Five Recent Guest Appearances and Interviews

It's been a while since I did a roundup of my recent appearances on radio shows, podcasts, and video channels, so it's time for another one!

I make these lists every so often, as the appearances accumulate. I also have a more comprehensive list of most of my appearances in the last seven or eight years over at my company website, if you'd like to check any of those out.

I get fairly regular requests to talk about a variety of topics because of my philosophy-focused YouTube channel, my podcast, my business ReasonIO, and my work as editor of Stoicism Today. If you'd like to invite me for a television, radio, video, or podcast appearance - or even for a live, in-person event, feel free to contact me.

Interview on Cooper Cherry podcast - two-hour conversation hosted by Cooper Cherry, discussing the nature of Hegelian dialectics, Marxism and post-structuralism, political perspectives of the present, and what's right and what's wrong with Hegel - you can listen here

Interview on Rendering Unconscious podcast - hosted by Vanessa Sinclair, discussing how philosophy gets put into practice, what philosophical counseling is and how it is connected with psychotherapy, and a range of other topics - you can listen here

Guest Show on Riverwest Radio - "Why It's Good To Give (Philosophical Perspectives)" - fundraising two-hour show with Dan Hayes, discussing philosophical insights about generosity, giving, and supporting community from Stoic and other perspectives - you can listen here.

Interview on Nathan Ormand channel - video interview hosted by Nathan Ormand, discussing Anselm of Canterbury's works and key ideas, what the "single argument is", Anselm's views on human freedom, how Anselm revolutionized prayer, and other topics - you can watch or listen here

Guest Appearance on the Post-Structuralist Tent Revival podcast: hosted by Eric Aldieri, Jacob Given, and Paula Landerreche Cardillo, discussing perspectives on anger in ancient philosophy and theology, and techniques for managing anger – you can listen here

There are several other podcast interviews I've done in the last month or so which aren't yet out.  As they appear, I'll post about them in my social media and on my Patreon site.

Aristotelian Magnificence And Student Loans

Last weekend, Robert Smith, the commencement speaker at Morehouse College's graduation ceremony, announced a gift of major significance.  Every member of the graduating class would have all of their student loans paid off.  The average student debt, reported by Morehouse's president, is around $24,000, and the entire payout is estimated to be about 40 million dollars.

Smith is a billionaire - they estimate that his net worth is 4.47 billion dollars - so this massive, generous, and for many people life-changing act of charity shaves off a little under 1% of his current assets. That's still quite a bit.  And this isn't the only act of philanthropy on Smith's part - he donated $50 million to Cornell University, his alma mater, a few years ago. 

Paying off college loans en masse like this might be lumped into the same category as donating money directly to a college or university.  In some cases, alumni donations go right into the institution's endowment.  In others, they may be earmarked for a new building project, for a program, for enjoying a chair, or all sorts of other ends.  One can argue that those sorts of uses are of general benefit to everyone within the educational institution that receives such largesse, and even to the wider communities which the institution is involved with.

This strikes me as something quite different.  It certainly has a much more direct impact upon the lives of many young people.  It brightens their futures, perhaps emboldens them about their prospects, removes anxiety over finances.  It will likely steer some of them by the power of example toward smaller-scale acts or attitudes of generosity on their own part. 

Ancient Greek virtue ethicists, like Aristotle, had a name for the type of large-scale, big picture generosity that Smith chose to engage in.  They didn't call it "generosity" (or to use an older-fashioned term, "liberality"), eleutheria in Greek, because they recognized that scale mattered.  They called it megaloprepeia, "magnificence".  And this virtue played an important role in social or civic life.

Rich people were expected to pull their weight within their communities, not simply cordon themselves off securely, enjoy their wealth, and leave the affairs and needs of the city to the rest of the citizenry.  To use Aristotle's own examples, one rich person might spend a portion of their wealth on equipping a ship for the city's naval forces.  Another might underwrite the expenditures for an important cultural event, specifically paying for a chorus and staging for a dramatic production. Yet another might provide a common meal for the public.  Funding a public building project would be another example.

It isn't enough - if you adopt a virtue ethics perspective - to just throw money around, of course.  One vice opposed to the virtue of magnificence is that of vulgarity.  Being a show-off, looking for admiration, making the act of public beneficence into a transaction for recognition, prestige, or power - all of that is vulgarity rather than generosity. Motive, and not just the money spent, matters.

There's more that I intend to write about Smith's act of largesse and the virtue of magnificence. I'll do later this week in my Medium site.  For the time being, here's a few interesting pieces on Smith, his gift, and its recipients.

• Robert Smith Pledges To Pay Off Student Loans For Morehouse College's Class Of 2019 (NPR)
• Morehouse’s student loan forgiveness is an incredibly useful economics experiment (Vox)
• Who is Robert F. Smith? (Chicago Tribune)
• Robert Smith’s Gift to Morehouse College Left This Student Behind (Vice)

Video Lecture Sequence - Cicero's On Duties, Book 1

Last week, I finished creating a sequence of core concept videos focused specifically on topics within Marcus Tullius Cicero's work of Stoic ethics, On Duties.  I began shooting these last semester for my students enrolled in the two Ethics classes I was teaching for Marquette University. 

I typically include some Stoic ethics in my courses, and this time around I decided instead of having them read selections from Epictetus' Discourses, I would introduce them to Cicero instead.  On Duties provides a more systematic framework, which gives them a brief look at natural law theory as well as Stoic virtue ethics.

Hopefully these will be of use to others who would like to study a classic work of Stoic ethics.  Cicero himself was not a Stoic, but he drew heavily upon Stoic philosophy, and this book is a reworking and addition to an earlier work by Panaetius, the sixth leader of the Stoic school.

Here are the 22 videos, associated into sections by content, starting with the introductory material.  hopefully they will help viewers better understand the key ideas as they work their way through Cicero's On Duties.

• General Issues Concerning Duty
• Nature and Reason
• The Four Sources of the Right 

New Milwaukee Chapter of SOPHIA - And Our First Event!

Milwaukee now has a local chapter of SOPHIA!  This is a national organization devoted to bringing philosophy out of the academy and back into the public sphere.

For those of you in the area, we'd love for you to join us at our first event for the general public - Where Do Justice and Kindness Meet?

We will be meeting in the Community Room of the Milwaukee Public Library - Central Branch.  The event begins at 1:30 PM, and runs until about 4:00 PM on Saturday, March 17.  To sign up for this event, to learn more, or to join our local SOPHIA chapter, go to our Meetup page.

$75 Million To Philosophy (For The Elite)

One of John Hopkins University alumni, Bill Miller - who did really study philosophy there in what appears to be a more or less serious way - made a massive donation earmarked specifically to support the Philosophy Department at that institution.  $75 million dollars.  That is the sort of money that can be "life-changing" not just for a person, but for an institution.

Here are a few representative pieces about Miller's gift, discussing his reasons for the donation.

• A Wall Street Giant Makes a $75 Million Bet on Academic Philosophy (New York Times)
• Bill Miller Is Giving $75 Million to Johns Hopkins University (Bloomberg)
• Bill Miller Donates $75 Million to Johns Hopkins University
• Legendary Hedge Fund Investor Attributes His Success to Studying Philosophy (CNBC Make It)

My first reaction upon reading that piece was a mixture of two main sentiments.  That's awesome!  And also: That's too bad. . .

That an alumnus who studied philosophy would make that level of a donation on behalf of the discipline philosophy is awesome, for a variety of reasons.  First, it does go to show that there are people who study philosophy, become successful, and then recognize that philosophy played some role in that success, and then want to give back in tangible ways.  Second, in an era when donors are often much more interested in getting the prestige that comes with charitable giving than in precisely who the recipients are, it is excellent that he specified that the money is supposed to be used to advance and sustain philosophical study.  Administrators and trustees can't get their proverbially grubby hands on it, and use it for their pet projects or favored programs.  It will hopefully get spent on genuinely worthwhile projects, people, and programs.  Here's what the money will accomplish, according to Bloomberg:

The commitment will help the department increase full-time faculty to 22 from 13 and create endowed professorships for the chairperson and eight others, the school said Tuesday in a statement. The university also aims to attract more undergraduates to study philosophy through new courses.

As Baltimore Business Journal reports, the department will also be changing its name to the "William H. Miller Department of Philosophy."

At the same time, for the rest of the profession, it is indeed too bad.  A wonderful opportunity to make a major difference has effectively been squandered. This one lump-sum donation to one single institution - if the goal really is to help out a discipline so often on the ropes - seems poorly thought out.  John Hopkins has some great researchers and teachers who make solid contributions to philosophy.  But so do countless other colleges, universities, and other organizations that do not enjoy the high prestige or financial status and security of John Hopkins, or of elite universities in general.  Was it really a rational allocation of that generosity to funnel it straight and solely into one department rather than to spread it around?  There assuredly are places where even just a portion of that money would have much greater impact on promoting philosophy as a profession, and in better educating students in philosophy on a potentially massive scale.

Of course one can respond that it's Miller's money, and he can therefore do whatever he likes with it.  Quite true.  I doubt anyone asserts his gift to John Hopkins is somehow a bad thing.  It is a net gain for the profession.  But it is entirely legitimate for any of us to criticize his choice, precisely as philosophers.

It's perfectly reasonable to see that gift and think:  "Right, more money for the already abundantly well-funded."  In a time when across the nation we see programs being cut, students struggling, and the widespread impoverishment of an entire adjunct class, even a fraction, a sliver, just crumbs of that money could have been used to make a major positive difference throughout the field.

The last thing I'll say on this matter is that I have no doubt that Miller was given advice from all sorts of people about his decision.  But he might have done better to set aside a mere fraction of the massive gift he intended ultimately to make simply to hire someone (or even a team) who could have drawn up a list of worthy potential beneficiaries of his largesse.

He could have decided that John Hopkins philosophy department gets $50 million, and then doled half of that out to other departments, programs, and organizations.  He could have endowed chairs of philosophy at dozens of struggling state schools or private colleges.  The list of other measures he could have taken with his money, with aims of promoting and protecting the discipline he praises, stretches out interminably. 

So, good for philosophy at John Hopkins, and for those others to whom some good trickles down.  But for the rest of the field, it is like hearing about how a castle several countries over is getting a beautiful new remodeling job, funded by a local magnate.  We might glance at the pictures, but then it's time to get back with the work in the unchanged world we know and live in.

Stoicism, Kindness, and Small Gestures

Earlier this week, one of our dogs made the day - if only for a brief moment - of a young man who seemed quite down.  Amica is friendly with strangers by temperament, particularly so when she has a ball in her mouth, so when she saw a young man in an X-man t-shirt approaching sadly from the apartment building across the street, she greeted him as soon as he was close.  Tail wagging, she went right for him, and shoved her ball into his leg.  He reached out tentatively to pet her - she's a big, muscular, energetic dog - and when I said "she's showing off her ball to you," his face brightened, he smiled, petted her briefly, and strode off visibly changed in his body language.

That brought home to me important but often overlooked aspect of Stoic moral theory.  When you read the classic authors - Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius - you'll see a good bit of advice that one ought to display attitudes of kindness, friendliness, and cheerfulness towards others.  Is this merely about being "nice," observing social conventions, getting along and fitting in?   For classical Stoicism, the answer is No.  When genuine or authentic, such attitudes, feelings, and actions actually comprise an integral part of virtue or moral goodness.

I was particularly reminded of a discussion by an earlier writer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was not himself a member of the Stoic school, but who admired and appreciated many of their doctrines.  His book, On Duties, presents Stoic moral theory systematically and in great detail.  In his discussion of the virtues - morally good states of character a person ought to develop and act in accordance with - he sets alongside justice a disposition we can call "kindness,"  "benevolence," or "charity" (he uses the terms benevolentia and beneficientia, "willing good" and "doing good" to another).  What my dog did, without giving it a thought, and in an admittedly small way, reflects what the Stoics think we ought to do - how we ought to act - with our fellow human beings.