Epictetus on Anger (part 2)

Over a year ago -- when I was in the process of writing a number of blog posts discussing how particular moral theorists regarded anger -- I wrote the first installment about what one Stoic philosopher had to say about that emotion:  Epictetus on Anger (part 1).  There, I started bringing together his remarks about the topic -- scattered in various places throughout his Discourses -- and I focused primarily on discussing how the limping philosopher viewed anger.  If I wanted to be flip, I could simply say:  he disapproved of it, as a good Stoic would with most if not all emotions.  But, we want to know more than simply that he thought anger was wrong, bad, beneath or an impediment to a fully human existence -- we want to know why he views anger that way -- what it is about anger that makes it bad.

To understand these sorts of matters about anger -- and this goes not just for Epictetus or for other Stoics, but for moral theorists in general -- you've also got to look at their broader perspectives on human nature.  What the fundamental good is for human beings, how we should order the multiplicity of goods, the difference between the real and merely apparent goods, whether reason is merely a slave to our passions and desires or whether it can play a more determinative role, what is needed for reason to fulfill its function and for us to flourish, what goes on when we feel and act on emotions -- all of these, and more, are the sorts of matters one has to inquire about.

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.

Critical Thinking: Class or Curriculum?

One of the conversations focused on college curricula and student learning, in which I perennially -- though thankfully not perpetually -- seem to find myself involved takes on the form of a false dilemma, a forced option, which all too often gets used as the framework for thinking out the role of foundational disciplines should play -- and the shape they ought to take -- in higher education.  Whether it is a matter of Critical Thinking, Ethics, Writing, or other similar disciplines, the same basic problematic arises:  should students be introduced to, and practiced in, that subject matter in a specific course?  Or should it be infused throughout the curriculum?

My answer, put in one word, is simply this: BOTH.  I've got my reasons to say that, and to assert it so emphatically -- which I'm going to set out in detail below.  I'd like to observe first, though, that there are also reasons why so many people find themselves constrained to frame this sort of issue in terms of an exclusive Either-Or.  Maurice Blondel, a great dialectical philosopher of the early 20th century, observed and critiqued this tendency to frame  matters important to us -- whether in metaphysics or moral theory, politics or education, aesthetics or religion -- through such rigid dichotomies, where choices are seemingly constrained to opting between one of the two poles.  Concealed by this, he notes over and over, is that, at a deeper level, often unrealized by those making it, another option, another choice gets made -- one between setting up the terms in abstract opposition to each other, or seeing that neither term is sufficient on its own, and demands the complement of the other term for its very own adequacy.

Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy: Apollo and Dionysus

At one time, quite long ago -- A period including the end of my undergraduate studies, the early years of my graduate studies, and the interval between, when I worked a series of low-paying jobs, studied languages, and trained obsessively -- I would unapologetically identify myself as a Nietzschean.  That wasn't the hardest thing to do, of course, not least because taking that kind of stance grants a person permission to indulge their appetites and desires, rancor and bitterness, propensities to compete and confabulate, to put others down, to lie to oneself and other under the guise of a higher, more brutal, cleaner honesty.  Transgression becomes, if not a duty -- for really a Nietzschean has only self-imposed duties -- a compensation, an exploratory effort, something to enjoy and to bask in.  One gets to set oneself within an elite as equally opposed to present, philistine elites as to the mass, to the ordinary, dull people -- though, really, that kind of life, for which Nietzsche's ideas and writings provide articulation, represents a certain shape of adolescence, sensitively spoiled as much as revealingly barbaric.

This explains one side of Nietzsche's perennial appeal as a philosopher, an incorporation of his writings into one's lifestyle that I know well myself, having indulged in it, and later, come to feel regret and even embarrassment over.  Later, as I studied him more carefully, I came to see that there's so much more of value, depth, attractiveness, rigor to the thought of the twilight philosopher -- actually, a thinker, with whom I disagree on many points, not usually head on, but at tangents, about overall direction, interpretation.  I've recently started offering a sequence of video lectures exploring Existentialism.  Among other things, this has had me closely rereading his early great masterpiece, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (video lectures one, two, and three available here), a work which I've often taught to students and discussed with colleagues.  I've noticed a tendency in readers, on its first few reads, to take a suggestive, seemingly correct, first path, following which cuts one off from seeing the entirety of what's going on in that early book of Nietzsche.

Lecture Capture, Technology, and Education

About a year and a half back, while still teaching at Fayetteville State University, I got involved with an activity -- and really, a commitment -- called by the rather elevated or exiting name of "lecture capture."  That's not a bad term for it, since one does indeed capture course lectures by some type of recording.  But, it is a bit misleading, since it easily gives the impression that the main part of the associated complex of pedagogical activities consists primarily in that act (however often repeated) of recording lectures -- either voice alone or video.

It's true, of course, that unless lectures are being recorded, there's no lecture capture, so recording is a necessary component.  But from a teaching and learning perspective, it's really just a small part of what is involved -- and putting stress solely on the situation of recording without attending to other aspects is likely to result in not particularly effective, useful, or interesting materials emerging from the process.  This last year, since moving to Marist College, I've continued videorecording my class lectures, but doing certain things differently, adding new ideas, trying new techniques.

Summer Break for Orexis Dianoētikē

I ought to have announced this two weeks back -- originally, I'd hoped to continue writing posts over my summer break -- but am finally doing so now:  I'm taking a 5 week break from writing for Orexis Dianoētikē and Virtue Ethics Digest.  I'll resume posting in mid-July.  For the time being, I'm traveling in New York and the Midwest, enjoying the company of my kids, wife, friends, and family.  I'm still teaching an online Ethics class, editing a few videos, answering questions on VYou, and catching up on reading I've put off far too long.

See you all later in July!

Ethics of Sterilization for Drug Addicts

An issue which ought by its very nature to provoke controversy of all sorts -- reproduction and childbirth by drug addicts -- has come to the fore again, centered around an organization, Project Prevention (PrPr, just so as not to confuse them with Planned Parenthood, often abbreviated as PP) whose main activity involves paying drug and alcohol addicts to get sterilized or to use long-term birth-control.  There's much more to be said about the purposes of the organization, as well as the moral issues involved, the deeper problems raised, and the ethical status not only of Project Prevention but also of their supporters and critics -- all of which I'll explore in some detail below. 

First, though, it's worth mentioning a few useful and specific sources -- given that this controversy has not often risen to the level of headline news or talking-heard-worthy burning issue of the hour.  New York Daily News, BBC News, and Time Health, among others have recent, well-balanced pieces about the organization, its mission, and its critics.  The Guardian ran a longer, somewhat more in-depth article nearly a year back, and Practical Ethics published a short blog post raising a few additional issues and proposing Britain's NHS do what PrPr does.  Africa Is a Country has an interesting though clearly anti-PrPr discussion of the expansion of the organization to Kenya, and its mission to include HIV. A Care2 piece also discusses Haiti and South Africa.  In 2006, the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment levied a number of charges of being unethical against Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK), the earlier version of PrPr.   Open Society Foundations held a panel discussion a little over a year ago, specifically on the ethics of Project Prevention, its aims, and its activities.  So, all that said, what should we think about this?