Eight Lecture Videos on Plato's Republic book 4

A number of years back, I created two core concept videos - drawn from my classroom discussions - about some of the key issues in Plato's Republic book 4.  This is a particularly important part of the work, for in it, Socrates finally makes good on his promise to tell the other characters of the dialogue his answer to the central question - what is justice?

All of Socrates' lead-up in sketching an ideal city (actually, if you read closely in book 2, the second-best ideal city) - with the idea that the city is a person's soul writ large - bears fruit in Plato's analysis of the soul, its parts, and their functions.

That Republic book 4 analysis of the tripartite soul, and of the four cardinal virtues associated with the parts of the soul, becomes massively influential throughout ancient and medieval philosophy (and theology as well), exercising influence within and without the specifically Platonic tradition.  So studying this part of the work - enjoyable in its own sake - is also important for understanding the history of ideas.

Here are those eight videos:

• Happiness of Citizens and the City
• Plato's City and The Parts of the Soul
• Distinguishing Parts of the Soul
• The Cardinal Virtues in Parts of the Soul
• The Virtue of Courage
• The Virtue of Temperance
• The Virtue of Justice
• Injustice, Overreaching, and Faction

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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.

Virtue Ethics and Pleasure as an End

At a philosophy dissertation defense I attended today - on an excellent project bearing on sex education by Shaun Miller, which I have been following for some time (here's an interview with him on his project) - a very interesting question got put to him.

After critically examining the moral assumptions and foundations of existing sexual education curricula, Shaun advocates for an ascesis- and virtue-ethics-informed approach, general outlines of which are worked through in his nearly 500-page dissertation.

The question that got asked by one of the members of the dissertation committee had to do with Aristotelian virtue ethics and pleasure as a telos (goal, end, or purpose).  The question was asked as a challenge, and unfortunately neither the asker nor Shaun knew the relatively straightforward answer that is easily drawn out of Aristotle's own text, particularly the Nicomachean Ethics, books 3 and 4.

Here is the problem that bringing in Aristotle's virtue ethics as a basis seems to raise when it comes to sex.  When it comes to virtuous behavior, and a virtuous disposition, Aristotle thinks that pleasure is not the goal, the telos, of the behavior or disposition.  It "accompanies" or "follows upon" behaving virtuously and being virtuous.  In fact, if the person doesn't feel some sense of pleasure in being, say generous, or just, or temperate, then that person doesn't yet fully possess that virtue.  But if a person is virtuous, it's not pleasure that orients their practical reasoning, their evaluations, their choices, their actions.

This view of Aristotle's position is right, broadly speaking.  He does say things along these lines in book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics. But. . .  there are two virtues in Aristotle's listing that explicitly bear upon pleasures and pains.  In fact, he examines these in considerable detail in books 3 and 4, and his discussions there make it clear that while pleasure is not the sole end in these virtues, pleasure plays a central role in them.  It doesn't just accompany them as a side-effect.  These virtues - in Aristotle's own words - bear directly upon pleasures.

What are these two virtues?

One of them is pretty easy for anyone to guess - that is, if they've encountered or studied much Aristotelian moral theory.  It's sophrosune in Greek, often translated as "temperance," or "self-control" (though that is something a translation of enkratia), or "moderation".  This virtue has to do specifically with bodily pleasures, our indulgence in them, and our desires for them.  A temperate person will enjoy and indulge in pleasures, at the right time, to the right extent, for the right reason, and so forth.  But they will - as a central component of this virtue - focus upon pleasure.

The other is a virtue that many people skimming through the Nicomachean Ethics, or getting the typical classroom teaching treatment, won't focus on all that much - which is a real shame, since what Aristotle has to say is pretty insightful.  It's called philia, but it's typically translated as "friendliness" rather than "friendship" (which Aristotle discusses in books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics).  It too deals with pleasure - as well as pain - but not one's own.  It has to do with giving pleasure or pain to others. What it has to do with is what activities, discourses, and practices we share or don't, approve of or criticize, with others.  We give people pleasure or pain depending on what limits we lay down, observe, or enforce.

This issue of virtues and pleasures is likely worth digging into further, so once my semester is finished, I'll do so at greater length over in my Medium site.