Recent Talk: Jeremy Bentham's Philosophy of Action

Earlier this month, I delivered a talk digging into a set of topics I've been interested in for quite some time -- the Utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham's philosophy of action -- as part of the Marist College Philosophy and Religious Studies Speaker Series.




I've taught Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation for some time in my Ethics classes (you can watch video lectures from those classes, and shorter Core Concept videos here), and I've often been struck by just how much attention he devotes to analysing elements of moral live and action which we don't usually associate with Utilitarian moral theory -- intentions, motives, dispositions, even (in his later works) virtues and vices. I decided it was a topic well worth researching and presenting on, and an opportunity to start reading through some of Bentham's less often perused, more mature works.

 As it turned out, the audience was primarily composed of undergraduate non-majors, so I tailored my examples and discussion to them.  For the very first time in my career, I was surprised that, after the talk, nobody had any questions, including the philosophy faculty who attended -- when I asked them about it later, their unanimous reply was that the presentation was so clear as to preclude any need for questions.

Here are the slides for the presentation.

Reflections on the Passing of Clive Burr

Although last week was brightened -- and largely dominated  -- by news concerning the election of a new pontiff, something else occurred which saddened me, personally, deeply, for reasons I'm been struggling to make sense of through reflection -- a news item that was not unexpected but, like all obituaries of those whose actions or artistry made some tangible, positive differences, is always in some sense unwelcome to read, untimely at its occurrence. Clive Burr, perhaps best known for his work as a drummer, early on in his career, for Iron Maiden, died on March 12 in his sleep.

Multiple Sclerosis had long ago begun eroding his system, cutting off his livelihood, damming up his talents, and ending his long career.  He was fortunate in having developed many solid friendships over the years -- his former bandmates in Iron Maiden, for example, organized and played benefits to assist him in paying his reportedly quite high medical bills -- and by all reports he is going to be missed, and grieved over, by many who knew him personally.  For my part, I'm just a fan, and didn't know him personally.  I can't say that I wrote him fan mail, or that I even saw him play -- by the time I first got to an Iron Maiden concert, with my leather and longhair burnout friends, several years had passed since he'd left the band, engaging in a series of never-quite-making-it-as-big ventures with bands like Trust, Escape, and Gogmagog

Classic Arguments About God's Existence in Cicero

My Introduction to Philosophy class is currently one-third of the way into Cicero's dialogue The Nature of the Gods -- a work that, like many others of Cicero, I unhesitatingly endorse as a philosophical analogue to undervalued stock.  It's a text that rarely gets taught in Ancient Philosophy classes, let alone Philosophy of Religion (where I taught it years back), or as a text by which to induct freshmen non-majors into the canons and practices of the philosophical profession.  I suspect that one reason for this lack of attention and use is that relatively few practicing philosophers have encountered it themselves -- whether in their own educational formation or in the course of their further studies.

That's a shame -- not only for On the Nature of the Gods, but also for other Ciceronian great works like the Academics, Republic, Laws, On Obligations . . .  one could go on and on.  A quite understandable tendency to underrate Cicero's role in philosophy -- construing him as merely an unoriginal eclectic who brought the philosophy he had learned in the Greek world into Roman culture -- tends to conceal the high level of philosophical discussion and debate contained in his dialogues.  If his is borrowed  brilliance, the words and arguments he places in the mouths of his characters become no less valuable or valid for replicating saying and speeches he learned from leaders of major philosophical schools in Athens or Rhodes -- particularly since it is his own artful arrangements we have to thank for passing them on to us, and down the ages.  Cicero is more than a mere digest-creator or textbook-scribbler, though -- he creates, he replicates, he articulates clashes and conflicts of modes of thought of the highest order available in his own time and place -- and like every playwright, every novelist, every poet of genius, he understands all that his characters do, and more.

Aristotle, Anger, and Akrasia

A man gets angry at lunch with several colleagues or coworkers -- a response to a perceived insult or put-down -- and before realizing it, launches into a profanity-laden diatribe.  He regrets it soon afterwards, since he crossed a line, though he didn't realize it at the time.  A couple arguing with each other find themselves unwilling to listen to the partner each of them does actually still love (though respect?  perhaps not), giving in to the temptation to construe the other person's claims in as bad a light as possible, taking digs and cheap shots -- the argument escalates into a full-blown fight, not what either of them really wanted, but what, on some level they both chose.  These are just two examples.  Just by mining one's own memories, or attentively watching other people, one could multiply these sort of cases indefinitely.  They represent a phenomenon which in moral theory we often call by its Greek term, akrasia.

Last November, I delivered a talk at Felician College specifically on akrasia -- commonly translated into English as "weakness of will," "incontinence," or "lack of self-control" -- specifically about the interconnections between akrasia and anger as Aristotle explores them in his texts -- the most important discussions appearing in his Nicomachean Ethics, but illuminating passages also popping up here and there in the Eudemian Ethics, the De Anima, and a few other texts.  For a number of years, I've been nursing, nurturing, and indulging an interest in Aristotle's views on anger, working towards eventually publishing a book on the topic (currently about 1/4 written, though such snapshot figures of progress tend to change, ironically always towards diminution, as the study progresses).  Aristotle's treatment of akrasia's connection with anger is sufficiently interesting to merit its own chapter.  But why?

What IS the Problem of Akrasia?

A little less than a month back, I delivered a talk, Aristotle, Anger, and Akrasia, down at Felician College -- discussing some material, and outlining certain issues, appearing in a book I'm currently writing, reconstructing Aristotle's theory of anger across the corpus of his texts.  I'd intended my next entry in this blog to use that as a starting point, continuing my on-again-off-again series on philosophical and theological treatments of anger (the last two, on Plato, are here and here).  Recently, a student from the University of Edinburgh -- who watched the video of the talk -- wrote me:

I came across your online lecture, which was very helpful, offering a very in depth description of the problem but you did not seem to offer a judgement on the problem itself.  Would you say that Aristotle effectively overcomes the problem of Akrasia?

So, that offers an excellent occasion for engaging in a bit of a digression in this post -- what precisely is the "problem of akrasia"?  -- that's what has to be asked, examined, and answered, before we can say whether Aristotle does or doesn't effectively formulate it, mainly in Nicomachean Ethics book 7, let alone overcome it.

Streamlining Life, Thinking, and Writing

If you're a long-term reader of this blog -- or of my other main philosophy blog, Virtue Ethics Digest -- you may have noticed a relative paucity of posts over the last year or so, a lower degree of productivity (or at least prolixity) than previously.  If you're a new reader to this blog, of course, you need only look to the sidebar post archive list, where you can see the numbers.  In either case, you might wonder why that has been the case, and whether or not this is the "new normal," as they say.

You might also have noticed a rather startling change to the look and even feel and function of the blog.  It started out as something like a playground or preserve for philosophical musings and rants, and for about two years I've done more or less what I liked with aesthetics, content,  even eventually scheduling.  Really a decision -- or at least a dissatisfaction -- coming down the pike for a long time, matters finally came to a head this Thanksgiving break, as I reflected on what else I've wanted to do with Orexis Dianoētikē, what I wanted to make of it.  I wanted something considerably more disciplined, focused, well-integrated with my other projects and purposes . . .  streamlined, you might say.  That's reflective of a broader resolve, one extending to (and through) numerous aspects of my own life, incorporating Orexis Dianoētikē within that larger reorientation.

Happy Birthday, Albert Camus

Very early on in my philosophical formation -- long before I had any idea that I might study, let alone go on to become a professor in that field -- I first encountered the work of Albert Camus, in the form of a paperback, The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays.  I had just started high school, and we were on one of our many visits from Wisconsin, where my mother and father had settled in the family's exodus out of Chicago, gone down I-65 into rural Indiana, where my grandparents and great-aunts and -uncles had built the complex of little pre-fab Wausau  houses, facing each other on a common driveway, two of them connected in their basements by a cinderblock garage -- a time and place of sand and sun, snow and wood-burning stoves, oaks and sandburrs, trails, freedom, work, card games and quiet affection that to me, in my childhood was perhaps an image of what paradise could be.  My uncle Aime lived there, in a room partitioned off from the rest of his parents' basement, and I would visit with him in that room where he slept, listened to and reflected on radio programs, and read the books stacked in neat piles, but at casual angles and locations. 

Camus' volume held the top place that day on one of the stacks.  I recognized the name Sisyphus from my readings in Greek mythology, so I picked it up to page through it.  Seeing my interest in it, Aime told me it was worth reading, and asked me if I wanted to take it, so I did, and tried to puzzle my way through the not-entirely-for-beginners prose in the main essay.  Trying to remember back to that time, I can't be sure I really understood much of what now, nearly thirty years later, seems clear enough that I've recently shot several video lectures (one, two, and three) discussing the work.  What I recall is being struck by the boldness of Camus' formulations, an enjoyment arising from turning over the paradoxical phrases, and the feeling that if I just dug at it tenaciously enough, I'd come away from reading equipped with something novel, exciting, something I could integrate within my own life and developing thought.  For me, its fitting that, in celebration of his birthday, I focus mainly on that early work in which I first encountered his intransigent thought, his resolve to live "without appeal."