor of Platform Pluralism

News  -- and even more than news, speculation -- about social media runs in seeming cycles, enhanced and deepened in imaginative resonance by the complex feedback between the tradition, albeit partially online and streaming media and the users and developers of social media platforms, with a number of social media experts, sites, and magazines as go-betweens in the loops.

It could be just a reflection of the position I occupy -- a rather humble, at times behind the curve, more information-consumer than opinion-former spot -- but it seems to me that there has been a rise in frequency and prominence of one genre of speculation and one closely associated template of news story.  Perhaps I'm off, and these have been going on at the pitch and tempo they assume at present, unbeknownst to or unnoted by me, bent on exploring, using, and integrating social media in more traditionally academic pursuits.

Where I've Been and Where I'm Going

It has been slightly over a week since I posted my last blog entry, which tantalized by promising further translations of Saint Anselm's writings and sayings about humility. I'm thankful that, over the eight months of its publication so far, Orexis Dianoētikē has developed -- for an academic blog written part time by a scholar admittedly and indulgently ranging all over the map of topics -- a solid readership. Doubtless a portion of the numerous reads of the posts and glances over the pages were one-time, non-repeat clicks. A core of devoted readers -- who subscribe, comment, wait for announcements of new posts (on Facebook, Twitter, Academia, and LinkedIn), and praise, condemn, argue or ask questions about the posts in those electronic forums -- has also developed, and continues to grow. Interestingly, a good portion of that readership is international -- particularly from The UK, Canada, Japan, Russia, Germany, South Korea, Brazil, Spain, and China.

I feel as if I owe some explanation to my readers as to why my posts have slowed over the last weeks and perhaps may not resume their normal rate for a little while longer. I am right in the middle of the process of leaving my post at Fayetteville State University, where for the last three years I have taught, researched, started a new projects, and even taken on some administrative, advisory, and assessment positions. Not only am I step by step extricating myself from the University -- grades are in, but I still have four reports to write, and was being called upon to provide information in meetings yesterday and just a few minutes ago (I'm writing this during my last meeting) -- and not only have I been continuing or making good on a number of scholarly projects and commitments -- even more importantly, I am finally moving up to the Hudson valley in New York to end the painfully-long-distance phase of the relationship with my wife-to-be, partner, and collaborator in work, writing, and life. I am very excited to be leaving with my wagon packed to the gills with the first load later on today.

Saint Anselm on Anger (part 4)

Continuing the series of Sunday posts discussing Saint Anselm's views on anger in light of his moral theory (so far part 1, part 2, part 3), tonight we turn to a very interesting, well-discussed (in secondary literature), but somewhat underdeveloped (in Anselm's own writings) aspect of Anselm's theory of the will:  the distinction he draws and develops between the "two wills," the will-for-justice and the will-for-happiness.  Where does anger and connected matters -- the emotional response itself, the causes of the emotion, the acts carried out under that emotion, the volitions,  the virtuous or vicious dispositions bearing on the emotion and the actions -- fit into this motivational  and moral scheme Anselm elaborates?

As mentioned in previous posts, the will has a threefold aspect in Anselmian moral anthropology: there is the will-as-instrument, will-as-use, and will-as-inclination (or -as-affection, as-disposition, affectio).  Both the will-for-justice and the will-for-happiness are examples of this third type of will, motivational structures perduring through and expressing the will of the person in multiple determinate situations.  There are several features of these affectiones of will which I summarized several years back in a paper, which will be helpful to bring up early on here.

Anselm says that “the will-as-instrument is affected [affectum] by its inclinations,” probably the reason he uses the rich term affectio to denote them.  To be sure, the will-as-instrument is also affected, in that it takes on determinate form in time in action and intention, by its uses -- but will-as-inclination affects the will-as-instrument over time, habitually, motivationally, affectively structuring it and conditioning the wills-as-use, the determinate intentions, choices, preferences, acts that a person has or makes.

Saint Anselm on Anger (part 2)

Reprising the subject from last Sunday's post, Saint Anselm on Anger, I'm going to delve a bit deeper and in somewhat greater detail into what an Anselmian theory of anger would look like.  As I noted in that entry, Anselm does not discuss anger overmuch, nor does he provide any systematic treatment of it.  In general, he regards it as bad, but simply knowing that leaves many important questions unanswered.  What we have to do then is take his scattered references to anger and situate them within his more comprehensive and explicitly developed moral theory.

I introduced several important aspects of that moral theory, not least what we can call Anselm's moral anthropology -- his viewpoint bearing on the different parts or aspects of human being -- and discussed how anger fits partly under what Anselm (following St. Paul, and a host of Christian writers) calls the "carnal appetites," which arise in our bodies but then give rise to corresponding desires in the soul, within the ambit of the human will to be precise.  In this post, I'm going to set out some of Anselm's teachings about the complex faculty which the human will is, and set anger within them,

First, though, I want to pick up where I left off, mentioning several states of character, virtues, which bear upon anger, primarily in negative manners, i.e., by preventing anger entirely, or by lessening its intensity, its ease of provocation, its duration, even by keeping legitimate anger directed properly, preventing it from  spilling over to other people, bleeding into other matters or occasions.  Those are patience, meekness (mansuetudo, also translated as "mildness" or as "gentleness"), humility, and justice.  The last two exercise absolutely architectonic roles in Anselm's moral theory -- indeed all of the virtues are connected in fundamental ways with both of them -- but the first two more specifically bear on anger.  Now, we unfortunately don't possess all  that much of the great monastic teacher's thought on these.  We do know from Anselm's biographer, Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, that he both taught and counseled on these subjects. He tells us that during the common meals, Anselm discussed these at length and in depth:

For if I were to describe him as he discoursed about humility, patience, gentleness . . . or about any of the innumerable and profound subjects on which we heard him talk almost every day, I should have to compose another work and put aside the one which I have undertaken.

Saint Anselm on Anger

As the case with so many other topics, Saint Anselm never provides anything remotely like a systematic discussion of anger, considered as a topic in its own right.  Instead, what he left us -- this great monastic Doctor, who wrote so eloquently and incisively, but typically only when some need of others or delight of his own compelled him -- are just fragmentary passages, like puzzle pieces which have to be assembled, or stones to be composed by attentive eyes and hands into a mosaic.

That Anselm the man, in face to face conversation, in sermons, in his classes and discussions, with people from all walks of life but especially with his beloved fellow monks, had much more to say on the topic than his bare writings communicate, is a certitude.  What we can correlate and extrapolate from what he did write, or what he said that others wrote down (for instance Eadmer, in his Life of St. Anselm, or Alexander in the Dicti Anselmi) is substantive and coherent, but does not exhaustively provide the fullness of thoughts about anger.  Still, an attentive scholar can draw broad enough outlines on the topic from his works, and that -- today and over the next several Sundays -- is what I intend to do.

There are a number of interconnected sub-issues concerning anger that can be unpacked and set out from an Anselmian perspective, including among them how anger affects the will and reason, the remedies for anger, divine anger's meaning, the connection between anger and other emotions, desires, virtues, and vices, anger's relationship with (right or wrong) punishment and the political or social roles and risks of anger in communities.

In this first blog entry, however, I'd like to focus just on one main, perhaps preliminary topic:  what anger is, basically, from an Anselmian perspective.  I'll close by mentioning what other states or comportments Anselm contrasts against anger.

We should also note right off that Anselm -- so far as I know -- never mentions anger as something positively good.  Usually, it is something bad, either in its very being, or in its cause, or its effects, or in the extent to which it is felt.  There are perhaps cases where it might be expediently useful for a person to feel anger, e.g. one who has to administer punishment, defend others who need it, maintain or reimpose (relatively more) right order -- I've written about such cases elsewhere -- but Anselm (as opposed to e.g. Aristotle or Saint Thomas --  even Augustine is some places) does not seem to ascribe any goodness to anger for this reason.  It is just not-bad.

Beyond 3,000: Thanks to Orexis Dianoētikē's Readers

Sometime last night, Orexis Dianoētikē's total number of total page views passed the 3,000 mark.  It might appear a rather arbitrary occasion for me to to stop and take note, celebrate, retrospect, reflect, and actually, in certain ways it is.  I started the blog in September, and by the end of October, it had 500 views. It passed 1,000 in December, then 2,000 in January.  At each of these small milestones, my partner, encouraging in so many needful ways, pointed out the growth in readership to me, and we chatted about prospects for new posts, interested readerships.  She reminded me that many blogs go on consistently for over a year before provoking a single comment, and  -- except for allowing vacation, visits with family, and a few other projects to distract me from blogging much in December --  I stuck with the writing, willing to see where it might go.

There's two main reasons why this round number takes on a different meaning to me.  One, which I'll write about momentarily, is that I feel as if Orexis Dianoētikē now has not only its space, not only a small but persistent readership, but also its groove, a clear direction, lines to follow out.  The other reason, much more of the moment, is that last night -- or so Bloggerstats tells me -- my blog attained an international readership of a different depth and diversity than ever before.  Here's a readership map of the last 24 hours:

For once, the USA was not the location of the majority of my readership.  27 readers hailed from the UK, 20 from Taiwan, 16 from Mexico, 11 from South Korea, 7 each from Australia and the USA.  Others read from Germany, Greece, India, and Kuwait.  Oddly, nobody from Russia yesterday -- I do seem to have some readership there, and even to have made it into a Russian search engine.

Desire, Doubt, and the Black Swan

I'm setting aside my previous plan for today -- to finally write a piece discussing the recent book Academically Adrift, the various intersecting controversies it has provoked (or better put exposed), and its use of the CLA as a measure for student learning.  Last night, at our little local downtown theatre, I watched the recent movie Black Swan, and I was so impressed, by the beauty of the production (within a production), resilient brittleness of the main character, the almost claustrophobic spatiality, the interplay play of doubt, desire, and discipline -- so taken, so provoked both affectively and intellectually, that I decided to hazard my very first piece on a film.  Not precisely a review, but not an article either, more reflections on the directions the action and the character takes, informed by thoughts of a few philosophers whose relevance and applicability suggest themselves to those who have long meditated on their works.  Less obvious, I'll grant, to those encountering them only in passing or secondhand, but perhaps this will become clearer though this short essay.  Those philosophical interlocutors I'm bringing in are two Frenchmen, Rene Descartes and Jacques Lacan.  To what I expect is the relief -- or perhaps the disappointment -- of my readers, I write with a style much more "cartesian" than "lacanian," preferring clarity to obliquity and erudition.

Black swan focuses on one central character, Nina (Natalie Portman), the only one to undergo anything which might be called development -- a strong claim which I think deserves a bit of explanation. What I mean is this:  the other characters are important, written and portrayed in their fullness, coming across as living, real human beings, not simply types or stand-ins.  I cannot fault the acting of any of the characters to whom Nina seems inextricably bound:  the neurosis and just-held-in-check intensity of her controlling mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), Thomas' (Vincent Leroy) intent focus on the demands of the craft, sliding along each downward lingering glance after an explanation, a command, into lechery.  The tragically disintegrating former star Beth (Winona Ryder), the straightforward pleasure-seeking  Lily (Mila Kunis) -- these are all believable, palpable even, but they all travel along the trajectories plotted out for them from the start, following their structured desires, making demands that flow and unfold from their characters.

Rejection, Anger, and Productive Responses

A few days ago, an actor friend of mine brought to my attention an interesting blog post, written specifically with actors in mind, but whose broader implications I saw straightaway.  It was titled How To Deal With Rejection, and three things caught my attention as I read it.  First, the advice it contained applies not just to actors or even to other performers, but just as much and just as well to academics, for reasons I'll mention in the minute.  Second, instead of simply giving advice, it led the reader -- entertainingly, too, which is a plus -- through some tempting though ultimately self-damaging responses to rejection, before suggesting a different, insightful, and ultimately more productive response.  Third, what the author, Josh Pais, wrote in his short piece fits in well with, and would provide a good springboard for, several classical thinkers' theories of anger. 

What is really going on in our responses to rejection is a set of emotional responses, closely tied in with our verbalizable thoughts, other emotions and moods, coalesced in more or less malleable habits.  Anger is a common affective response to rejection.  In fact, one might say it is the common affective response, if it were not for the other emotions rejection tends to evoke in people:  sadness, despair, fear, even perhaps in some relief (if the rejection means one gets out of something causing anxiety).  Notice, though, that these other emotions differ from anger in a very important way:  one tends to remain in them, or turn to something else to displace or numb them.  They are not particularly active responses.

But, anger is an active response.  Even if the response of anger is choked back, that takes effort (until it becomes habitual, and then the effort to maintain the calm, even pleasant mask becomes concealed, unconscious).  When it goes underground, and becomes transformed into passive aggression or into bitterness towards oneself, others, one's situation, it manifests itself in activity.  If misdirected, at the wrong people, the wrong things, flaring up on the wrong occasions, or perhaps fanning out to color one's response to everything surrounding oneself, it is active.  When one becomes angry at the right object, that which inflicted injury, which treated one or those one identifies as of little value, that which threatens the loss of some good. . . (the listing of general dynamics could go on) -- then the active nature of anger unmistakably shows itself.  It gets the person feeling it ready for conflict, for engaging in a battle in which, in the angry person's mind, the first shot has been fired, the first blood already drawn.

Is College a Ticket to Success?

A piece posted today in the Chronicle of Higher Education, New Evidence That College is a Risky Investment, argues quite rightly that merely choosing to attend college does not translate into the likely successful life our culture unfortunately still promises to prospective students.  It is often overlooked -- and Richard Vedder is doing a service to point out -- that if a student does not actually graduate with a degree, the better-paying job opportunities will remain inaccessible for him or her, and they will likely accrue still-harder-to-pay debt in the process.

I have been saying for years that there is a huge risk that new college entrants will drop out, and that published academic studies usually implicitly look at those who graduate, ignoring a roughly equal number who fail to graduate from college in a timely manner. That is the huge flaw in the Does College Pay? studies annually produced by Sandy Baum for the College Board.

Three Aspects of The Will in Anselm's Thought

Saint Anselm is best known to non-philosophers and non-theologians for the so-called "ontological argument,"  found in his second major work, the Proslogion, ch. 2 (or perhaps ch. 2-4, and all too often philosophers' distortive reconstructions of those passages). Actually, even for most philosophers who do not specialize in Medieval thought, what they know of Anselm is typically just a hazy penumbra surrounding some version of that argument.  For theologians who, for one reason or another, lack much exposure to Anselm's thought, his key work is Cur Deus Homo, and the crux of it (pun intended) is his argument explaining the necessity of the Incarnation and Atonement.

Deriving a novel argument for God's existence and producing a new treatment of central mysteries of the Christian faith are significant achievements in their own rights, befitting their author a place in pantheons of philosophy and theology.  But, there is yet more, much more, than even these in Anselm's work.  Another set of achievements are hinted at early on in Cur Deus Homo, where Anselm attempts to beg off the task his student lays upon him:

. . . .we need an analysis of ability and necessity and will and of certain other notions which are so interrelated that no one of them can be fully examined apart from the others. And so, to deal with these notions requires a separate work — one not very easy [to compose], it seems to me, but nonetheless one not altogether useless. For an ignorance of these notions produces certain difficulties which become easy [to deal with] as a result of understanding these notions.
[using, as is my wont in these blogs, Hopkins and Richardson's translations,]

Online Communication, Morality of (counter-)Violence, Take 2

A week and a half ago, I was scheduled to give a talk with my colleague from Communication, Todd Frobish, on the topic of a paper we are co-writing, dealing with flaming the flamers as a viable rhetorical and ethical strategy.  For me, it's an interesting problem to apply an Aristotelian perspective to, not least since Aristotle had a lot to say in his own time about rhetoric, civic and social life, and ethics, and would have much to say about this contemporary problem.  Todd is more interested in the analysis of communicative interchanges and what they reveal.  We are both interested in developing typologies of aggressive online acts, persons, and motives, and in the moral evaluations and strategies such typologies afford.

At its basis our central contention is this:  In opposition to much of the literature discussing flaming which views it as uniformly negative and as a sign of decay of decent social life in online settings, we regard it in some circumstances as a legitimate response to other people's online aggression.  Todd frames it as a last resort measure, to be used only after all other resources have been attempted or ruled out.  I see it instead as a response which is admittedly fairly far along a continuum of forceful, coercive, or (verbally) violent acts, but which one might use ethically even before it becomes a last resort.

Pleasure in Student Failure: An Aristotlean Perspective (part 1)

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran what turned out to be a very provocative piece Monday (ok, not as provocative as their tell-all The Shadow Scholar earlier today).  

The short article was called The Pleasure of Seeing the Deserving Fail, ostensibly by an Alice Fenton.  In it, she admitted to a range of positive affective states when certain students fail in her classes -- deservedly fail.  As the short essay it is, I would actually rate it quite well as a contribution to discussions about moral psychology, desert, and the profession of teaching, not least because she sets out a typology of differing types of bad students and associates different responses in emotion and action to the pattern of actions (or lack of actions) of those students.

As I've been writing this, harvesting from the rich trail of 109 comments responding to her essay, I realized that for blogging-brevity's sake this will have to be the first of two entries.  This one leads reflectively through the comments, reviewing them and the arguments as an Aristotelian like myself does.  Aristotle actually has a lot to say about this sort of controversy over pedagogy, student failure, and emotional responses, and in the second installment, I'll carry out the more systematic and exegetical work that I skip over in this post.