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.

Should Stoics Be Concerned About Others?

In a 6-week online course on Epictetus I'm presently teaching though my company, ReasonIO, I got asked a question that keeps popping up, quite naturally, when we're considering Stoic Ethics.  I'm also in the process of consolidating and rewriting posts from my other blogs into pieces here in Orexis Dianoētikē. Here's a piece originally published in Virtue Ethics Digest that frames and addresses those general concerns - Should a Stoic be concerned about (non-)Stoic others? And further, how and why?

Over the course of Stoic Week 2015, 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?