An Ethics of/for the Future? [1 ed.] 9781443870399, 9781443861250

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An Ethics of/for the Future?

An Ethics of/for the Future?

Edited by

Mary Shanahan

An Ethics of/for the Future? Edited by Mary Shanahan This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Mary Shanahan and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6125-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6125-0

For Grace

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................ x Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1 Plato: The Humanity of Ethics Colm Shanahan Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 17 Plotinus’ Doctrine of the Sage in its Historical Context John Dillon Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 30 The Ethical Dimension of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy: A Logotherapeutic Reading Stephen J. Costello Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 43 Ontological Conscience, Christian Parallels and the Path to Authenticity Kevin Sludds Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 53 Critique and Ethos Ian Leask Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 62 The Potencies of the Ethical: On the Sources of Being Good William Desmond Chapter Seven ........................................................................................... 76 Do Wittgenstein’s Ethical Views have anything to Offer for the Future of Ethics? Patrick Quinn

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Chapter Eight ............................................................................................ 89 A Virtue Ethic Approach to Bearing and Rearing Children David McPherson Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 116 A Pregnant Space: Levinas, Ethics and Maternity Mary Shanahan Contributors ............................................................................................ 127 Notes ....................................................................................................... 130 Index ....................................................................................................... 143

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The inspiration for this collection emerged from a conference of the same name which was held in conjunction with the Irish Philosophical Society at St. Patrick’s College, Thurles, in March 2013. I would like to thank the speakers and delegates who attended, the academic and support staff who assisted, the students who volunteered to help, and the College President, Rev. Thomas Fogarty, who offered encouragement throughout. I also wish to acknowledge the support of the Irish Philosophical Society. I offer my sincere thanks to each of the contributors, whose work has made this book what it is. A special word of thanks is owed to Patrick Quinn, whose generous assistance rendered this collection possible. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Colm, and our daughter, Grace, for their ever-present support and love.

INTRODUCTION The questions of what ethics is, what it does, and how it should or should not operate are some of the oldest, and yet also most current, that human beings ask. This collection, as alluded to in its title, engages with our desire to come to terms with the ‘how’ of being ethical. Given the various backgrounds and interests of the contributors, the chapters circumnavigate a vast terrain in attempting to respond to this ‘how’. Beginning with Plato, we move through the Middle Ages and modernity before arriving at the future of/for ethics, addressing a wide range of themes along the way. In Chapter One, Colm Shanahan argues that Plato has much to offer to contemporary culture regarding an understanding of what grounds our ethical judgements. Focusing on the account of eros provided in the Symposium, Shanahan seeks to demonstrate how it is that knowledge is a constituent feature of virtuous character. In so doing, he attempts to show that Plato’s thinking does not suggest a retreat from the physical realm to that of the transcendental but rather that, for the embodied soul, the task of seeing the Form of Beauty is achieved by directly engaging with others in the physical realm. In the second chapter, John Dillon addresses Plotinus’ Doctrine of the Sage. Dillon notes that it is generally agreed that the epicentre of Plotinus’ ethical theory consists of his concept of the nature of the spoudaios (‘the Sage’) and the virtues appropriate to such a figure. Drawing on a breadth of scholarship, Dillon suggests that the Plotinian Sage exhibits more than a passing resemblance to its Stoic counterpart. Dillon contends that, while Plotinus differentiates himself from the Stoics to a significant extent, he nevertheless shares with them a concern for freeing oneself from all manifestations of the passions (apatheia), and from any concern with the phenomena of the physical world that could distract one from attaining the ultimate goal of ‘likeness to God’ (homoiosis theôi). In the third chapter, we move to the Middle Ages. Here, Stephen J. Costello presents an innovative reading of Boethius from a logotherapeutic perspective. Costello begins by addressing the tripartite approach to mental health to be found, he contends, in the work of Plato, Freud and Frankl. Using Frankl’s method of tri-dimensional ontology, Costello offers a reading of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy that purports to

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highlight the relevance of both for contemporary society. For Costello, logotherapy may be defined as any meaning-centred intervention that leads to an attitudinal adjustment. Just such an adjustment, Costello holds, is to be found in Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Maintaining the Christian theme introduced in Chapter Three, in Chapter Four Kevin Sludds turns our attention to Heideggerian phenomenology and its ethical implications. Sludds examines the make-up and meaning of Heidegger’s description of ontological conscience and the distinct points of contact that exist between this and the Christian conception of kerygma as an hermeneutical intuition. The phenomena of formal indicators (formale Anzeige) in Being and Time are detailed and Sludds attempts to show how close Heidegger comes to a Christian interpretation of fallenness by considering the relevance of paradoxes, contracts and doublets. In Chapter Five, Ian Leask notes that Michel Foucault’s later writings on ethics and the ‘care of the self’ have been depicted not only as a kind of post hoc recantation or even apologia, but also as being profoundly out of kilter with the bulk of his more famous archaeological and genealogical analyses of modernity. Leask argues that, by attending more carefully to Michel Foucault’s philosophical relationship with Kant, we can understand his thought as being consistent, coherent and developmental. Leask does not endeavour to ‘simply’ provide a better understanding of Foucault (or Foucault vis-à-vis Kant), he also suggests that the way in which Foucault roots ‘the practical’ in terms of its ‘historical a priori’ provides a crucial corrective to the ahistorical and apolitical myopia of so much contemporary ethical discourse. In a striking appraisal of ethical systems, in Chapter Six William Desmond notes that a frequent practice of ethical reflection is to distinguish different sets of moral value and sometimes to pit one against another. Desmond offers a reflection which is a kind of “step back” from the foreground of such sets or systems of moral value into the sources of the ethical, sources often recessed or taken for granted as we go about the daily practice of ethical life. Desmond calls these sources the “potencies of the ethical”. Among these are numbered the idiotic, the aesthetic, the dianoetic, the eudaimonistic, the transcendental, the transcending and the transcendent. Drawing on Ethics and the Between (Desmond 2001) Desmond explains what each of these means and what they entail. His point is that these potencies enter differently into different ethical systems, sometimes some potencies are repressed, sometimes some are recessed, sometimes certain potencies are in the dominant. Desmond contends that understanding the potencies allows us to look differently at different

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ethical orientations, again say, Christianity or Kantianism or Nietzscheanism, without simply pitting one ethical system against another. The “step back” allows a return to the multiple sources of the ethical in the potencies, sources which can get diversely expressed, inflected, repressed or ignored in different ethical systems. This “step back”, Desmond asserts, would paradoxically help us have something to say about the future of ethics. Turning to the analytical tradition, in Chapter Seven Patrick Quinn offers an analysis of Wittgenstein’s ethical writings. Quinn contends that, while Wittgenstein does not devote a great deal of his philosophical attention to ethics, the little that he does write on the subject makes it clear that ethics is of great importance to his understanding of life generally. Quinn also notes that the religious dimension in Wittgenstein’s understanding of ethics is crucial. For Wittgenstein, Quinn contends, ethics is all pervasive and is a “condition of the world, like logic” (Wittgenstein 1993, 77e). So, Quinn asks, what contributions might Wittgenstein’s thinking make to an ethics of/for the future? For Quinn, apart from its importance to human life and thought, the value of Wittgensteinian ethics is of striking significance. Finally, Quinn contends that Wittgenstein’s view of the supernatural basis of ethics is worthy of significant attention. In Chapter Eight, David McPherson presents a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic approach to bearing and rearing children. On such an approach, the virtues are derived from an account of human nature in that they define what it is to flourish or be fulfilled qua human being. Neo-Aristotelians generally agree that one of the ‘natural ends’ of human beings–as for other living things–is to promote the continuance of the species. This might seem to suggest that to be a flourishing/fulfilled human being one must be a parent, indeed, a good parent. McPherson argues that parenthood is not necessary for human flourishing/fulfillment because we are meaningseeking animals who can have a number of meaningful projects, commitments, or concerns that can be in tension and must be worked out through practical reason. However, a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic does require of every human being the virtue of hospitality in being receptive to the “gift” of life and the virtue of benevolence in promoting human life. For at least some this will involve bearing and rearing children and doing so is a human good. Moreover, family life is an important school for the virtues for parents as well as for children. But further questions remain about whether coming into existence is beneficial, first, for the child, and, secondly, for the wider human community in light of overpopulation concerns. In regard to the first issue, McPherson argues against the

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pessimistic view that it would be better if we were never born and defends the view of human life as a “gift”. The second issue is best approached on a neo-Aristotelian account of practical reason and McPherson suggests what this would look like. In the final chapter, Mary Shanahan continues with a similar theme but turns her attention exclusively to pregnancy and maternity, exploring the notion that pregnancy can be understood to be a mode of ethical development. Drawing on the notions of otherness, the self-Other relation and responsibility, Shanahan argues that, although these notions are conducive to a consideration of pregnancy as a modality of transcendence and ethical development, Levinas does not engage with them in this way. Instead, he chooses to pay attention to the themes of fecundity, paternity and the father-son relationship, showing scant regard for the potency of maternity. Although Levinas argues that the transcendent can be characterised as an “absent presence” and that the Other can be said to be “in” the same, he does not adequately explore these notions through the lenses of either maternity or pregnancy. Thus this chapter seeks to show that the Levinasian ethical framework, and by implication his consideration of transcendence, is somewhat lacking given his apparent overlooking of the ethical potential of maternity and pregnancy. In the era in which we live, critical debate about the future of ethics and, indeed, the ethics of the future is surely essential. Each of the nine contributors has offered an interesting response to the challenge posed by the question mark in the collection’s title but, in the spirit of ethical dialogue, not one has arrived at a ‘case closed’ solution. For this reason, and given the array of subjects and philosophers tackled, it is my hope that this collection will serve as a stimulating invitation to further critical engagement with the ‘how’ of ethics and its future possibilities.

CHAPTER ONE PLATO: THE HUMANITY OF ETHICS COLM SHANAHAN

Introduction Plato’s thinking on the nature of love has been the subject of much scholarly attention because of the pivotal role it plays in his understanding of the nature of the soul, its good, and how this good relates to others. As such, understanding Platonic love will, in turn, shed light on Plato’s conception of ethics. Gregory Vlastos, in his much discussed essay “The Individual as Object of Love in Plato”, argues that Plato takes ethics to involve selfdevelopment by way of deepening and developing one’s level of knowledge. In this account, others are loved because they can assist with this task of self-development. According to Vlastos, Plato’s thinking on love ultimately asserts a utility-based, self-interested drive that does not really relate to loving others per se. More recently, in relation to the Symposium, Frisbee C. C. Sheffield has argued that, since the goal of the members of the symposium is to outline the nature of eros and not interpersonal love (which I take to be a type of philia since it requires love and a genuine concern for another), much of the debate that has arisen in response to Vlastos is misguided (see Sheffield 2012). Conflating these two distinct forms of interaction, she argues, will necessarily lead to confusion and to a misrepresentation of Plato’s thinking. Yet, as I will argue, many of the conclusions drawn by both Vlastos and Sheffield are reached because of a misconstruing of the role that knowledge is assigned by Plato. Indeed, there is much to suppose that, while eros begins as a self-interested drive, there are still grounds for holding that, as our understanding of the good develops, eros for others will become philia. That is, with the advent of new levels of awareness

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regarding beauty, the soul, and the good, the focus of eros ceases to be on a good that is ultimately self-interested and takes as its object a good that is divested within the Platonic love relationship. In relation to the Symposium, the dialogue that I shall be focusing on, it is often taken that the goal of eros is seeing the Form of Beauty, such that this alone is said to be what “all of his previous toils were for” (210e). As such, knowledge should be assigned a significant role in the object of eros but, I will contend, it is misguided to conclude from this that knowledge of Beauty per se is the object of eros. At 212a, for example, we read that upon contemplation of the Form: “it is under these conditions alone…that he will succeed in bringing to birth, not phantoms of virtue…but true virtue”. Contemplating the Form is what generates true virtue and so it is not the case that knowledge of the Form is itself true virtue. This is so as true virtue is said to issue from knowing or contemplating the Form. Therefore, true virtue is something over and above simply knowing the Form of Beauty since it is what is generated as a consequence of knowing such. I will argue that it is this true virtue that is the object of eros and that the possession of this virtue requires interaction with others. My argument shall be outlined as follows: in Section 1, I will outline what Plato takes to be the manner in which virtue is generated. I will suggest that, since beautiful bodies cannot be understood to produce the good that an individual like Socrates is in pursuit of, they alone cannot be an appropriate object of love. In Section 2, I will argue that the reevaluation of bodily beauty goes straight to the core of understanding the good. I will also address, with direct reference to Ralph Wedgwood, how this “transformation” of the good enables the transition from relating to the others through eros to relating to them through philia. In Section 3, I will show how knowledge can be understood to be a component feature of generating true virtue, and I will argue that, as a consequence, eros’ ultimate object is the good of virtuous character. I will also contend that virtuous character is attained in virtuous forms of interacting with others. In so doing, I will analyse Plato’s position regarding the need for a guide in the pursuit of virtue. In addition to this, I will hold throughout that knowledge of the Form of Beauty, vis-à-vis virtuous character, has a direct application to the world.

Section 1: The Value of Loving Bodies While Socrates-Diotima1 has many things to say about the features of love, I shall primarily be concerned with how love relates to coming to know the Form of Beauty. Taken as a whole, Socrates-Diotima’s account

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of love is, one might suggest, as perplexing as it is insightful. At 199c5, Socrates questions Agathon’s account of love with a view to showing the weaknesses therein. However, he also does so in order to outline a necessary feature of love. Socrates attempts to show that when an individual loves something, the object of his love is not something which the lover possesses (see 200a10-b1). From this conclusion, Socrates goes on to hold that love, as a fundamental aspect of the soul, reveals that the soul is itself inherently “lacking”. This lack, Socrates-Diotima goes on to state, is responsible for the promulgation of all of our longings and is also the cause of the quest for both knowledge and the good. The desire to possess the good further reveals that this lack refers to an inability to maintain possession of the good. As such, this arduous task of pursuing the good is responsible for our pursuit of happiness and this desire for happiness is, in turn, what precipitates both “the supreme love and treacherous love” (205d2). The good and happiness are what motivate love and they lead to the activity of acquiring the objects of love. That is, motivation springs forth from the lack that is inherent to the soul and so the objects that are thought to generate both happiness and the good become the objects of love’s pursuits. Ultimately, these objects are what Socrates-Diotima suggest will be possessed when a person comes to know the Form of Beauty. In effect, all of the “previous toils [of love] were for” (210e5-211a) this supreme object of love: the Form of Beauty in itself. Yet, this achievement, the climax of the ascent of love, begins in the physical world and its initial object is physical bodies and the desire for such. This desire for bodies will be considered, at various stages of the ascent, to be something that ought to be avoided (210b), and, at 210b5, it is stated that the beauty of bodies is a “slight thing” because the beauty in the soul is “more valuable than beauty of the body”. Yet, as I will show, a more accurate reading of the text suggests that this should not be interpreted as a negation of the physical body’s value. Or, more accurately put, in this account, Plato propounds the notion that the body can be a component feature of an appropriate object of love. Socrates-Diotima outlines the manner in which the ascent begins in the physical and how the lover, if he “leads him [his beloved]2 correctly” (210a5-b1), enters into a process of educating the beloved in virtue, in the ways in which “young men become better men” (210c1-c5). Love, it has been stated, is not love of beauty but of “procreation and giving birth in the beautiful” (206e5). It is by this process of generation or regeneration that human beings and animals are thought to possess their own qualities.

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Socrates-Diotima holds that physical bodies exist by way of the body continually regenerating itself and, as such, an old man is distinct from the person he was as a young man (207d5-e1). This process of educating the beloved, I will argue, is one by which the guide can generate within his beautiful beloved and, in so doing, maintain the possession of his virtuous character. At 207e Socrates-Diotima states that “its traits, habits, opinions, desires, pleasures” are continually renewed afresh and so the nature or quality of a character can change in a person. In the case mentioned above, positive changes occur when one person pursues knowledge of virtue with the assistance of another. The ascent to knowledge of the Form therefore represents the advent of new types of knowledge which will in turn allow the person making the ascent to develop their virtuousness. Since knowledge here refers to a process of “possessing” a particular character, it follows that new concepts will allow a person to transform the quality of their character. Additionally, since these concepts are at the very least brought into clearer focus by the education that is inherent in the ascent, it follows that the world vis-à-vis beauty is brought into being by the individual’s ability to consider (and reconsider) that which is thought to be beautiful. For example, as referred to above, the first “step” on the ascent refers to loving one body, then to loving all bodies, and then to the view that the beauty of bodies has little significance compared to the beauty of the soul. Crucial to an understanding of why the body’s beauty is “devalued” is the following: this devaluing of the body should lead to the development of desires that do not take the body to be their object. This means that Socrates-Diotima takes the new conceptual development to be matched or marked by a corresponding conative achievement.3 The notion of conceptual development is intrinsically linked to desire which also shows that progress on the ascent is not limited to the development of knowledge or concepts. The lover of beauty must be a lover of wisdom (since “Wisdom is actually one of the most beautiful things” (204b)) but, since both are taken to refer to more than simply knowing, it is clear that eros will involve going beyond a purely epistemic frame of reference. Desires themselves are cultivated on the ascent and so the development of knowledge is always considered from the perspective of knowledge being attained by an embodied soul. That is, a soul that has the capacity to generate vice,4 and so the good outlined is, in turn, the good of an embodied soul. Therefore, with the advent of new levels of knowledge regarding the soul’s good, the “task” becomes living in a way that adheres to the new valuation placed on beautiful objects.

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It is from this perspective that “character”/qualities relate to “possession”, where possession means the continual production of both concepts and character/qualities. As Sheffield cogently notes: “[i]f we desire to possess good things and happiness, or anything at all for that matter, this is something that must be realized in various actions and productions if it is to be had at all” (Sheffield 2006, 109-110; see also: 105, 107, and 1125).6 As such, concepts and knowledge are being generated by individuals possessed of eros. The embodied soul, therefore, may develop the ability to generate beautiful ideas. However, these ideas– which in turn lead to the new conative stances to the world–do not suggest that the conative force of the new concept extinguishes that of a previous conceptual framework. Indeed, since the pursuit of beauty in the bodily sense (being pregnant in body) is a characteristic of the embodied soul, and since each quality of the embodied soul must be continually generated to be possessed, it follows that if one concept/desire is to take precedence over another it must be consciously made to do so. Therefore to say that Socrates, for example, is a just man is to say much more than his knowledge is such that he only desires good for others. Rather, he has the fortitude to allow his knowledge to generate a desire for good within himself to such a degree that this desire takes precedence over his other desires. This suggests that goodness of character does not consist in the removal of desires per se but in the ability to curtail one type of desire in favour of the pursuit of another. It seems reasonable then to suggest that, for one reason or another, Socrates is drawn to the beauty of Alcibiades’ body. That being stated, it is also evident from the text that Socrates, despite having the opportunity to receive sexual gratification from Alcibiades, was not willing to engage in such activity (at 219c, for example, Alcibiades states that Socrates treated him as would a “father or elder brother”). Alcibiades notes his astonishment at being rejected by Socrates, stating: “how completely full he…[Socrates] is…of moderation” (216e1). This example brings two points into clearer view: (1) that it is Socrates’ ability to exercise moderation that makes him virtuous, and, (2) that the need for temperance or moderation indicates the presence of a desire that requires virtue to be exacted over it. Such activity is indeed an instance of virtue and, by this very process, Socrates can be said to be virtuous due to actively generating his virtuous character. While the love of bodies remains, the task of maintaining virtuous character is such that these desires are not permitted to corrupt virtue. Beautiful bodies, as with all beautiful objects, are to be valued with reference to how they relate to the production of the good. However, it is simply the case that sexual gratification is an inadequate “object” of Socrates’ love, hence,

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he forgoes the sexual pleasures offered to him by Alcibiades and, in so doing, maintains his own virtuous character. Socrates desires beauty in order to reproduce–and thereby generate the good–but since this beauty refers to the soul, it would not be appropriate for him to engage in sexual activity. Instead, he attempts to educate Alcibiades, which facilitates the maintenance of his own virtue and presents the possibility of generating virtue in another (Alcibiades).7 I must stress that it is not the case that Socrates does not value the beauty of Alcibiades’ body. It is rather that his eros for beauty, knowledge and virtuous character has developed an understanding of the good such that the physical is not sufficient to fulfil his desires. Indeed, bodies should be valued and interacted with appropriately, hence Socrates-Diotima refers to the guide leading correctly towards the Form of Beauty (210). In other words, Socrates’ actions should be in keeping with the value that he knows the body has and, as a result, he will no longer be a slave to the passions of his body.8 Love for bodies, in this regard, is love for the embodied soul’s virtuous character. This demonstrates that the motivational force of Socrates’ eros can be deployed in a manner that is sensitive to the knowledge that he has attained, and towards virtuous interaction. After all, it remains the case the Socrates is very much drawn to the raucous and beautiful Alcibiades. Such attributes suggest that it is quite unlikely that Socrates is drawn to the beauty of Alcibiades’ character.9

Section 2: Bodies, Self-interestedness and the Form of Beauty It could be argued that Socrates’ interest in Alcibiades is motivated by the opportunity to exercise moderation. However, it is evident from the text that Socrates went much further than this, for he also tried to educate him. At 216a5 Alcibiades states that Socrates has caused him: “to admit that although there’s much that I lack myself, it is myself I neglect, and do the Athenians’ business”. This is precisely the type of education that Socrates-Diotima prescribes between a lover and his beloved. Yet, the reference to self-neglect also seems to bear a heavy resemblance to Socrates-Diotima 205e, where it is stated that the good is “what belongs” to a person. I suggest, therefore, that when Alcibiades states that he is neglecting himself this should be read as his recognition (admittedly, a rather unreflective one) that he is neglecting the pursuit of the good. That this is indeed the case, and that Socrates’ efforts do not lead to Alcibiades’ betterment, is confirmed when he states that: “I forcibly stop my ears and

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I’m off, as if I were running away from the Sirens” (216a5). It is for this very reason that Alcibiades, in contrast to Socrates yet by the same means, can be thought of as not being a virtuous person. Indeed, that virtue and the good are things that require continuous effort suggests that what is required is not a fleeting appreciation of the object of eros but rather, in some sense, a “commitment to being virtuous” and thereby of generating the good. Eros is ultimately bound up with knowledge since it pursues beauty, and wisdom is one of the most beautiful things. Yet wisdom, in the context set out in the Symposium, seems to have a wider application than simply seeking knowledge or virtue. The relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades (perhaps a case study of the Platonic love relationship gone awry) demonstrates, on the one hand, a frustrated teacher and, on the other hand, a struggling student. Their relationship, I argue, reveals what is meant by Plato’s appeal to giving birth in beauty. The active sense of possessing beauty, as stated, refers to the very process of generating virtue and wisdom, or, put differently, of being beautiful in soul. In the case of Alcibiades, he is “amazingly proud of the way I looked” (217a) and the opportunities that he believes it can afford him: namely, possession of the wisdom that he perceives in Socrates. As Socrates correctly identifies: “you’re trying to get hold of truly beautiful things in return for only apparently beautiful ones, and you have in mind a true exchange of ‘gold for bronze’” (219a). This might be more problematic for Alcibiades than it first appears. For one thing, the beauty of bodies (including his own) is considered by Socrates-Diotima to be less important than the beauty associated with the soul, namely virtue. As such, Alcibiades’ pride could, in large part, be what prevents him from progressing on the ascent. This implies that the ascent is concerned with knowledge of the Form of Beauty but it also indicates the importance of considering the implications of knowledge for the person who attains it. In other words, living in a way that is sensitive to this knowledge is a component feature of this “knowledge”. If the final goal of eros involves coming to knowledge of the Form of Beauty then such knowledge must generate a reconceptualization not only of beauty but also of what it means to be beautiful. While Ralph Wedgwood has many cogent insights in relation to the Symposium, his suggestion regarding the four modes of relating to beauty– outlined in the following quote–cannot be applied here: “happiness consists in instantiating the Form of Beauty, in making active efforts to maintain and renew one’s instantiation of the Form of Beauty, in creating instantiations of the Form of Beauty, in loving and admiring instantiations of the Form of Beauty” (Wedgwood 2009, 318). For one thing if a person

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admires their own physical beauty, as Alcibiades does, it may impede their development on the ascent. For another, it is not clear from these four stances how Alcibiades ought to value his own beauty. In addition, this is another sense in which knowing or coming to know the Form of Beauty has a direct relationship with the world in and through virtuous character. This means that pursuing beauty can lead to “the supreme love and treacherous love” (205d2). And so any “ethics of eros”,10 therefore, will involve: (i) commitment to being virtuous, (ii) coming to an understanding of what, exactly, is being pursued, and (iii) allowing this knowledge to inform desires. As already suggested, being “committed to being” (wise or beautiful) is what distinguishes Socrates’ eros from Alcibiades’ since he is willing to live by his knowledge and Alcibiades is not. It is this active sense of possession that allows character traits to be possessed. Such possession also generates reflection on the nature of beauty, the good, and how both are attained; this allows Socrates to value each type of beauty according to its due. Socrates generates his virtue and wisdom, things associated with the beauty of soul, and yet he can still appreciate the beauty of Alcibiades’ body. Physical beauty per se–either literally being beautiful, as Alcibiades is, or the perception of such–will not generate the good or virtue. Therefore, it is not knowledge or perception of Beauty that elicits beauty of the soul but, rather, it is the content of desires and actions in response to Beauty which generates virtuous character. The argument that contemplation is inadequate for the purposes of the ascent is also to be found in Price, who states that: “[c]ontemplation (Symp. 210d4) and looking (212a2) cannot be selfcontained activities when their objects are the moral, or practical, Forms” (Price 1989, 51). Physical beauty is thus best considered a suggestion of the good since it can prompt a virtuous response. Therefore if eros begins as an attempt to attain the “good” of sexual pleasure, such self-interestedness needs likewise to be tempered by the degree to which its emphasis is shifted. Socrates values beauty appropriately and wishes to generate beautiful ideas but, if eros is the pursuit of a subjective good, would not Socrates have been better off to find a more worthy partner than Alcibiades? Therefore, it would be misguided to argue that since eros begins as a self-interested drive that it must remain so, especially when it comes to loving others.11 Yet it seems evident that Socrates, along with knowing what value should be placed on physical beauty, is also very much concerned with showing Alcibiades the same. Alcibiades’ beauty might act as a catalyst for Socrates’ musings but it is quite clear that Socrates attempts to share his insights regarding beauty and the manner in which it should be valued

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with him.12 Indeed, valuing beauty seems to imply, on the one hand, cognition and the tempering of desires, and, on the other hand, in the application of such, actively generating one’s own good–the good of being virtuous–while at the same time, and perhaps as a condition of the said, attempting to share this good with another.13 By this very process, and in shifting its emphasis, eros for the beloved becomes philia.14 This new transition is vital in understanding Plato’s thinking on the development involved in the ascent to the Form of Beauty. The original object of eros was thought to be a self-interested pursuit of the good of sexual pleasure but, with the resultant revaluation of the physical body, the demise of eros is not ushered in. Rather, the all-encompassing desire that was directed toward the beautiful body begins to be directed towards knowledge of the Form of Beauty.15 Philia allows for individuals to assist one another in the development of their knowledge corresponding to their current stage on the ascent. Such a sharing, and the orientation of eros towards a new understanding of the good, in addition to being evident from the education that Socrates-Diotima prescribes, is also intuited by Alcibiades when he states of his fellow symposiasts: “you’ve all shared in the madness and Bacchic frenzy of philosophy” (218a). The philosophical lover seeks to generate in beauty. He does so with an understanding of the many incarnations of beauty, which brings about the ability to generate in beauty. Socrates can perceive the Form of Beauty as an instance in Alcibiades’ body and so he gives birth in the presence of the Form when he is with him. Yet, knowledge per se could not be the sole objective since Socrates lives by this knowledge, thereby generating his virtuous character, but he also attempts to generate such in Alcibiades’ soul. As such, Socrates, in the manner outlined, attempts to generate beautiful qualities within Alcibiades and so is committed to both knowing the Form and acting on this knowledge.16 The physical beauty that is within the world can be “added” to and hence the very processes and activities of eros are engendered. Therefore, all beauty is valued–hence it relates to the good–but the attempts to generate in beauty can be understood as the effort to move away from what might be termed “actualised beauty” in the pursuit of yet to be realised levels of beauty. Therefore, the philosophical lovers, in and through their acts of philosophizing, generate higher levels of virtuous interaction which are, in turn, predicated on higher levels of knowledge. Moreover, since valuing knowledge and virtuous interaction are intrinsically related there is no need to suggest that one should take precedence over the other.

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Therefore, when Sheffield states that “The proper end of eros is the Form of Beauty and persons or things are loved insofar as they instantiate that true beauty” (Sheffield 2012, 118), she does not acknowledge the fact that knowledge is pursued to generate true virtue, that which issues from knowing the Form of Beauty. Also, when she states that instances of the Form of Beauty “at the very least includes an instrumental role” (Sheffield 2012, 121), she overlooks the manner in which this instrumental role acts as a muse for Socrates (which will lead him to simultaneously educate Alcibiades). Therefore, the instrumental character is in place but, on my reading, this cannot be completely self-serving. Indeed, it is with the surpassing of this self-interestedness that a concept of a shared good is generated.

Section 3: Realising the Need for Teachers I have argued that progressing towards knowledge of the Form of Beauty involves: (1) coming to re-evaluate objects of beauty; (2) Socrates–a lover of beauty–valuing beauty in all of its manifestations; and, (3) Socrates generating beauty in all of its manifestations, both in himself and in others. The latter point suggests that, in the case of the “guide”, the process of generating in beauty–that is, the attempt to instantiate an instance of beauty–is itself a virtuous project. As such, knowledge can be understood to provide a grounding for the very possibility of virtuous action. That said, there is reason to suppose that knowledge should not be understood to be the “complete” object of love. That is, knowledge is rather a component feature of the broader term “virtuous character” which is the object of love. It is important to note that development on the ascent requires knowledge of what good is most suited to the soul. Moreover, developing knowledge of this good will, in turn, involve developing knowledge of the soul itself since the good, in this sense, is the good of the soul. However, there is no suggestion of a Form of the soul in Plato and, therefore, any knowledge of the soul and its good will involve something more than contemplation. That is, any suggestion of the good will have to correspond to the theory holding true in experience to some extent. This presents something of a moral quagmire that is filled with the possibility of activities that might not be virtuous and so, in this regard, a guide would be most helpful. This point is suggested in simple terms when Socrates states that “I realize that I need teachers” (207c), attesting to the obstacles that isolated acts of contemplation can lead to. Something of this is also

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intuited by Alcibiades when he attempts to persuade Socrates to “teach” him what he lacks.17 The challenge of moving from love of beautiful bodies to love of beautiful minds is, I suggest, that (in addition to the consequence of Alcibiades needing to downgrade his own beauty) the activities of generating children of the body and children of the mind both generate a level of the good. Therefore, what is required to choose between the two is the knowledge of which good is best. This is precisely the type of knowledge that contemplation, in and of itself, cannot generate because of the fact that there is no Form of the soul to contemplate.18 (Hence love, being linked to the soul of the philosopher, is said to be “between wisdom and ignorance” (203e5).) Since contemplation, in and of itself, will not yield knowledge of the soul, it is evident that working with a guide is the most appropriate route to take. As Reeve puts it: “the goal of the elenchus is not just to reach adequate definitions of virtue, however. Its primary aim is moral reform” (Reeve 2006, xiv); where moral reform refers to both members of the Platonic love relationship. Eros begins with the desire for beautiful bodies but virtue develops with the realisation that bodies alone cannot generate the good of the soul. Upon the realization that beautiful bodies are of “slight importance” compared to the soul, the task of philosophizing–using rationality to reevaluate the known to be beautiful objects–is needed and this is precisely the point at which Alcibiades becomes concerned about Socrates’ teaching. The object of Alcibiades’ love, however, could not be understood to be the good of knowing the Form since he does not yet know the Form (although he does seem to apprehend the good that “possession” of Socrates’ knowledge would entail). Knowledge, once the object of eros is understood to be virtuous character, is pursued with the desire to act virtuously already contained within it. Thus, when Socrates– being committed to living virtuously–learned the value of beautiful bodies he came to interact with them accordingly. As such, teachers are required both to teach the nature of the soul and also to provide–in their very personhood–a coherent object of love. This coherent object is, of course, the good of virtuous character. This is precisely the role that Socrates fulfils for Alcibiades since it is this good that the latter wishes to obtain. The role of the guide or teacher is ultimately to cultivate this desire and to assist the beloved with coming to knowledge of the Form of Beauty. In addition, the guide also assists his student by showing him how the application of such knowledge can bring about the ability to generate in beauty.

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Thus, interacting with the good that the guide, as a consequence of his virtuous character and knowledge, possesses provides the beloved with both an experience of beauty that generates the good and, after a process of education, the realization that it is the path of developing this good that is most suited to the nature of the soul. This facilitates the beloved with the knowledge of the limitations of the “good” of a purely sexual pursuit of beauty. Ultimately, this results in the beloved having the capacity to act as a guide to another. This is so as the ascent leads to the capacity to generate beauty both in one’s own soul and in the soul of another. “Possessing” knowledge, with a firm commitment to interacting with others on the basis of this, is what generates the good of virtuous character or, in other words, true virtue. This shows knowledge, virtuous character and the good to be intrinsically related in the sense that all three bear a causal relationship to one another, though they retain their distinctiveness. Consider the following example: if a person desires the good of living in a house, he will need some degree of knowledge regarding architecture but this knowledge alone will not give him a house nor, as such, the good of living within one. He must first put this knowledge to “work”, just as in the case of living by knowledge and “possessing” knowledge in the active sense. Thus the literal work of building the house can be likened to the point at which virtuous character is generated/maintained. However, it is the outcome of the process that generates the house and thereby the good of living there. The virtuous soul, just as was the case with the house, requires knowledge and education to be built/realised. The actions and desire to “possess” the good of the house and the good of a virtuous soul, orientated towards rational desire for development and active engagement with others, are attained with the development of appropriate desires for others. It is the formation of rational desires, desires to possess a virtuous soul, which signifies the good of virtuous character. Thus, while knowledge plays a pivotal role in attaining the good it should not be taken to be the object of love. Rather it is a condition of achieving the object of love; an objective that is synonymous with initially needing and interacting virtuously with a guide and which will, in turn, involve becoming a guide, and interacting virtuously with another.19 Therefore, it is virtuous action that is the object of eros and the very condition of “possessing” the good. All intelligible interaction is, as stated above, predicated upon some conceptual understanding of the object of the experience but true virtue is said to issue from, as per 212a, knowledge or contemplation of the Form. It is not the case that contemplation is itself true virtue. It would therefore seem to be the case that knowledge is but a requirement of the production

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of true virtue. True virtue is the good that is generated from the outcomes of contemplating the Form of Beauty. The ultimate object of love, it turns out, is not simply contemplation of the Form. The object relates to the consequence of this: the ability to generate true virtue. The true object of love is never completely dissociated from the good and, as such, it is the pursuit of the good that is the continuous thread from the ascent’s inception to its completion.

Conclusion Beauty pursued as an object of eros is best understood as a suggestion of the good but it is with regard to the understanding of the good that leads to the type of eros generated. Therefore, Wedgwood is correct in arguing that eros can be a rational desire (see Wedgwood 2009, 306). Yet, what is not at all clear is how a rational desire for the Forms (taken, by Wedgwood, quite rightly, to be intrinsically valuable) comes to inform and underpin interaction with the instances of the Form. It is also evidently the case, as per Socrates-Diotima, that such instances can be generated (see Wedgwood 2009, 318). However, as I have argued, and this is in contrast to Wedgwood, new levels of understanding with regard to Beauty and its value must be related to self-knowledge. As was the case with Alcibiades, admiration of one’s own beauty, in and of itself, is a negative occurrence which leads one away from knowledge of the Form. Eros for the physical beauty of the beloved can, with the right orientation, become philia. Such philia is focused on maintaining and developing both the guide’s and his beloved’s understanding and knowledge of Beauty, virtue and the good. This is situated within a love relationship which pursues “true virtue”, the attainment of which sees the good of both the guide and his beloved. Indeed, in this philia, the eros of both members of the relationship can be thought of as being deployed “in the madness and Bacchic frenzy of philosophy” (218a). By focusing on the “how” of virtue, Plato demonstrates how the good of the guide relates directly to the good of his beloved. Knowledge, in the active sense, is the “how” of virtue which, in turn, leads to the attainment and production of the good. Pursuing and possessing this good require knowledge and virtuous interactions with others. This line of thinking is quite congruent with Socrates’ claims that: “the greatest good for a man [is] to discuss virtue every day...and [test himself] and others” (Apology, 38a), and, “I was always concerned with you, approaching each one of you like a father or an elder brother to persuade you to care for virtue” (Apology 31b; this is

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also reminiscent of Symposium 219c, cited above). Plato’s analysis of eros provides justification for these Socratic claims. Moreover, the Socratic dialectic, in pursuing and developing virtue, can itself be understood to be a virtuous project once the object of eros is taken to be virtuous character. Such character is predicated upon a commitment to living virtuously based on the findings of this knowledge, and, therefore, while the end goal of eros involves knowledge, it would be a mistake to hold that knowledge is the object of eros.

References Aristotle, 1995. Metaphysics. Trans. W. D. Ross in ed. Jonathan Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Volume II, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1552-1728. Chanter, Tina, 1995. Ethics of Eros: Irigaray’s Rewriting of the Philosophers, London & New York: Routledge. Cooper, John. M., ed., 1997. Plato: Complete Works, Indianapolis: Hackett. —. 1999. Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cornford, F. M., 1967. The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays, New York: Cambridge University Press. Dover, Kenneth, 1978. Greek Homosexuality, London: Duckworth. Ferrari, G. R. F., 1987. Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato’s Phaedrus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freidländer, Paul, 1969. Plato, Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans. Hans Meyerhoff, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gould, Thomas, 1981. Platonic Love, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Griswald, Charles L. Jr., 1996. Self-knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Guthrie, W. K. C., 1968. The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, London: Routledge. Halperin, David M., 1990. ‘Why is Diotima a Woman?’ in ed. David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love, London & New York: Routledge, 113-151. Hawthorne, Susan, 1993. ‘Diotima Speaks Through the Body’, in ed. BatAmi Bar, Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle (SUNY Series), New York: State University of New York Press, 83-97. Irigaray, Luce, 1994. ‘Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato’s Symposium, Diotima’s Speech’, in ed. Nancy Tuana, Feminist Interpretations of

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Plato (Re-Reading the Canon), University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 181-195. Irwin, Terence, 1995. Plato’s Ethics, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 1979. Plato’s Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jaeger, Werner, 1989. Paideia, The Ideals of Greek Culture: Volume II, In Search of the Divine Centre. Trans. Gilbert Highet, Oxford et al: Oxford University Press. Kahn, Charles H., 1998. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form, Cambridge et al: Cambridge University Press. Pappas, Nickolas, 2003. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and the Republic, London & New York: Routledge. Plato, 1991. The Dialogues of Plato: Volume 2, Symposium. Trans. R. E. Allen, New Haven & London: Yale University Press. —. 1997a. Symposium. Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, Indianapolis: Hackett, 457-505. —. 1997b. Phaedrus. Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, Indianapolis: Hackett, 506-556. —. 1974. Republic. Trans. Desmond Lee, The Republic, London: Penguin (second edition). Price, A. W., 1989. Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Reeve, C. D. C., 2006. Plato on Love: Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus, Alcibiades, with Selections from Republic and Laws, London: Hackett Publishing. Rist, John M., 1964. Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus and Origen, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sayers, Sean, 1999. Plato’s Republic: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Shanahan, Colm, 2012. ‘Plato’s Symposium: Virtue as a Lesser Good?’, Philosophia 42, 106-120. Sheffield, Frisbee C. C., 2006. Plato’s Symposium, Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 2012. ‘The Symposium and Platonic Ethics: Plato, Vlastos, and a Misguided Debate’, Phronesis 57, 117-141.

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Vlastos, Gregory, 1981. ‘The Individual as Object of Love in Plato’, in Platonic Studies, Princeton: Princeton University Press (second edition). Wedgwood, Ralph, 2009. ‘Diotima’s Eudaemonism: Intrinsic Value and Rational Motivation in Plato’s Symposium’, Phronesis 54, 297-325.

CHAPTER TWO PLOTINUS’ DOCTRINE OF THE SAGE IN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT1 JOHN DILLON

It is generally agreed that the core element, or culminating point, of Plotinus’ ethical theory consists of his concept of the nature of the spoudaios, a term which we may fairly render as “the Sage”,2 and the virtues appropriate to such a figure. The Plotinian Sage exhibits more than a passing resemblance to the Stoic Sage, as initially presented to the world by such thinkers as Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus some five centuries previously, though Plotinus is concerned to differentiate himself from the Stoics in significant respects–as we can see him doing so in Ennead I 4, for example. However, he does share with the Stoics a concern for freeing oneself from all manifestations of the passions (apatheia), and from any concern with the phenomena of the physical world (including the fates of one’s country, city, or nearest and dearest) that could cause one distress, or distract one from attaining the overriding aim (telos) of “likeness to God” (homoiosis theôi). Now this is undeniably a pretty austere, not to say self-centred, ideal, and my previous attribution of it to Plotinus3 has called forth a number of protests since,4 chiefly seeking to adduce as a counter-example aspects of Plotinus’ actual practice, as recounted by Porphyry in his Life. I do not actually see much of a problem here, however, I must say. Certainly, Plotinus administered in Rome a large household full of (probably aristocratic) orphans, at the behest (presumably) of the aristocratic lady Gemina,5 and he showed impressive concern for various of his companions, not least Porphyry himself, when he was afflicted by depression, as Porphyry recounts himself (VPlot. 11. 11-19), in the context of a chapter devoted to attestations of Plotinus’ unusual degree of insight into character. So there is no doubt that Plotinus was personally a considerate and caring individual, who was prepared to take an active part in the social life of his time and place. The question is, though, whether this constitutes

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necessarily a contradiction with his professed philosophical position. I must say that I do not see that it does, but there is quite a school of thought which considers that I have been rather too austere and one-sided on this topic. What I would like to do on this occasion is to go over the arguments that can be advanced on either side of this controversy, to see whether we can find common ground, while setting Plotinus in his due context against the background of Stoic and Platonist ethical theory up to his time. In this connection, I will make use chiefly of such tractates as IV 8 [6], I 2 [19], I 4 [46], III 2-3 [47-8], and I 1 [53]. Of course, Plotinus may say anything at any time, but this spread of key tractates may, I think, be relied upon to give a fair picture of the range of his views. We may commence with the famous passage which begins IV 8: Often I have woken up out of the body to myself and have entered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a beauty wonderfully great and felt assurance that then most of all I belonged to the superior realm; I have actually lived the best life and come to identify with the divine; and set firm in it I have come to that supreme actuality, setting myself above all else in the realm of Intellect. Then, after that rest in the divine, when I have come down from Intellect to discursive reasoning (logismos), I am puzzled as to how I ever come down, and how my soul has come to be in the body, when it is what it has shown itself to be by itself, even when it is in the body.” (1. 1-11, trans. Armstrong, slightly emended)

This is, certainly, a relatively “early” work–if anything can be considered “early” in the case of a man who did not begin to write until he was about the age of fifty–but it reveals an attitude to the world of sense that I do not believe Plotinus ever modified in later life. It is the position of one who does not consider himself to be properly of this world at all, so that any relations he may perforce have with it should be preferably at arm’s length, so far as that is possible. That said, however, it is remarkable to what an extent, as one reads on, IV 8 turns out to be an essentially “world-affirming” work. Plotinus is concerned here, as he makes plain straightway, with the apparent contradiction in Plato’s works between the portrayal of the soul’s entry into the world as a “fall”, as in the Phaedo or the Phaedrus, and the praise of the world as a “blessed God”, into which the soul is inserted as part of the cosmic plan of the Demiurge, in the Timaeus. This does indeed represent a tension, both in the thought of Plato and in that of Plotinus, which leads to much interesting speculation throughout the Plotinian corpus.

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Even in this tractate, however, lest we should get too carried away with enthusiasm for the physical world and the role of the soul in it, Plotinus reminds us in the last chapter (8), not only that we are not properly of this world, but that there is a portion or aspect of our soul that never does descend into this realm: And, if one ought to dare to express one’s own view more clearly, contradicting the opinion of others, even our soul does not altogether descend, but there is always something of it in the intelligible; but if the part which is in the world of sense-perception becomes dominant, or rather if it is itself dominated and thrown into confusion (sc. by the body), it prevents us from perceiving the things which the upper part of the soul contemplates. For what is grasped by the intellect reaches us when it arrives at perception in its descent, for we do not know everything which happens in any part of the soul before it reaches the whole soul…For every soul has something which is below, in the direction of the body, and of what is above, in the direction of intellect. (Trans. Armstrong, slightly emended)

All of us, Plotinus makes clear, have a higher consciousness, but in most of us it remains potential, being above our focus of awareness, even as many humbler processes involving the lower soul, such as processes of growth or digestion, remain below it. For the achieved Sage such as Plotinus, however, this “undescended” level of the soul is where his consciousness rests by preference, when he is not distracted by worldly concerns–and even when he is, as Porphyry makes clear in his Life of Plotinus, ch. 8, attending to the needs of others, “he never, while awake, relaxed his intense concentration upon intellect.” It must have been a slightly uncanny experience to observe the great philosopher attending with great solicitude to the concerns of his orphan charges–helping them with their homework, perhaps–when one knew, as did Porphyry, that his real self was focused elsewhere. And this is indeed a state of mind that Plotinus had plainly developed in himself, whether by rigorous training or by some divine dispensation, which colours his whole attitude to life. I select, more or less at random, some other passages illustrating this, one from an early work (VI 9 [9]), the other from a late one (I 1 [53])–placed by Porphyry, as it happens, at the end and at the beginning respectively of his edition–which illustrate this state of mind further. First, VI 9, 3, 18-27: One must lift oneself up from the things of sense which are the last and the lowest, and become freed of all evil, since one is striving towards the Good, and ascend to the principle (arkhé) in oneself and become one from many, when one is going to behold the Principle and the One. We must,

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Chapter Two 6 then, become intellect, and make over our soul in trust to intellect, and establish it firmly in that, in order that what it sees the soul, in its wakened state (egrégoruia), may take into itself, and by means of it come to a vision of the One, bringing to it nothing of sense, nor allowing anything from that source into intellect, but with pure intellect and the highest element of intellect to behold the purest thing of all.

This is indeed a most eloquent description of the process of transcendental meditation in which the prospective Sage must engage, but there is as yet no explicit distinction made between what in later tractates are distinguished as “the inner man” or “true man”, and the outer, or “other” man,7 that lower part of the soul, together with the combination of soul and animate body (the synamphoteron), which Plotinus increasingly came to regard as alien to his true self. This, however, comes out more clearly in the second passage I have chosen, I 1. 3, 21-6: I mean that one part (sc. of the soul) is separate, the part that makes use of the body (sc. as an instrument), and the other is mixed in one way or another with body and itself on a level with what it uses, in which case it will be the task of philosophy to turn this lower part towards the using part, and draw the using part away from what it uses, insofar as the connection is not absolutely necessary, so that it may not always even have to use it.

Here Plotinus is far clearer that there are two types or levels of soul, related to each other, but with very different relationships to the body with which they are associated. For him, it is the former that is the true self, the true subject of eudaimonia, and it is on this point that he finds a substantial bone to pick with the Stoics, with whom otherwise–in particular in respect of determinism and the self-sufficiency of virtue–he has much in common. As regards determinism, Plotinus’ position is an interesting one, as it emerges particularly in Enn. III 2-3. At first sight, he really has no quarrel with the Stoic position. For him, as he makes plain at the outset of the treatise, this physical realm is simply a debased copy, projected onto a spatio-temporal matrix, of a perfect, intelligible archetype. Where all at the archetypal level is coordinated and harmonious, at the level of the copy parts get in the way of other parts, and conflicts and contradictions arise. Yet all is still governed by a single cosmic Logos, and in that way is still the best world possible, given that, as he says in III 2, 2 (9-10), the intelligible realm was not of a sort to be the ultimate existent: there had to be a process of emanation proceeding downwards from it, through Soul and Nature to Matter, until all possibilities of creation are exhausted.

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A striking version of Plotinus’ vision of the structure of the world is to be found in the last chapter of the whole treatise (III 3, 7), which seems worth quoting at length. It comprises the image of the Great Tree, one of Plotinus’ more notable “dynamic images”: And since the higher exists, there must be the lower as well. The universe is a thing of variety, and how could there be an inferior without a superior, or a superior without an inferior? We cannot complain about the lower in the higher; rather, we must be grateful to the higher for giving something of itself to the lower. In a word, those that would like evil driven out from the universe would drive out providence itself. What would providence have to provide for? Certainly not for itself or for the Good: when we speak of a providence above, we mean an act upon something below. That which resumes all under a unity is a principle in which all things exist together, and the single thing is all. From this principle, which remains internally unmoved, particular things push forth as from a single root which never itself emerges. They are a branching into part, into multiplicity, each single outgrowth bearing its trace of the common source. Thus, phase by phase, there is finally the production into this world; some things close still to the root, others widely separate in the continuous progression until we have, in our metaphor, bough and crest, foliage and fruit. (III 3, 7. 1-17, trans. MacKenna, slightly emended)

All this, then, is fully accepted by the Sage. He understands that, in this world, there prevails an ineluctable sequence of causes and effects, many most unwelcome to any given individual, including himself, but all necessary for the fulfilment of this world as a world, that is, as a full spectrum of all possibilities, arranged in the best way possible under the circumstances. To this extent, the Sage accepts the world, and exercises concern for the maintenance of its good order. But this is not to say that he feels pity for the misfortunes of those who suffer, or indeed permits himself the exercise of any passion in their regard. In another of Plotinus’ powerful images, unveiled earlier in the same tractate (III 2 [47] 15, 43-62), human affairs are to be regarded as no more than a stage play: Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such a spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the soul within but the shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing.

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Chapter Two All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life, and never perceiving that, in his weeping and in his serious activities (spoudaia) alike, he is but at play (paizôn); to handle serious matters seriously is reserved for the serious man: the other kind of man is himself a plaything (paignion). Those incapable of behaving seriously (spoudazein) read seriousness into playthings which correspond to their own frivolous nature. Anyone that joins in their playing and so comes to look on life with their eyes must understand that by lending himself to such play (paidia) he has laid aside his own character. If Socrates himself takes part in the play, then it is the outer Socrates that plays. We must remember too, that we cannot take tears and laments as proof that anything is wrong; children cry and whimper when there is nothing amiss. (Trans. MacKenna, emended)

This is pretty stern stuff, giving short shrift to the panorama of human misfortunes (note the insistent antithesis in the latter part between spoudaios/spoudazô and paignion/paizen/paidia). Plotinus’ use of this essentially Stoic-Cynic trope of life as a play, however, reveals just how he differs from the Stoic position, a distinction developed more explicitly in the immediately preceding tractate, I 4 [46], On Well-Being. It is all very well, he points out, for the Stoics to maintain the impassivity of the Sage in such an environment as the Bull of Phalaris, but they precisely do not postulate a level of soul which could rise above the Bull, and look down impassively on the lower soul and body writhing in agony within it (I 4, 13): The good man’s activities will not be hindered by changes of fortune, but will vary according to what change and chance brings; but they will all be equally fine, and, perhaps, finer for being adapted to circumstances (peristatikai). As for his activities on the contemplative front, some of them which are concerned with particular matters will possibly be hindered by circumstances–those, for instance, which require research and investigation. But the ‘greatest object of study’8 is always ready to hand and always with him, all the more if he is in the so-called ‘Bull of Phalaris’–which it is silly to call pleasant, though certain people keep on saying that it is. For according to their philosophy that which says that its state is pleasant is the very same thing that is in pain; according to ours, that which suffers pain is one thing, but there is another which, even while it is compelled to accompany that which suffers pain, remains in its own company, and will not fall short of the vision of the universal Good. (Trans. Armstrong, slightly emended)

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This distinctive position of Plotinus, by which he differentiates himself from the Stoics, is vividly illustrated somewhat earlier in the tractate (Chapter 8, 1-6), by the striking image of the lantern in the storm: As far as the Sage’s own pains go, when they are very great, he will bear them as long as he can; when they are too much for him, they will bear him off.9 He is not to be pitied in his pain; his light burns within, like the light in a lantern when it is blowing hard outside with a great fury of wind and storm.

This postulation of a higher soul which is the true repository of the moral personality is a development of remarkable boldness, and one might beg leave to doubt how far it represents an achieved reality for Plotinus, as opposed to an aspiration. It is to be noted that, at the time of composing this tractate, Plotinus was already suffering from the rather nasty disease that was soon to kill him (cf. Porph. VP 2), which adds some poignancy to his remarks here.10 However, such an attitude is not conducive to anything like other-centred concern on a Judaeo-Christian model. Consider his remarks, just below in the same chapter, on this issue (ll. 18-24): And when the pains are those of others? (To sympathise with them) would be a weakness for our soul. Witness to this is the fact that we think it something gained if we do not know about other people’s sufferings, and even regard it as a good thing if we die first, not considering it from their point of view but from our own, trying to avoid being grieved. This is just our weakness, which we must get rid of, and not leave it there and then be afraid of its coming over us. And if anyone claims that it is our nature to feel pain at the misfortunes of those close to us (oikeioi),11 he should realise that not all are this way inclined, and that in any case it is the business of virtue to raise ordinary nature to a higher level, something better than most people are capable of; and it is better not to give in to what ordinary nature normally finds terrible.

Such a passage as this is the justification for a remark of mine in my essay in the Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, which has caused some reproachful comment since:12 “One feels of Plotinus that he would have gladly helped an old lady across the road – but he might very well fail to notice her at all. And if she were squashed by a passing wagon, he would remain quite unmoved.”13 I think now that on balance I would stand over that, with the qualification that it does not deny to Plotinus a general providential concern for sublunary affairs, which would include a preference that wagon-drivers should look where they are going; but basically one must

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recognise that such incidents are that envisaged here are paignia–even if the old lady concerned were one’s granny. I would like in conclusion to turn to an essential, but remarkable, feature of Plotinus’ doctrine in relation to virtue ethics, to wit, the theory of levels of virtue. There is, of course, an inherent tension in the Platonic tradition, as inherited by Plotinus, between the portrayal of the virtues in Book IV of the Republic as ways of managing the irrational elements of the soul by the reasons–and, by implication, imposing moderation on the passions, rather than striving for their elimination–and the requirement that the Sage free himself from all ties to both the lower elements of the soul and to the physical world, as seems to be the message conveyed by Socrates in the Phaedo. To make matters worse, in the Phaedo (82a), we find a dismissive reference to a level of virtue which is described as demotiké kai politiké, based on ethos and meleté, rather than philosophy and wisdom, which seems to betoken a down-grading of the virtues as set out in the Republic. This apparent contrast gives Plotinus an excuse to postulate two distinct levels of virtue, only the latter of which is proper to the achieved Sage. He addresses this question in Enn. I 2 [19], taking his start (as so often) from an aporia arising out of a Platonic text, in this case the notable passage Theaet. 176a-b: Since this realm here is where evils are, and “they must necessarily haunt this region,” and the soul wants to escape from evils, we must escape from here. What, then, is this escape? “Being made like God”, Plato says. And we become godlike “if we become righteous and holy with the help of wisdom”, and generally in (acquiring) virtue. If, then, we are made like by virtue, the likeness is presumably to a being which itself possesses virtue. And what god would that be? Would it be the one that appears to be particularly characterized by the possession of virtue, that is, the soul of the cosmos and its ruling principle, possessed as it is of a wondrous wisdom? And indeed it is reasonable to assume that it is this principle to which we should become like, seeing as we are here in its cosmos. (I 2. 1, 1-10, trans. Armstrong, slightly emended)

But this is not the end of the problem; it is only the beginning. The first difficulty is that, even if we accept that it is this essentially immanent, demiurgic entity to which we are to liken ourselves, and not a more transcendent, primal God, this entity cannot be thought of as possessing the virtues in their normal “civic” form. After all, it does not face the external circumstances which we mortals face, which would require the exercise of such virtues as courage, or self-control, or justice. The upshot of this argumentation, as arrived at in Chapter 3, is that this being has not

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virtues in our sense, but rather paradigms of virtues, and even the copies of these, by the exercise of which we liken ourselves to it, are not the “civic” virtues, but rather “kathartic”, or “purificatory” analogues of these, as follows (3, 10-21): What then do we mean when we call these other virtues ‘purifications’ (katharseis), and how are we made really like by being purified? Since the soul is bad when it is thoroughly mixed with the body and shares its experiences and has all the same opinions, it will be good and possess virtue when it no longer has the same opinions but acts on its own–that is intelligence and wisdom (noein kai phronein)–and does not share in bodily passions (méte homopathés eié)–this is self-control (sôphronein)–and is not afraid of departing from the body–that is courage (andrizesthai)–and is ruled by reason and intellect, without opposition–this would be justice. It is such a state of soul as this, in which it exercises intellection, and is in this way free from bodily affections, that one would not be wrong in calling ‘likeness to God’. (trans. Armstrong, lightly emended)

So here, then, we have a parallel set of “kathartic” virtues which are more proper to the Sage than the “civic” ones. He sums them up again at the end of Chapter 6 (23-27): So the higher justice in the soul is its activity towards intellect, its selfcontrol is its inward turning to intellect, its courage is its freedom from affections (apatheia), according to the likeness of that to which it looks which is free from affections by nature: this freedom from affections in the soul comes from virtue, to prevent its sharing in the affections of its inferior companion.14 (Trans. Armstrong)

There seems here no room left for any degree of empathy for physical concerns. Having gotten this far, however, Plotinus raises the question, at the end of the treatise (7. 14ff.), “whether the possessor of the greater virtues possesses the lesser ones in actuality (energeiái), or in some other way” (sc. in potentiality). He is plainly unwilling to jettison the civic virtues altogether, but, as he runs through one virtue after another, he is pretty doubtful as to how their coexistence with the kathartic level of virtues would work: Perhaps (the possessor of the higher virtues) will know them, and how much he can get from them, and will act according to some of them as circumstances require (peristatikôs). But when he reaches higher principles and different measures he will act in accordance with these. For instance, he will not make self-control consist in that former observance of measure and limit, but will altogether separate himself, as far as possible, from his

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It seems to me that enough has been said by now to clarify the lineaments of Plotinus’ virtue ethics. His purpose is not so much as to lay down a code of conduct, as, by a mixture of exhortation, reasoning and striking imagery, to create a model of a type of person. This person, the Sage (ho spoudaios), accepts the universe as a rational and necessary emanation from an intelligible archetype (and indeed ultimately from the One itself), and with this archetype the Sage feels himself to be in close communion, even identity, by reason of the fact that the highest element of his personality has not descended from union with the rest of the intelligible realm, and thus in effect administers the physical universe in conjunction with Intellect itself. There is room here for providential concern for the details of the sublunary world, but not for any degree of empathy such as would disturb the Sage’s dispassionate concentration on the higher realm.

References Annas, Julia, 1993. The Morality of Happiness, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aquila, R. E., 1992. ‘On Plotinus and the ‘Togetherness’ of Consciousness’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 30, 7-32. Armstrong, A. H., 1977. ‘Form, Individual and Person in Plotinus’, Dionysius 1, 49-68. Beierwaltes, W., 2001. Das wahre Selbst: Studien zu Plotins Begriff des Geistes und des Einen, Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann Verlag. Blumenthal, H. J., 1971. Plotinus’ Psychology: His Doctrine of the Embodied Soul, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. —. 1993. Soul and Intellect: Studies in Plotinus and Later Neoplatonism, Aldershot: Variorum. Bodeüs, R., 1973. ‘L’autre homme de Plotin’, Phronesis 28, 256-64. Brisson, Luc et al., 1982-92. Porphyre, La Vie de Plotin, 2 volumes, Paris: Vrin. Bussanich, J., 1990. ‘The Invulnerability of Goodness: The Ethical and Psychological Theory of Plotinus’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 6, 151-84.

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Ciapalo, R.T., 1997. ‘The Relation of Plotinian Eudaimonia to the Life of the Serious Man in Treatise I 4 [46]’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71, 489-98. Clark, S., 1996. ‘Plotinus: Body and Soul’, in Gerson 1996, 275-91. Cleary, John J., ed., 1999. Traditions of Platonism: Essays in Honour of John Dillon, Aldershot: Variorum. Corrigan, K., 1985. ‘Body’s Approach to Soul: An Examination of a Recurrent Theme in the Enneads’, Dionysius 9, 37-52. Dillon, John, 1983. ‘Plotinus, Philo and Origen on the Grades of Virtue’ in eds. H. D. Blume & F. Mann, Platoismus und Christentum: Festschrift für Heinrich Dörrie, Münster: Aschendorff, 92-105. —. ‘Singing without an Instrument: Plotinus on Suicide’, Illinois Classical Studies 19, 231-8. —. 1996. ‘An Ethic for the Late Antique Sage’, in Gerson 1996, 315-335. Dombrowski, D., 1987. ‘Asceticism as Athletic Training in Plotinus’, Aufstieg und Niedergang Der Römischen Welt (ANRW) II: 36.1, 70112. Emilsson, E., 1988. Plotinus on Sense-Perception, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferwerda, R., 1984. ‘Pity in the Life and Thought of Plotinus’ in ed. D. T. Runia, Plotinus amid Gnostics and Christians, Amsterdam: Free University Press, 53-72. Gerson, L. P., ed., 1996. The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graeser, A., 1972. Plotinus and the Stoics,. Leiden: Brill. Grmek, M. D., 1992. ‘Les maladies et la mort de Plotin’, in Brisson 1992, 335-53. Gurtler, G., 1988. Plotinus, The Experience of Unity, New York: Lang. Hadot, Pierre, 1963. Plotin ou la simplicité du regard. Paris: Vrin. Himmerich, W., 1959. Eudaimonia: Die Lehre des Plotin von der Selbstverwirklichung des Menschens, Würzburg: Trilsch. Inwood, B., 1985. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kalligas, P., 2000. ‘Living Body, Soul, and Virtue in the Philosophy of Plotinus’, Dionysius 18, 25-37. Kraut, R., 1989. Aristotle on the Human Good, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kristeller, P.O., 1929. Der Begriff der Seele in der Ethik des Plotin, Tübingen: J .C. B. Mohr. McGroarty, K., 2006. Plotinus on Eudaimonia: A Commentary on Ennead I 4, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Murray, J., 1951. ‘The Ascent of Plotinus to God’, Gregorianum 32, 22346. O’Daly, G., 1973. Plotinus’ Philosophy of the Self, Shannon: Irish University Press. O’Meara, D. J., 1975. Structures hiérarchiques dans la pensée de Plotin, Leiden: Brill. Ousager, A., 2004. Plotinus on Selfhood, Freedom and Politics, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Plass, P., 1982. ‘Plotinus’ Ethical Theory’, Illinois Classical Studies 7, 241-59. Rich, A. M. N., 1963. ‘Body and Soul in the Phiosophy of Plotinus’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 1, 1-15. Rist, John M., 1967. Plotinus, The Road to Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 1967. ‘Integration and the Undescended Soul in Plotinus’, American Journal of Philology 88, 410-22. —. 1976. ‘Plotinus and Moral Obligation’, in ed. R. B. Harris, The Significance of Neoplatonism, Norfolk VA: Old Dominion University, 217-33. Schibli, H., 1989. ‘Apprehending our Happiness: Antilepsis and the Middle Soul in Plotinus, Ennead I 4. 10’, Phronesis 34, 205-19. Schniewind, A., 2003. L’éthique du Sage chez Plotin: le paradigme du Spoudaios, Paris: Vrin. —. 2005. ‘The Social Concern of the Plotinian Sage’, in ed. A. Smith, The Philosopher and Society in Late Antiquity, Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 51-64. Schroeder, F. M., 1987. ‘Synousia, Synaisthesis and Synesis: Presence and Dependence in the Plotinian Philosophy of Consciousness’, ANRW II 36.1, 677-99. —. 1997. ‘Plotinus and Aristotle on the Good Life’ in ed. John J. Cleary, The Perennial Tradition of Neoplatonism, Louvain: Louvain University Press, 207-20. Schwyzer, H. R., 1960. ‘Bewusst und Unbewusst bei Plotin’, in Les Sources de Plotin, Entretiens Fondation Hardt 5, 343-70. Smith, A., 1978. ‘Unconsciousness and Quasiconsciousness in Plotinus’, Phronesis 23, 292-301. —. 1999. ‘The Significance of Practical Ethics for Plotinus’, in ed. John J., Traditions of Platonism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 227-236. Song, Euree, 2009. Aufstieg und Abstieg der Seele: Diesseitigkeit und Jenseitigkeit in Plotins Ethik der Sorge, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

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Thedinga, F., 1925. ‘Plotins Schrift über die Glückseligkeit’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 74, 129-54. Warren, E. W. 1964. ‘Consciousness in Plotinus’, Phronesis 9, 83-97. —. 1966. ‘Imagination in Plotinus’, Classical Quarterl 16, 277-85. Wijsenbeek, H., 1985. ‘Man as a Double Being: Some Remarks on Plotinus’, Diotima 13, 172-91.

CHAPTER THREE THE ETHICAL DIMENSION OF BOETHIUS’ THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY: A LOGOTHERAPEUTIC READING1 STEPHEN J. COSTELLO

Philosophy and Therapy: Plato on Mental Health In my view, the primary model of mental health in the West was originally proffered by Plato who, in his Republic, divides the soul (self) into three parts. This triparition was echoed centuries later with Sigmund Freud’s topographical models (conscious, preconscious and unconscious in the first model; id, ego, and superego in the second). This is also the case with Viktor Frankl’s logotherapeutic method of tri-dimensional ontology which construes man as body, mind and spirit. Frankl’s logotherapy may be defined as any meaning-centred intervention that leads to an attitudinal adjustment. In this chapter, I want to suggest that just such an attitudinal adjustment is to be found in Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Plato’s doctrine of anamnesis (remembrance) is a forerunner of the unconscious. Plato stresses the spiritual dimension of the person, which Frankl labels the noölogical, where health resides. Harmony, for Plato as for Frankl, consists in the integration and unity of the disparate parts of the human personality, with all three elements performing their proper function (ergon). In Book Five of the Republic, Plato defines justice as inner harmony. It is man’s real concern and is oriented towards inner events and interests rather than outward actions. Plato likens such selfmastery to a musical score with all three notes on a scale (high, middle and low) being in tune. So too with man: when he orders his soul to the Good (Agathon), to meaning, then the elements of his being will be in concord and unison, “fully one instead of many”, as Plato puts it (Rep., 443d-e), or

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a unitas multiplex as Frankl calls us, following St. Thomas, a unity in multiplicity and diversity. For Plato, disorder is inner strife, an internal civil war (see 443d-e). Justice, by contrast, is health, happiness and harmony; in a word: order. As Plato puts it, such excellence (arête) “is a kind of mental health” (444d). As we engage in an anamnetic quest for the origins and end of our being, emerge from the shadows in the Cave to the sunlight exemplified by the Good, and occasioned by the opening of the soul, come to the divine Ground of Being Itself–which Frankl calls “ultimate meaning”–we arrive at that which is beyond the complete comprehension of mortal man. Mental health, then, would be the absence of a mental disorder, a kind of psycho-spiritual resilience.2 Frankl retrieves and renews this ancient Platonic philosophical tradition with the redeployment of Socratic dialogue in his logotherapy or “healing through reason”. In Frankl’s work, reason is understood as an openness to perceiving and receiving reality rather than the mere act of logical thought or calculation.

Logotherapy The subtitle of Frankl’s first book–penned in a concentration camp–The Doctor and the Soul is “From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy”, implying from the outset that there is a difference between these two disciplines. Logotherapy is a therapy which starts from man’s spirit; it recognises and respects man’s psycho-physico-spiritual unity. Frankl labels it “a psychotherapy in spiritual terms” (Frankl 2004, 29). The aim of logotherapy initially was not to supplant but to supplement psychotherapy. Frankl tells us that psychoanalysis is its indispensable foundation (see Frankl 1988, 10). However, over the years logotherapy developed into its own independent system, and few logotherapists are rooted in Freud or in existential philosophers (such as Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Max Scheler) as Frankl was. Indeed, Omar Lazarte reports that in 1984, at the first Argentine Congress on Logotherapy, those present remembered Frankl saying that he supported himself on two pillars: Freud and Heidegger (see Lazarte 2009, 181). Frankl delineates the differences between logotherapy and psychotherapy thus: “Psychotherapy endeavours to bring instinctual facts to consciousness. Logotherapy, on the other hand, seeks to bring to awareness the spiritual realities” (Frankl 2004, 43). Logotherapy indeed is specifically designed to help and “handle those suffering over the philosophical problems with which life confronts human beings” (Frankl 2004, 46). Logotherapy,

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unlike nearly all of the psychotherapies with the exception of psychosynthesis, takes explicit account of the spiritual sphere (the noetic or noölogical). Unity, of course, does not designate wholeness which involves the integration of somatic, psychic and the spiritual aspects of the human person: “Without the spiritual as its essential ground, this wholeness cannot exist” (Frankl 2000, 34). The spiritual self emerges from unconscious depths. Logotherapy is the clinical application of Frankl’s existential analytic approach. Already in 1926 logotherapy “had extended beyond the scope of psychotherapy beyond the psyche, beyond the psychological dimension to include the noölogical dimension, or the logos” (Frankl 2000, 67). So Franklian psychology, in its clinical praxis, is both a therapy and an analysis; it is a logo- not a psycho-therapy just as it is an existential analysis rather than psycho-analysis. Franklian existential analysis differs quite radically from the existential analysis of Boss and Binswanger, Caruso and May, in that it draws in its philosophical dimensions more from Max Scheler’s phenomenology and philosophical anthropology, as evidenced especially in logotherapy’s tri-dimensional ontology, than the Heideggerianism of the other schools of continental existential analysis. So let us be clear: logotherapy is not a psychotherapy; it is a noetic therapy. It is a noölogy rather than a psychology and is best considered, I argue, as a philosophical form of praxis. Did not the great Eric Voegelin tell us that Frankl was revitalising the older Platonic tradition of philosophy as a therapeia with his “Socratic dialogue” (Voegelin 1990, 278-9)? Many commentators place logotherapy within the humanistic and integrative school but logotherapy is existential and personalist and, with its explicit reference to transcendence, it may also be construed as a transpersonal theory and therapy. Peter Sarkany’s seminal paper, “Outlines of Viktor Emil Frankl’s Religious Philosophy”, is instructive in this regard and my analysis agrees in the main with his. Sarkany argues that logotherapy and existential analysis is rooted in the philosophical dimension and that its theory of personality is transpersonal (Sarkany 2008, 168). In another article, “An Outline of the Philosophical Care of the Soul: Phenomenology, Existential-Analytic Logotherapy and Philosophical Counselling”, Sarkany outlines the case made by Pierre Hadot that logotherapy be considered as a philosophical therapy which has as its principal aim the cure or “care of the soul”, as Frankl puts it. This Platonic concern for “care of the self or soul” ruptures in the Middle Ages and in modernity but is alive and well in the twentieth-century in the work of Wittgenstein, Jan Patocka, Jaeger, Foucault, Hadot and others. Logotherapy

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has much in common with this older philosophical tradition which views philosophy not only as a noetic therapy but also as a practical system of spiritual exercises which were developed by the Stoics and others and which find their way into logotherapy as dereflection, Socratic dialogue and attitude modification. Another thinker who argues similarly is Reinhard Zaiser and I would like to draw briefly on his paper, “Working on the Noetic Dimension of Man: Philosophical Practice, Logotherapy and Existential Analysis”. Zaiser asserts that we can discover the ancient spiritual exercises in contemporary logotherapy and he makes the point that most philosophical practitioners are actually doing logotherapy. He begins by stating that philosophical practice and logotherapy have a lot in common in that both are working with similar methods on the noetic dimension of man. Zaiser calls Frankl “a pioneer of philosophical practice” (Zaiser 2005, 83). Zaiser writes: “In principle, the spiritual exercises by the ancient philosophers are nothing more than the methods of logotherapy: Socratic dialogue, modification of attitudes, paradoxical intention, dereflextion, existential analysis of dreams, and mystagogy” (Zaiser 2005, 83). Zaiser also reads in Boethius’ description of Lady Philosophy in The Consolation of Philosophy as that of a logotherapist. The new movement of “philosophical counselling”–started in 1981 by Gerd Achenbach in Cologne and which continues to be practised by others such as Lou Marinoff in Plato not Prozac–is heir to this tradition too. Logotherapy returns us to the therapeutic tradition of classical Greek philosophy. Care of the soul is practised primarily, though not exclusively, through Socratic dialogue. Logotherapy and existential analysis is a kind of philosophical ministry. Sarkany observes: “logotherapy can be perceived and practised as a kind of philosophical counselling” (Sarkany 2008, 132). It is Frankl who, with logotherapy, has realised the ancient dreams of healing by reason and has fulfilled their therapeutic ambitions. However, logotherapy goes beyond philosophical counselling in that Frankl has also developed and incorporated into his practice a psychiatric classification of the neuroses and psychoses, as evinced in his On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders. More than anything, logotherapy is a practical philosophy, a way of living meaningfully and mindfully.

Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy3 The Consolation of Philosophy is, as the title suggests, a type of consolation–a moral meditation and medication. The book consistently

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refers to illness, remedy and cure and was hugely popular in mediaeval Europe. Boethius’ ideas suffuse the thought of both Chaucer and Dante, with Dante setting Boethius among the twelve lights in the heaven of the Sun. The Consolation of Philosophy combines poetic intensity with brilliant philosophical insight in a light and lyrical manner. While drawing on medical metaphor it is primarily a meditation on the moral medication that is being offered by Boethius’ therapist, who bids him to reconsider his conception of happiness. Boethius stands at the crossroads of the classical and mediaeval worlds. The title of his work says it all–it is less about argument than it is about the consolation that philosophy can bring generally and in the face of death particularly. The Consolation restores and celebrates a Platonic tradition of dialoguing–it is somewhat akin to Plato’s The Last Days of Socrates, which similarly discusses Socrates’ final hours before his own execution by hemlock in 399 BC. Boethius describes Philosophy– personified throughout–descending to him from on high and leading him by various paths to God Himself. The schema is somewhat Platonic and mirrors the description in Book VII of the Republic of the soul’s ascent in the famous allegory of the Cave, moving from seeing shadows to seeing the sun as a metaphor for the Form of the Good. We may also compare The Consolation to Sir Thomas Moore’s Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, which was also written in prison and under the threat of execution. Boethius’ bitter experiences led him, in the work we are here considering, into a re-description and re-examination of the nature of happiness. In its conversational commentary and tone, The Consolation is akin to the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Augustine. It is a philosophical rather than theological consolation, so there is no talk of the Trinity or Paradise or the Incarnation, et cetera. He draws a distinction between faith and reason. The Boethian doctrine of salvation is the ascent of the individual by means of philosophical introspection to the knowledge of God; it is close to Neoplatonic philosophy and post-Augustinian Christianity. Turning now to the text itself, we see Boethius in a state of much distress and deep despair–from happy youth to hapless old age. As the first poem opens: “Foolish the friends who called me happy then/Whose fall shows how my foothold was unsure” (Boethius 1969, 35). While Boethius is venting his sorrow and anger, he becomes aware of a woman standing over him, with an awe-inspiring appearance and burning eyes. On the bottom of her gown two Greek letters are embroidered: Pi and Theta. These correspond to the two kinds of philosophy, practical or praxis (Pi) and contemplative or theoria (Theta). The former includes moral

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philosophy and ethics, the latter metaphysics, theology and physics. Thus Philosophy is defined as both theory and practice. This nurse who comforts the imprisoned Boethius can be considered, as my logotherapy colleague and theologian Reinhard Zaiser has pointed out,4 the first female logotherapist and existential analyst, helping her noetically depressed patient change his attitude toward his suffering and thus his life. For this reason, I shall refer to Lady Philosophy as both Philosophy and Lady Logotherapist throughout the remainder of this chapter. Lady Logotherapist consoles Boethius by discussing the transitory nature of fame and wealth (“no man can ever truly be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune”), and the ultimate superiority of things of the mind, which she calls the “one true good” and which Frankl labels the noetic core of the spiritual person. She contends that happiness comes from within, and that one's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperilled by the vicissitudes of fortune (what Frankl calls “the blows of fate”). In The Consolation, Boethius answered religious questions without reference to Christianity, relying solely on natural philosophy and the Classical Greek tradition. However, he believed in the correspondence between faith and reason and so took the view that the truths found in Christianity were no different from the truths found in philosophy. The Consolation is, thus, a work written by a Platonist who happens also to be a Christian and it is not, therefore, a “Christian” work. The philosophical message of the book fits in rather well with the religious piety of the Middle Ages. Readers were encouraged not to seek worldly goods such as money and power, but to seek internalised virtues instead.5 For the Christian of Boethius’ time, evil had a purpose: to provide a lesson to help to bring about change for the good. Because God ruled the universe through Love, prayer to God and the application of Love would lead to true happiness.6 Lady Philosophy, as Logotherapist, tells her patient that it is a time for healing, not lamenting. When he turns to look at his physician he discovers it is his nurse, in whose house he has been cared for since childhood: Philosophy. He takes some consolation from knowing that many illustrious philosophers suffered similar fates: Anaxagoras was banished from Athens, Zeno was tortured, and Socrates was put to death. While Boethius displays his grief, Philosophy remains unperturbed, stoiclike in silence. Eventually she says that Boethius is full of grief, alternating between fits of rage, wrath, anguish and disturbing passions, and thus in need of a cure. The cause of his illness is that he has forgotten his true nature and Philosophy, as analyst, attempts to restore his health so that treacherous passions become dispelled in the resplendent light of

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truth. He is told to banish grief as his mind is clouded and bound in chains. Lady Logotherapist tells him she prefers “gentler medicines” (Boethius 1969, 49), but no less potent. She tells him that in “discovering his state of mind” she can cure him (Boethius 1969, 50). She bids him let go of his emotional distractions and concentrate on the meaning of the moment and the “purpose of things” (Boethius 1969, 51) in true logotherapeutic fashion. The best hope of restoring her patient to health is to help him attune his life to the divine Logos and order his life to the mysterious meaning of his present suffering: “In dark clouds/Hidden/The stars can shed/No light”. The mind is clouded where grief holds sway. Frankl would similarly suggest we need to move from reacting to responding. At the level of the instincts we are driven, but at the level of spirit we are drawn. We are pushed by the past but pulled by the future. Through free choice and responsibility we are ultimately deciding beings, suffering and acting persons. In Book II, Lady Philosophy says that she has discovered and diagnosed the nature of his condition: he has been pining for his former good fortune and this has catapulted him into the slough of despondency. She puts some maieutic questions to Boethius: what type of happiness is it which is destined to pass away? Philosophy reveals that change and inconstancy is Fortune’s normal behaviour and that Fortune has lured and enticed him with a false happiness that is ephemeral. Just as a farmer entrusts his seed to the fields, he balances the bad years against the good and so should he have done. Things change quickly on the wheel of chance and in one short hour one can see “happiness from utter desolation grows” (Boethius 1969, 56). Wealth, honours, fame and power are all under Fortune’s jurisdiction. In life there are both fruit and flowers, cloud and cold–inconstancy is Fortune’s very essence and sometimes “the overthrow of happy realms” is carried out “by the random strokes of Fortune” (Boethius 1969, 58) and the mind of man is plummeted in a “deep seated melancholy” (Boethius 1969, 59). Philosophy says that this is not a cure for Boethius’ condition but an application to help soothe his grief and console his heart. Philosophy reminds him of how fortunate he has been in so many ways, having enjoyed the blessings of a wife and two consular sons et cetera. Lady Logotherapist bids him “not dwell on it” (Boethius 1969, 59). It is sound therapeutic advice for if we cannot change our situation, as Frankl tells us, then we are challenged to change ourselves. Boethius is suffering because of his “misguided belief” (Boethius 1969, 61) and it is his beliefs or attitudes that Lady Logotherapist is seeking to change in this existential analytic session. She admonishes him gently thus:

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You are a happy man, then, if you know where your true happiness lies, since when the chief concern of mortal men is to keep their hold on life, you even now possess blessings which no one can doubt are more precious than life itself. So dry your tears. Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. (Boethius 1969, 62)

Philosophy continues: But I can’t put up with your dilly-dallying and the dramatization of your care-worn grief-stricken complaints that something is lacking from your happiness. No man is so completely happy that something somewhere does not clash with his condition. It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety…Some men are blessed with both wealth and noble birth, but are unhappy because they have no wife. Some are happily married but without children…Some again have been blessed with children only to weep over their misdeeds. No one finds it easy to accept the lot Fortune has sent them… Remember, too, that all the most happy men are oversensitive. They have never experienced adversity and so unless everything obeys their slightest whim they are prostrated by every minor upset, so trifling are the things that can detract from the complete happiness of a man at the summit of fortune…No one is so happy that he would not want to change his lot if he gives in to impatience. Such is the bitter-sweetness of human happiness…It is evident, therefore, how miserable the happiness of human life is; it does not remain long with those who are patient, and doesn’t satisfy those who are troubled. (Boethius 1969, 62-63)

Philosophy then reveals the secret of happiness: it lies within. She observes: Why then do you mortal men seek after happiness outside yourselves, when it lies within you?…I will briefly show you what complete happiness hinges upon. If I ask you whether there is anything more precious to you than your own self, you will say no. So if you are not in possession of yourself you will possess something you would never wish to lose and something Fortune could never take away. In order to see that happiness can’t consist in things governed by chance, look at it this way. If happiness is the highest good of rational nature and everything that can be taken away is not the highest good–since it is surpassed by what can’t be taken away–Fortune by her very mutability can’t hope to lead to happiness. (Boethius 1969, 63)

Such a happiness, based on chance and which comes to an end at death, is unreliable as Fortune changes all the time. This is a false happiness but Philosophy tells Boethius that she knows that he is convinced that the human mind cannot die and so others have sought happiness actually

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through death and even suffering.7 She proclaims: “It seems that the happiness which cannot make men unhappy by its cessation, cannot either make them happy by its presence” (Boethius 1969, 64). Ultimately it is fear that prevents us from being happy.8 Philosophy then proceeds to show how barren and poor riches really are: precious stones, the beauty of the countryside, the sea, the sun, the stars and sky and moon, flowers and fine clothes et cetera, none of which truly belong to man. Life is full of plenty as well as poverty, pearls as well as perils and he who has much, wants much. Philosophy poetically exclaims: “O happy was that long lost age/ Content with nature’s faithful fruits” (Boethius 1969, 68). Like riches, power, fame and high office, Fortune is not worth pursuing and is of no intrinsic good or value. However long a life of fame and fortune is, “when compared with unending eternity it is shown to be not just little, but nothing at all” (Boethius 1969, 74). One deserving of the title “philosopher” practises virtue and seeks out heaven in freedom and despises earthly affairs. Fortune may seem to bring happiness but deceives man with her smiles. As Fortune is capricious, wayward and inconstant so also is human happiness: “how fragile a thing happiness is” (Boethius 1969, 76). Frankl stresses that it is meaning we should seek rather than the pursuit of happiness which leads more often than not to ego-absorption rather than self-transcendence. Boethius is encouraged to attend to the beauty of the countryside in his mind’s eye–to look upon the sea, the stars, the sky, the sun (Frankl does likewise) and practice virtue and ethical values as he prepares to leave the existential vacuum. The world in constant change Maintains a harmony, And elements keep peace Whose nature is to clash.

Philosophy tells Boethius to get in touch with the profound unity of his being, which is the integration of psyche and soma but more: to unify also the noetic part of his personality structure. This will produce the harmony and wholeness for which he is unconsciously seeking and lead to ultimate health. “The centre must hold”, as Iris Murdoch tells us, perhaps by way of response to Yeats’ “things fall apart, the Centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. Book II ends with Philosophy crying: Love promulgates the laws For friendship’s faithful bond. O happy race of men

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If Love who rules the sky Could rule your hearts as well! (Boethius 1969, 77)

Book III begins with Philosophy telling Boethius that she is trying to bring him to his true destination, which is true happiness. She criticises him thus: “Your mind dreams of it…but your sight is clouded by shadows of happiness and [you] cannot see reality” (Boethius 1969, 78). Boethius begs her to show him the nature of true happiness, which she promises to do. She tells him that “all are striving to reach one and the same goal, namely, happiness, which is a good which once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired. It is the perfection of all good things and contains in itself all that is good” (Boethius 1969, 79). And, like Frankl, she asserts that perfect good does not, as some suppose, reside in wealth or respect, in fame, enjoyment, in power, position, popularity (whose “acquisition is fortuitous and its retention continuously uncertain”, (Boethius 1969, 89)) or pleasure. All men desire happiness and are looking for it in all these pursuits but they will not find it there. Nothing satisfies greed; it is insatiable and once dead “his fickle fortunes him forsake” (Boethius 1969, 84). Philosophy says of the pursuit of bodily pleasures that it is “full of anxiety and its fulfilment full of remorse” (Boethius 1969, 90) and if bodily pleasure can produce happiness, why then the animals are very happy because their whole life is directed to the fulfilment of their bodily needs and requirements. All these paths to happiness are side-tracks.9 If you want to hoard money, you have to take it by force; if you want high office, you will have to grovel to those who bestow it; if you want to outdo others in honour, you will have to humiliate yourself by begging; if you want power, you will have to expose yourself to risks and plots; if you want fame, you will find yourself on a hard road and worn with care; if you decide to lead a life of pleasure, some others will pour scorn on you and see you as a slave of the body. All of these things are puny, as is man himself when compared to an elephant in size, a bull in strength, or a tiger in speed: “Look up at the vault of heaven…and stop admiring things that are worthless” (Boethius 1969, 90). Beauty is ephemeral too. The point here is that the mind should concentrate more on the eternal than the evanescent: The sleek looks of beauty are fleeting and transitory, more ephemeral than the blossom in spring. If, as Aristotle said, we had the piercing eyesight of the mythical Lynceus [one of the Argonauts who could see in the dark and discover hidden treasure] and could see right through things, even the body of an Alcibiades [an Athenian military leader of the fifth century, whom we will encounter later on; he was famous for his wealth and beauty and

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These things “are not the way to happiness and cannot by themselves make people happy” (Boethius 1969, 93). The supreme good is happiness but it is not, as Eudoxus or Epicurus believed, to be found in pleasure. Man is a drunkard who cannot find his way home. Happiness is, rather, a state of self-sufficiency with no wants. True “and perfect happiness is that which makes a man self-sufficient, strong, worthy of respect, glorious and joyful” (Boethius 1969, 96). Nothing in the mortal state of things can furnish such a state of complete happiness–they are only shadows of the truly good. Only an imperfect happiness exists in perishable goods, which means “that there can be no doubt that a true and perfect happiness exists” (Boethius 1969, 99). God is filled with supreme and perfect goodness. And the perfect good is true happiness, so it follows that true happiness is to be found in God. This is Philosophy’s conclusion. “God is the essence of happiness” (Boethius 1969, 101). And “supreme happiness is identical with supreme divinity” (Boethius 1969, 102), a position Aquinas will adopt. Through the possession of happiness people become happy and since happiness is divinity it is through the possession of divinity that a person becomes happy. “Each happy individual is therefore divine” (Boethius 1969, 102). Heaven is man’s true homeland and “God is happiness itself” (Boethius 1969, 110). Boethius’ tragic and tearful melancholy is over and he addresses Philosophy thus: “The conclusion of this highest of arguments has made me very happy, and I am even more happy because of the words you used. I am now ashamed of the stupidity of all my railing” (Boethius 1969, 111-12). This is the ultimate attitudinal change. Nevertheless, in Book IV, Boethius admits that the greatest cause of his sadness is the realisation that evil exists, that the wicked go unpunished, and that virtue is unrewarded. Philosophy, as logotherapist, answers thus: all men desire the good, and happiness is the good itself. Both good and bad men strive to reach the good and men become good by acquiring goodness so they obtain what they are looking for. But if the wicked obtained what they want–that is goodness–they could not be wicked. They desire good through the things that give them pleasure but they don’t obtain it, “because evil things cannot reach happiness” (Boethius 1969, 123). Philosophy says simply, “Goodness is happiness” (Boethius 1969, 124) and the punishment of the wicked is their very wickedness. Someone who “robs with violence and burns with greed” (Boethius 1969, 125) is like a wolf; someone who is wild and restless and

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is forever engaged with lawsuits is like a dog yapping; the person who lies in ambush in order to steal is like a fox; the person of quick temper is like a lion; the timid coward is like a hind; the lazy person is like an ass; the fickle person is like a bird with ever-changing interests; the person wallowing in impure lusts and filth is like a sow.10 So the good are happy while the bad are unhappy and they are unhappier, according to Philosophy, if they go unpunished. When the wicked receive their punishment they receive something good since the punishment itself is good because of its justice: “So the wicked are much more unhappy when they are unjustly allowed to go scot free, than when a just punishment is imposed on them” (Boethius 1969, 129). Punishment must alternate between a penal severity and a purifying mercy. The wicked are used to the dark and haven’t yet come into the light. Further, Philosophy opines that those who commit an injustice are unhappier than those who suffer it. Plato had said that it was better to suffer injustice than to do it. The guilt of the wicked could be cut back by punishment “like a malignant growth” (Boethius 1969, 131) and wickedness is compared to “a disease of the mind” (Boethius 1969, 132). Health means goodness and wickedness sickness (a Platonic motif). Philosophy (and Boethius too) brings this dialogue to an end by saying that evil is necessary for some good (we think, for example, of the sufferings of Job). Philosophy/Logotherapy addresses Boethius thus: “Providence stings some people to avoid giving them happiness for too long, and others she allows to be vexed by hard fortune to strengthen their virtues of mind by the use and exercise of patience” (Boethius 1969, 139). The Consolation of Philosophy concludes with the advice of Lady Logotherapy: “Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high” (Boethius 1969, 169). The logotherapeutic session has ended with words of hope and meaning that motivate and strengthen Boethius’ inner resolve and noetic resilience that helps him face his fate without flinching. As Frankl remarks in Man’s Search for Meaning: “Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips” (Frankl 2004, 136).

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References Boethius, 1969. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. V. E. Watts, London: Penguin Books. Costello, Stephen, 2010. The Ethics of Happiness: An Existential Analysis, Ohio: Wyndham Hall Press. Frankl, Viktor, 2004. Man’s Search for Meaning. Trans. Ilse Lasch, London: Rider. —. 2000. Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, New York: Basic Books. —. 1988. The Will to Meaning, Middlesex: Meridian Books. —. 2004. The Doctor and the Soul, London: Souvenir Press. —. 2004. On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders, New York: Brunner-Routledge. Hadot, Pierre, 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, Cornwall: Blackwell Publishing. Lazarte, Omar, 2009. ‘Reflections on Viktor E. Frankl’s Anthropology’ in eds. Alexander Batthyany and Jay Levinson, Existential Psychotherapy of Meaning, Arizona: Zeig, Tucker and Theisen. Marinoff, Lou, 1999. Plato not Prozac, New York: Harper Perennial. Plato, 1985. The Republic, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Sarkany, Peter, 2008. ‘Outlines of Viktor Emil Frankl’s Religious Philosophy’, available from: http://www.koed.hu/integrity/peter.pdf. —. 2009. ‘An Outline of the Philosophical Care of the Soul: Phenomenology, Existential Analytic Logotherapy and Philosophical Counselling’, available from: http://www.koed.hu/vocation/peter.pdf. Voegelin, Eric, 1990. Published Essays 1966-1985, in ed. Ellis Sandoz, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, volume 12, Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press. Zaiser, Reinhard, 2005. ‘Working on the Noetic Dimension of Man: Philosophical Practice, Logotherapy and Existential Analysis’, Philosophical Practice 1 (2), 83-88.

CHAPTER FOUR ONTOLOGICAL CONSCIENCE, CHRISTIAN PARALLELS AND THE PATH TO AUTHENTICITY KEVIN SLUDDS

Heidegger’s Ontological Conscience Although for many philosophers it was considered axiomatic to regard Heidegger’s Being and Time as offering nothing to the ethicist (for example, William Barrett), for others a more nuanced reading of his magnum opus allows for subtle, yet profound, ethical themes to emerge (for example, Frederick A. Olafson). If, at its heart, ethics (ethikos– custom/practice) concerns itself with the various choices we must make in life, Heidegger’s fundamental ontology would appear to have little to say. However, from one perspective at least, we can extrapolate a virtue which is keenly important to our everyday mode of being–that is, our capacity1 and responsibility to embrace our ontological Situation2 authentically. For Heidegger, it is conscience that illuminates Dasein’s authenticity–a mode of disclosedness which finds expression in Dasein’s questioning of itself as it attempts to decide how it is to be.3 Generally, Heidegger contends, Dasein finds itself lost in its fallen everyday mode of being and, when faced by anxiety or death, flees to the “they” (das Man) for comfort. This suppression of self-understanding is, in ethical terms, an avoidance of making a radical choice towards authenticity. For, despite the fact that each of us lives chiefly in the de-vivified (Entleben) mode of everydayness, we are still responsible for who we are and what we do. To break away from the das Man mode we must recognise our guilt (Schuld) or, more ontologically, our lack (Mangel), that is, the very null ground of our Being for which we are indebted and from which the key decision of how to be stems. In the triune structure of care (Sorge) lies Dasein’s essential guilt, “Care itself, in its very essence, is permeated with nullity through and

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through. Thus “care”–Dasein’s Being-the-ground of a nullity…[means] that Dasein as such is guilty” (Heidegger 1992, 331). The call of conscience tells me I am guilty from “the fact that this “Guilty!” turns up as a predicate for the ‘I am’” (Heidegger 1992, 326). For I can never choose the foundations of my life and so must accept they are essentially deracinated. The call of conscience (Stimme des Gewissens)4 plays the highly important role of awakening Dasein to the possibility of authenticity, for, as Heidegger informs us: “This haphazard being carried along by the nobody, through which Dasein is ensnared in inauthenticity, can only be rescinded if Dasein is, on its own, brought back to itself from lostness in the they” (Heidegger 1992, 312-313). Conscience acts as a formal indicator (formale Anzeige), the call which is a moment of disclosure, not in a literal sense of audibly hearing something but of Dasein having gained a new and more profound grasp of its Situation and something which occurs with a start: “In the tendency to disclosure which belongs to the call lies the momentum of a push – of an abrupt shake up” (Heidegger 1992, 316; my italics).

Ontological Conscience and Christian Parallels The “abrupt shake-up” of the call of conscience is mirrored, Heidegger explains, by the Christian notion of kerygma, the conduit for our reorientation:5 “Christian factical life-experience is historically defined in that it originates with the proclamation that comes to a person in a moment and is constantly co-actual in the enactment of life” (Heidegger 1995, 60: 117; my italics). Such a pre-theoretical intuition-capacity exemplifies, in religious terms, the basic experience (Grunderfahrung) of life as a whole, a fundamental template for Heidegger’s later description of Dasein’s attunement (Befindlichkeit) towards authenticity. It is important to highlight just how closely Christian thinking is to Heidegger’s on the topic of intuition. A. Carthusian explains: By the word ‘intellect’ I mean not only reason, the power of reasoning which is precious, yet inadequate when dealing with higher values, but also intuition. Thanks to intuition, we have direct apprehension of realities, of being, of the first principles of truth, an appropriate sense of ourselves, a lively conscience. The intuitive process are infinitely more delicate and go infinitely further than reason, which does not after all, do more than order what the intuition learns so it can be used . . . it is precisely on these intuitive faculties an awakened receptivity that the graces of contemplation

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most readily grafts itself, and infinitely develops according to their own nature. (Carthusian 1993, 55; my italics)

Many of Dasein’s authentically vital concepts (for example, conscience, anxiety, guilt, being-towards-death and moment of vision) have a long history of being treated in purely theological terms, something which Heidegger was both deeply aware of and deeply influenced by. The idea that life contains “basic experiences”, “moments of intensification” or, to borrow Marion Milner’s colloquial phrase, “fat feelings”, is certainly nothing new to Heidegger. In his An Introduction to Metaphysics he states that: . . .each of us is grazed at least once, perhaps more than once, by the hidden power of this question [‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ And, further, ‘what is the meaning of Being?’]. . .it looms in moments of great despair. . .it is present in moments of rejoicing, when all the things around us are transfigured and seem to be there for the first time. (Heidegger 1961, 11; my italics)

And in Being and Time we see how anxiety6 acts as the “basic way in which one finds oneself”; and as far back as 1919 we find Heidegger talking of “graced moments of life” (Crowe 2006, 171; my italics) which are there to present an opportunity to bring our lives as a whole into focus. These “graced moments of life” are the basic experiences in which we feel ourselves belonging immediately to the direction in which we live, experiences “of our understanding having oneself (verstehende Sichselbsthaben)” (Crowe 2006, 30). Such experiences of clarity, such moments of genuine and profound awakening make possible our reattunement (and “resoluteness”), the very antithesis of everyday complacent conformity, and allow us to move towards a greater appreciation of the “hermeneutics of facticity”. In fact, Heidegger provides concrete examples from his own life that illustrate what he means by these basic experiences; occasions such as hiking in the woods or listening to the clock tower or the church bells of St. Martin’s pealing across the square in his home village of Messkirch– experiences that offered an immediacy to life. Christian thinkers, as Heidegger was acutely aware, have always made much of just such moments: Looking at things: a house, a roof, a tree, a flower, the sky. Which is their real face? The one seen by the vacant passive eye, like a camera lens? Or the face textured by the mystery of forms, by the drama of light and shadow, by the silence of a secret life, that artists evoke on their canvases?

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Chapter Four It reaches its perfection when interior or sensibility is plunged in the same source from which all these beings came, when exterior sensibility resonates in harmony with the being that lives in them, to the point that it feels at one with them, with the flowers, with the tree, with the sky. . .we have all had these privileged moments of intuition, of communion. (Carthusian 1993, 99; my italics)

In his later work Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege), Heidegger describes a wayside path winding through the countryside around Messkirch in a manner which is akin to the deeply spiritual description just offered. The path meanders by a wood which Heidegger knew well from his childhood, and it is here that he stops to ponder the trees: The hardness and smell of the oakwood began to speak clearly of the slow and lasting way in which the tree grew. . .the growth means to live open to the span of the heaven, at the same time, to have roots in the dark earth. . .the kingdom of all living things which grow around the country lane offers a whole world in microcosm. The very ineffability of their language proclaims, as Meister Eckhart, that old master of life, says, God, first God. (Heidegger 1950, 14)

In Being and Time these basic experiences find expression in the call of conscience and the formal indicators of these experiences that disrupt our quotidian inauthentic life to re-orientate us towards authenticity. A capacity which, in ethical terms, is a crowning virtue of the highest ontological order. It is easy, when un-attuned to such basic experiences for Being (or God), to be forgotten; to lose oneself in the anonymity, irresponsibility and inauthenticity (Un-eigenlichkeit) of the “they”. It is important here to clarify that by the term inauthenticity Heidegger was not referring to a concept; rather, inauthenticity is a formal indicator of a way of being which is uncovered in life as we live it. The root “eigen” means own and denotes the singularity of human life and, thus, Un-eigenlichkeit indicates a way of being that fails to stand up/out,7 to “own” up to its life and, instead, remains tranquilised by the siren-like allure of the “they”. This rendering of inauthenticity, of course, owes much to Heidegger’s study of Christianity. The basic experiences elucidated by the early Christians refer to a phenomenon that awakens us from our worldly slumber and, having been awoken, we are attuned to the Word of God. It is this meaningful model which Heidegger, in Being and Time, names the “call of conscience”.

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Awakening and the Christian Light of Faith In Christian terms the notion of “awakening” is brought to life in the leitmotiv of the light of faith which is a “hidden participation in the knowledge that God has of himself. It is a light that makes it possible to see God in himself, and that already touches him directly, even under the veil of verbal formulae that our understanding can but feebly penetrate” (Carthusian 1993, 57). The Carthusians again help in linking ideas of Being, light and faith when they say that: To be a people of prayer we must have…interior peace, our eyes must continually be focused on a light that is wholly other, and closed to ordinary light. We must be detached in regard to everything that is not God or that is not transparent to God. We must enter into the fathomless depths of our being where the heart and the intellect are one at their root, where God touches us, where God is at work on the root of our being, giving us himself. (Carthusian 1993, 85)

According to Heidegger, to be awakened is the principal stepping stone away from remaining in tranquilised compliance with the “they”. Faith, he says, is an on-going “anxiously worried” (Bekümmerung) arrival into the future”, that is, an eschatological “running after the goal” (Heidegger 1995, 60: 127). Of the Christian Church he notes that: “[the] hope that the Christians have is not simply belief in immortality but is, rather, a faithful perseverance grounded in Christian factical life” (Heidegger 1995, 151). Such a comment is made in an effort to reinforce the central point that primitive Christianity was not naive in focusing on an afterlife but that everyday vigilance (that is, resoluteness) must be kept up if the awakened believing soul is not to be orientated towards the strong pull of quotidian convention in the “they”. This emphasis on both future possibilities and factical life experiences is neatly packaged by Heidegger in Being and Time when he discusses Dasein’s blind uniformity in the “they” being disrupted, interrupted, assailed or overcome by primordial moods such as anxiety. Such light, such “wakefulness”, as that pronounced by primitive Christians is starkly contrasted with the darkness in which those who abide only by human concerns live; those whose lives are guided only by the statutes and even ideals held out to them by the “they”; those who are left, as a result, ignorant and estranged both to their genuine-selves and God. This is precisely St. Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians, when he beseeches them not to become complacent, lost or alienated from themselves in the conformity of daily activities: “So let us not fall asleep

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as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thess. 5:6). And he encourages them to remain loyal to the kerygma (that is, Heidegger’s secularised “call of conscience”) that will lead to their conversion (that is, Heidegger’s secularised “transformation”).

Contrasts and Contradictions We recognise in these descriptions of light and darkness the role of contrasts, paradoxes and doublets in expressing both theological and philosophical messages. For example, the dynamic between God’s condemnation of our ego-centred ignorance, experienced in His wrath (Anfechung), and its opposite, that is, faithful adherence and dependence8 to His way and His word: “The righteous person. . .understands that even the severity of God is good for his salvation, for it breaks him down and heals him. ‘The Lord kills and brings to life’” (1 Sam. 2:6). Heidegger too makes much use of contrasts in Being and Time; the key concept aletheia,9 for instance, meaning not simply truth but uncoveredness; the existentialia of mood, understanding and discourse disclosing to Dasein what is present but unseen. Of course, in Being and Time, Heidegger also speaks of a “relatedness backward and forward” (Macquarrie 1966, 9), something which he calls the “hermeneutical circle”–that in every act of interpretation there exists a disclosure and concealment, for interpretation itself can only begin if we already have some (however elementary) grasp of what is to be interpreted. I have written the word “question” in this semi-italicised form throughout in an effort to accentuate this point. Heidegger’s inquiry in Being and Time and, indeed, in his lifetime’s work, concerns the question of the meaning of Being, that is, a quest which is awakened from the already given (that is, “always already”) make-up of Da-sein’s constitution. Our existence (existential) and our Being (ontological) are two sides of the same coin, in the same way as human concupiscence (flaw) is the flipside, in a religious sense, of man who is made in the image of God. Such “coincidences of opposites” (as Heraclitus put it) or contrasts require non-rational, pre-theoretical or intuitive “awareness” (or sense) to grasp their meaning. Ontological understanding is, thus, to be found within everyday experiences and perceptions: Being is pre-thematically given yet retrievable for Heidegger along lines structurally parallel to the way being is availed (identified, experienced) but not yet thematized in categorical intuitions that saturate every level of ordinary (quotidian, everyday) perception. (Dahlstrom 2001, 96)

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This pre-given arena of meaning for Christians, this living in Christ is a way of inhabiting the world in an ethically vital way through the immanent sense of life as religious; a noetic grasp that shapes or guides the religious person’s whole Being. God is given in a particular way of life, just as the call of conscience in Being and Time is heard not by those using theoretical reason but by those, through anxiety, who are in a state of addressedness. It is clear that, for Heidegger, primordial (that is, essential or primal) thinking/knowledge as opposed to utility (that is, calculative or theoretical) thinking/knowledge is akin to religious contemplation. Primordial thinking is a lived experience, it does not try to objectify its thought just as theology is founded on an encounter with God called “faith” and does not try to objectify God, responding to Him rather as Dasein responds resolutely to the call of conscience. On the question of whether Being can signify God for the believing soul,10 Macquarrie writes that: If we use the word “God,” it does designate Being; but we should be clear to begin with that “God” is not a neutral designation, as “being” is, but one that carries important existential connotations of valuation, commitment, worship, and so on. We could, however, say that ‘God’ is synonymous with ‘holy Being’. (Macquarrie 1966, 105)

The Bible is replete with paradoxical stories which Heidegger would have remained sensitive to: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10). And poverty is equated with purity of heart in St. Matthew’s gospel and, thus, great wealth: “Blessed art those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6); “Happy are those who weep: they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:5). Throughout the Johannine writings, this contrast of concepts is evident: truth-falsehood, light-darkness, freedomenslavement and so on; each is a possibility for man, each a decision to be made against the backdrop of a life lived either for God or for this world. In secular, Heideggerian terms, we can speak in this regard of an authentic or inauthentic self. A phrase from the famous 14th century guide to spiritual experience–“a cloud of unknowing that is between you and your God”–shows itself to have relevance for us here. The word “between” has the double meaning, of course, of indicating separation and also bonding. The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing notes that what is separating is founded on man’s consciousness of his separateness, that is, a “sense” of his mineness apart from God. To overcome this state man must place himself in a position which is firmly

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counter-intuitive, that is, a position of weakness, a means of jettisoning consciousness as his guide and allowing himself to fall into a condition of unknowing. This state of unconsciousness is the very “cloud of unknowing” of the title, a cloud which envelops him and dims his “sense” of separation, providing him with the medium in which his union with God is made possible.

Beyond Fallennness in Secular and Religious Terms Both Christian theology and Heideggerian philosophy are in agreement that fallenness is a vacuous state of existence from which both human pride and ignorance emerge. The mood of anxiety reveals to Dasein that it is lost in-the-world, but from this most profound disclosure Dasein flees, yet only ever as far as the absolute delimiter of existence is reached, that is, death. For Dasein to move from lostness in the “they” to an authentic grasp of its Being, it must be transformed. Dasein’s fallenness is the burden (molestia) of factical thrown existence, and our response to this burden is what we are awakened to in the call of conscience. As early as 1920, Heidegger noted that “they [that is, non-Christians] are caught up by what life offers them; they are in darkness with respect to self-knowledge. The faithful are, on the other hand, sons of light and of the day” (Heidegger 1995, 60: 105). Our fallenness most certainly lies within ourselves (within our facticity), for what perpetually ensnares us in-theworld is what is inherently appealing in our worldliness, though also what makes it possible for Dasein to grasp its questioning, standing-up/out to find its Being as an issue for itself. Within Dasein’s way of being-in-theworld “there lies,” Heidegger says, “a priori an enigma” (Heidegger 1992, 23). Dasein’s enigmatic turning away from itself is not done consciously but simply is its way of being, a mirror of the Christian perception of humankind both lost and, yet, open to redemption. Dasein too must in some sense, Heidegger recognises, die to itself11 (that is, its “they”-self) to become itself (that is, its authentic-self). Naturally, this crowning paradox is well known in Christian theology and is faithfully captured by St. Mark when he writes that: “whoever would save his life will lose it; and whosoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). Such fundamental contrasts in life confirm that, when it comes to dealing with God, or Being for that matter, ontic-utility thinking is insufficient. Ontological-primordial thinking which can only ever hint, intuit or imply is essential. Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity is built on the basic experiences which phenomenologically allow us to grasp the

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question of the meaning of Being, precisely because life, with its ethically vital dimension, is revealed through formal indicators as always already meaningful. For the believing soul, Heidegger appreciates that they inhabit an arena which is specifically religious, an environment which is not predominantly concerned with dogmas, rituals or institutions but with a way12 of Being, a pre-theoretical grasp of faith lived out in religious life, just as for him philosophy was an activity, a way of being from which we begin to philosophise. Philosophy, thus, belongs to the lived immediacy of life, as authentic selfhood is a pre-theoretical given reachable by Dasein once it remains “faithful” (that is, attuned) to the pointers (that is, formal indicators) Being offers it.

References Anonymous, 1957. The Cloud of Unknowing, Illinois: Delta Books. Carthusian, A., 1993. The Way of Silence Love: Carthusian Novice Conferences, Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications. —. 1998. The Spirit of Place: Carthusian Reflections, Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications. Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain, ed., 1966. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version, London: Catholic Truth Society. Crowe, Benjamin D., 2008. Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religion, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Dahlstrom, Daniel O., 2001. Heidegger’s Conception of Truth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dreyfus, Hubert L., 1991. Being-in-the-world, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Haugeland, John, 2000. ‘Truth and Finitude: Heidegger’s Transcendental Existentialism’, in eds. Mark Wrathall and Jeff Malpas, Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 1, Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 43-79. Heidegger, Martin, (1957). Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. —. 1950. Holzewege, Frankfurt: Klostermanr. —. 1961. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. Ralph Manheim, New York: Anchor Books. —. 1992. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Oxford: Blackwell Press. —. 1995. Gesamtausgabe, Munich: Vittorio Klostermann.

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—. 2004. The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Trans. Matthias Fritsch & Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencci, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Kelly, Thomas A. F., 1994. Language and Transcendence: A Study in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Karl-Otto Apel, Oxford: Peter Lang. Luther, Martin, 1972. Luther’s Work. Trans. various, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. Macquarrie, John, 1955. An Existentialist Theology, London: SCM Press. —. 1966. Principles of Christian Theology, London: SCM Press. —. 1999. Heidegger and Christianity, London: Continuum. Milner, Marion, 1998. A Life of One’s Own, London: Virago Books. Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1999. The Christian Faith. Trans. J. S. Stewart, London: T&T Clark. Sheehan, Thomas. 1979. ‘Heidegger’s Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion 1920-1921’, The Personalist 60 (3), 312-324. Skinner, John, 1995. Hear Our Silence: A Portrait of the Carthusians, London: Fount. Sludds, Kevin, 2011. ‘Cognitive and Heideggerian Approaches to the Question: What’s the Object of Objectless Fear?’ European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 7 (1), 49-60.

CHAPTER FIVE CRITIQUE AND ETHOS IAN LEASK

Michel Foucault’s later writings on ethics and the “care of the self” have been depicted, not only as a kind of post hoc recantation or even apologia, but also as being profoundly out of kilter with the bulk of his more famous archaeological and genealogical analyses of modernity. This chapter will suggest that, by attending more carefully to Foucault’s philosophical relationship with Kant, we can understand his thought as being consistent and developmental: the structural descriptions, provided by the earlier work, outline (historical and cultural) conditions of the possibility of experience; while the later concern with “ethos” and “attitude” seeks to locate and explore the question of practice within the kind of structures unpacked by his previous labours. Accordingly, this chapter will sketch 1) how Foucault’s most celebrated, earlier, work can be understood as delineating the structural conditions of any ethical discourse, and 2) the particular significance of Foucault’s later engagement with the practical question Was ist Aufklärung?, What is Enlightenment?; as we shall see, these two (Kantian) elements are reciprocal and mutually intertwined. The main point, however, is not solely to provide a better understanding of Foucault (or Foucault vis-à-vis Kant): the chapter also suggests that the way in which Foucault roots or embeds “the practical” in terms of its historical a priori provides a crucial corrective to the ahistorical and apolitical myopia of so much contemporary ethical discourse.

Conditions In the closing sections of Foucault’s 1966 book Les Mots et les choses (translated as The Order of Things), Kant stands accused of inaugurating the “anthropological slumber” that characterizes so much subsequent philosophy. For sure, Foucault argues, Kant severs philosophy from

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classical assumptions about the unproblematic nature of representation and, instead, critically examines its basis; nonetheless, he will eventually re-locate that same basis within a transcendental consciousness that posits itself as origin only by voiding itself of any historical formation. It seems, then, that, for Foucault, Kant is the ultimate source of all those fateful humanist illusions which “structuralism” (broadly construed) sets out to dispel; the “death of man” is the death of Kant’s progeny. Bearing in mind this indictment, the later Foucault’s apparently positive “turn” towards Kant might appear like a volte-face that serves to confirm Habermas’s assertions about the impossibility of some total rejection of the “philosophical discourse of modernity”: where, before, there was an “unyielding critique”, now we find that “Foucault’s selfunderstanding [is] as a thinker in the tradition of the Enlightenment” (Habermas 1987, 152). In other words, the final acceptance of Kant becomes is taken to confirm the inherent contradictions and waywardness of Foucault’s earlier work. Nonetheless, however trenchant Foucault’s criticism of a too-easily assumed humanism; and however surprising the subsequent juxtaposition of that criticism with the supposed “Kantian turn” of the final work; a more nuanced reading can unpack a very different process at work, whereby the engagement with Kant emerges as a consistent and developmental factor in Foucault’s oeuvre as a whole.1 For one thing, The Order of Things can itself be understood as providing a more appreciative treatment of Kantian thematics than a commonly imagined version of Foucault might suggest; moreover, the recent publication of some of Foucault’s earliest philosophical productions–work that undoubtedly informs The Order of Things–helps further to elucidate the extent of his engagement with Kant. As regards the first of these, what seems too easily overlooked in The Order of Things is that (as we have already noted) Foucault’s depiction of an “anthropological slumber” is subtended by a recognition of Kant’s profound acuity in delivering philosophy from metaphysical dogmatism. (Foucault, we might say, comes to praise Kant’s critical insight, as well as to bury Kantian “man”.) With Kant, the very basis of philosophical representation becomes opened up to critical investigation: we can no longer simply assume that things are as they appear; and the possibility emerges that ideas and representations have an origin different from what was hitherto supposed. Foucauldian archaeology, in turn, follows fundamentally Kantian principles, inasmuch as it wants to show how discursive subjects are “determined in their situation, their function, their

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perceptive capacity, and their practical possibilities by conditions that dominate and even overwhelm them” (Foucault 1970, xiv). What is more, when we also consider Foucault’s earlier commentary on Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View–originally completed in 1961 as his thèse complémentaire, but only published in 2008–we find that, at the start of his full-fledged philosophical career, Foucault developed out of Kant’s late work a kind of blueprint for what a critical engagement with the Critical Philosophy might entail. Instead of beginning with transcendental consciousness, Foucault suggests here, the Anthropology presents “man” as primarily an empirical construction that emerges within “the multiplicity of a sensible chronicle” (Foucault 2008, 57): in the 1798 work, “the self has access neither to a subject in-itself, nor to a pure ‘I’ of synthesis, but to a ‘me’ which is object, and present solely in its phenomenal truth” (Foucault 2008, 24). Not that Kant rejects or rescinds the transcendental position of the first Critique: the subject of the Anthropology still finds (eventually) that the self that emerges in empirical self-construction must always have been “already-there”, in order for any syntheses to have taken place. Crucially, however, Kant’s subject is no longer a purely formal, “timeless”, presupposition; for Foucault, accordingly, the Anthropology presents the a priori “in a truly temporal dimension” (Foucault 2008, 89). All of which, in turn, helps us to understand Foucault’s project as being, in large part, a critical development of Kantian notions, rather than their total repudiation. After all, perhaps the main task of Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical work is to delineate the conditions for the possibility of our experience; the central Kantian goal is a central Foucauldian goal. Indeed, Foucault’s own account of his “target”, in The Order of Things, could hardly be more explicit: This a priori is what, in a given period, delimits in the totality of experience a field of knowledge, defines the mode of being of the objects that appear in that field, provides man’s everyday perception with theoretical powers and defines the conditions in which he can sustain a discourse about things that is recognized to be true. (Foucault 1970, 158)

Just as Kant wants to know what it is that “makes knowledge possible” (Foucault 1970, 31), so Foucault makes explicit his interest in [r]econstituting the general system of thought whose network, in its positivity, renders an interplay of simultaneous and apparently contradictory opinions possible. It is this network that defines the conditions of possibility of a controversy or a problem, and that bears the historicity of knowledge. (Foucault 1970, 75)

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Crucially, however, the Foucauldian a priori that emerges here is not some formal, metaphysical, given. Instead, the conditions of experience are configured as being temporalized, historicized: what we are now dealing with, famously, is an historical (or historicized) a priori. Humans are always subject to some kind of conditions for the very possibility of their experience; but these conditions–linguistic, political, economic, and so on–are mutable, and evolutionary. Put otherwise: we always come within some episteme or other; but such an episteme is itself subject to temporal transformation. As Foucault tells us: What I am attempting to bring to light is the epistemological field, the episteme in which knowledge, envisaged apart from all criteria having reference to its rational value or to its objective forms, grounds its positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility. (Foucault 1970, xxii; emphasis added)

Far from abandoning Kantian “principles”, then, Foucault wants to reaffirm their centrality–but in a way that can take better account of the very finitude that Kant himself did so much to open up for exploration.

Critique Giving due attention to the Kantianism that (positively) informs the Foucauldian project from its outset, we can begin to read the 1984 essay on Kant’s Was ist Aufklärung?, not as a philosophical U-turn, but as the continuation and the creative development of a constant feature of Foucault’s thought.2 In particular, we can begin to appreciate how a certain Kantian attitude helps to configure and consolidate the final “phase” of Foucault’s remarkable oeuvre. For Foucault, it is not so much the basic question of Was ist Aufklärung?–how should philosophy understand the present?–that is new; it is more that how Kant frames the question breaks with all previous consideration. Before, philosophers had sought to understand the present in terms of its relationship to past eras (very often as some sort of “fall” or decline), or, alternatively, as the harbinger of, or prelude to, some new epoch or achievement. But for Kant, the question is quite different: asking “what are we at the present time?” means asking “how might today offer some sort of Ausgang, or exit, from yesterday?” The short answer to this question is that the present–that is, the Enlightenment–offers the possibility of a way out from, or of, our immaturity (Unmündigkeit). In itself, an almost banal proposition. And

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yet, seen in the context of Kant’s wider, critical, project, the invocation of some Ausgang becomes far more loaded: if we are to know what to do, what to hope for, how far we can trust our judgements, and so on, this knowledge itself must be founded upon a critical determination of its own legitimate conditions; understanding these is a crucial component part of fashioning some discontinuity within the present. Put otherwise, and more succinctly: “the Enlightenment is the age of critique” (Foucault 1984, 38). It is an age of critique–and, crucially, its critical questioning entails an historical understanding: for Foucault, Kant’s question means: “What’s going on just now? What’s happening to us? What is this world, this period, this precise moment in which we are living?” (Foucault 1982, 216). The point is no longer to ask about, say, the cogito in isolation from history; rather, Kant is asking about “us” in “a very precise moment” (Foucault 1982, 216). What Foucault finds in Kant, here, is the demand for a precise cartography of the present. All of which, Foucault suggests, helps to usher in an unprecedented level of self-consciousness: Kant understands his insertion in “today”, as well as the insertion of “today” in his own work, to an extent that founds, and ordains, the kind of concentrated self-reflexion that emerges in the 19th century and beyond (exemplified, for Foucault, by the dandysme of Baudelaire). And this, in essence, is what Foucault finds to be so significant in Kant’s text–namely, that its real concern is with articulating a certain historically framed attitude, rather than delineating epochal shifts. (After Kant, Foucault writes, we are obliged to see ourselves as “object[s] of a complex and difficult elaboration” [Foucault 1984, 41].) What is laid out here, then, is nothing less than “the attitude of modernity” (Foucault 1984, 39): A mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what the Greeks called an ethos. (Foucault 1984, 39)

In other words, Foucault’s commitment to an ideal of Enlightenment is not about some partisan entrenchment or “faithfulness to doctrinal elements” (Foucault 1984, 42). Rather, what he takes from Kant’s text, and how Kant’s text inserts itself into his project, revolves around “the permanent reactivation of an attitude–that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era” (Foucault 1984, 42), or even as the “permanent critique of ourselves” (Foucault 1984, 43).

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The purpose of critique is a kind of ongoing interrogation, an attitude, an ethos. Indeed, we can now see how the “final” Foucault’s invocation of Kant, far from representing the renunciation of his earlier work, reiterates and confirms so much of what the writings of the 1960’s had already laid out as core concerns. Critique, the older Foucault tells us, is not about making metaphysics possible, or “the search for formal structures with universal value” (Foucault 1984, 46); instead, critical philosophy means “a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying” (Foucault 1984, 46). The basic shape of the “What is Enlightenment?” commentary remains structured around Foucault’s commitment to the historical a priori. Nonetheless, the “What is Enlightenment?” text does more than demonstrate continuity in Foucault’s oeuvre. It also shows how his thought develops in itself–which is also, of course, in its critical relationship to Critical Philosophy. For if Kant sought to stress the limits within which philosophy must remain (and beyond which it should never venture), Foucault’s critical attitude is centred upon the question of “franchisement”, of how we might transgress limits, how philosophy might provide a contemporary Ausgang. If, as Foucault puts it, “the Kantian question was that of knowing what limits knowledge has to renounce transgressing” (Foucault 1984, 45), today our task is more like a negation of Kant’s negation, a renunciation of his renunciation, so that “the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation” is transformed into “a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression”, or crossing (Foucault 1984, 45). Inside the present, there is the permanent possibility of openness and overcoming. We can never know the outcome of our attempts at such overcoming; but their potential production is an ineradicable feature of our experience.

Location Of course, the critical attitude that the Was ist Aufklärung? commentary stresses is not solely the result of Foucault’s engagement with Kant. The engagement with Kant takes shape within a broader shift in Foucault’s later thought–a shift that is also informed and shaped, in large part, by Foucault’s particular “Kantianism”. Accordingly, it seems worthwhile sketching something of this broader context… Roughly, the later Foucault’s stress on the subject comes about (in part, at least) as power itself is rethought as being more complex and

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multiple than the purely vertical, oppressive, model (or dispositif) that seemed dominant earlier in Foucault’s thinking. What emerges is an understanding of power-relations as unceasing, horizontal, processes unfolding within bodies, movements, desires and forces; power is now seen as what is exercised, not just possessed. The emphasis shifts towards powers rather than “Power” and thus towards “the interplay of nonegalitarian and mobile relations” (Foucault 1978, 94). What emerges from this refusal to attribute unilateral or univocal status to power is a different view of the subject–different, that is, from the kind of “straightforward” anti-humanism that might be taken to characterize Foucault’s earlier and more famous work. For sure, there is no sudden affirmation of some timeless substance or “inner authenticity” waiting to be discovered. Nonetheless, the later Foucault is not restricted to describing the wholly passive product of Panopticism, the subject who is (always already) “subjected to…”. Instead, and given the new emphasis on powerrelations, Foucault will stress the subject who acts, the subject who is involved in “strategic games between liberties” (Foucault 2000, 299), the subject as “immanent cause” rather than merely the effect of some transcendent Power. Indeed, “individuals in their freedom” (Foucault 2000, 300) are now considered as a kind of primary vital force, involved in an ongoing network of strategies and relations that helps them constitute, define and organise themselves. Of course, “individuals in their freedom” still must presuppose historical conditions and preconditions; Foucault’s point is not suddenly to promote some purely formal, ahistorical figuration of “humanity”. But neither is the subject to be taken as purely passive, even hapless: understanding the conditions within which and by which we are formed itself becomes central in the acts of critical resistance we might perform. Furthermore, Foucault’s later subject is still regarded as a production, or fabrication–but it is also to be understood, in part, as a self-fabrication, an invention de soi: where the earlier analysis might seem to suggest that we are wholly docile, and manufactured “from above”, the later work provides a very different emphasis, on the liberty we enjoy in terms of self-fashioning, within (and in reaction to) a given episteme. And so what seemed to have no place at all in the earlier Foucault becomes utterly central: in general, active subjectivization (subjectivation) emerging as a counter to passive subjection (assujetissement); more particularly, subjects’ ongoing creation (via strategic decisions and localized opposition) of a new ethos, new “practices of self”. For the later Foucault, in short, critical resistance assumes a central position, both ontologically and ethically: “at the heart of power relations and as a permanent condition

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of their existence there is an insubordination and a certain essential obstinacy” (Foucault 2000, 346). Overall, we could say that, for the “final” Foucault, the stress is on the subject’s self-production, rather than some imagined self-discovery. And it is a production that takes place, not by some putative refusal of our historical conditions, but, on the contrary, by resolutely confronting the question “what are we at the present time?”–a confrontation that simultaneously allows us to cultivate “the art of not being governed or better, the art of not being governed like that and at that cost” (Foucault 1997, 29). The Foucauldian subject emerges–as a kind of counter-practice, a node of crafted defiance–through critique, in the fullest sense of the term. In short: we fabricate ourselves, we constitute ourselves, via critical resistance.3

Concluding Remark Accordingly, with this context adumbrated, we can now locate the 1984 commentary on Kant within the broader setting of Foucault’s final labours: the stress on attitude that is so important in the What is Enlightenment? text is part of a wider development in Foucault’s thought, within which agency becomes such a central issue. More importantly, perhaps, when we also bear in mind the “Kantian continuity” that this chapter has sought to stress–that is, the way in which Foucault’s entire philosophical effort can be construed as a grappling with the structures and conditions of subjectivity–so we are also confronted with the sheer situatedness of ethical discourse: as this broader outline makes manifest, the resisting subject still must act within a set of conditions, even if the main purpose is “not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are” (Foucault 1982, 216), to work out some Ausgang, or exit, from those same conditions. Reading the “What is Enlightenment?” essay in terms of Foucault’s broader engagement with Kant thus reiterates both the centrality of critical resistance and how “the practical” is always embedded in its historical a priori: “Kant’s question appears as an analysis of both us and our present” (Foucault 1982, 216). Foucault reminds us, then, of both the centrality of creating and maintaining a critical attitude, but also of how there can be no ethos floating free of broader structural conditions; rather than vacuous platitudes about “respecting the other”, ethical discourse has to be built on concrete, material, analyses of “the relations between the subject, truth and the constitution of experience” (Foucault 1990, 48). Today, when so much ethics consistently fails to see that, so often, it is trying to answer essentially political questions, that reminder could hardly be more timely.

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References Foucault, Michel, 1970. The Order of Things. An Archeology of the Human Sciences. Trans. A. M. Sheridan-Smith, New York: Pantheon. —. 1984. ‘Space, Knowledge & Power’, in ed. Paul Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, New York: Pantheon. —. 1990. Politics, Philosophy, Culture. Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, ed. L. Kritzman, London: Routledge. —. 1997. The Politics of Truth, eds. Sylvere Lotringer & Lysa Hochroth, New York: Semiotext(e). —. 2000. Ethics, Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, volume 1, ed. Paul Rabinow. Trans. Robert Hurley et al, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —. 2008. Introduction to Kant’s ‘Anthropology’. Trans. Roberto Nigro & Kate Briggs, ed. Roberto Nigro, Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press. —. 2009. Le courage de la vérité: Le government de soi et des autres II. Cours au Collège de France, 1984, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard. Habermas, Jürgen, 1994. ‘Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present’, in Critique and Power, in ed. Michael Kelly, Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate, Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press, 149-154. Revel, Judith, 2005. Michel Foucault: Expériences de la pensée, Paris: Bordas.

CHAPTER SIX THE POTENCIES OF THE ETHICAL: ON THE SOURCES OF BEING GOOD WILLIAM DESMOND

I A frequent practice of ethical reflection is to distinguish different sets of moral value, say an Aristotelian set or a Christian, or a Kantian set or a Nietzschean, and then to note divergences and overlaps, and indeed sometimes to pit one against another. This practice of reflection mirrors the manner in life itself wherein we sometimes find ourselves being committed to, or departing from, one or another set of fundamental values. By contrast, I want to offer a reflection which is a kind of “step back” from the foreground of such sets or systems of moral values into the sources of the ethical, sources often recessed or taken for granted as we go about the daily practice of ethical life. I call these sources the “potencies of the ethical”. Among these I number what I call the idiotic, the aesthetic, the dianoetic, the eudaimonic, the transcendental, the transcending and the transcendent. Drawing on Ethics and the Between, I will explain briefly what each of these means and entails. My point will be that these potencies enter differently into different ethical “systems”.1 Ethical “systems” manifest these potencies in this or that determinate configuration; sometimes some potencies are repressed; sometimes some are recessed; sometimes certain potencies are in the dominant. Understanding the potencies allows us to look differently at different ethical orientations, again say, Aristotelianism or Christianity or Kantianism or Nietzscheanism, and without simply pitting one ethical system against another. The ethical potencies enter into all such systems in diverse ways and without being identical with or exhausted by any one system. The “step back” allows a return to the multiple sources of the ethical in the potencies, sources which can get diversely expressed, inflected, repressed or ignored in different

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ethical systems. This “step back” might also paradoxically help us have something to say about the future of ethics. The “step back” is not into some past determinate system but into the always generative sources of diverse ethical systems, whether of the past or present, or a possible future. Why this “step back” at all? I do not see it as simply a matter of “metaethics”, understood as a reflection of the nature of philosophical ethics. I think more of an archeological exploration of the sources of our being ethical, archeology in the sense of a logos of the archai or originary sources at work in our being ethical in the diverse practices of life, sources indeed that enter into the practices of philosophical thought that reflect on these first “lived” practices. The point I am making might be seen as asking for ethics something somewhat analogous to Heidegger’s claim that we need a “step back” out of metaphysics. Heidegger’s proposal need not be antagonistic to metaphysics, though sometimes it is understood in this manner. I would say the point has its force relative to the fact that diverse metaphysical systems have been developed and articulated throughout a long history of philosophical reflection, but these very developments tend to a sedimentation into systems that, to a degree, lose contact with the more originary sources of metaphysical reflection. If we turn from metaphysics to ethics, we might say analogously that diverse ethical “systems”, or patterns of moral order, have taken form in the history of ethical living and reflection, and that what we take as familiarity with these determinate ethical systems or orders may blunt us to the question of the originary ethical (re)sources that go into their formation. If we reflect on these sources perhaps we may find that the determinate “systems” or moral orders, in their overlaps and divergences, are subtended by sources that cast light on what is centrally at stake in such “systems” or orders. And this, in regard to what they highlight and in regard to what they slight, in regard to the defining individualities of these “systems”, and in regard to what sets them apart or in opposition. When one says “system” one is not dealing with system as a closed totality but with an open and dynamic order which is potentially permeable to what is “trans-systematic”. That permeability can also become a relevant theme if we seek to “step back” in an archeology of the originary (re)sources. Such an ethical archeology is not a genealogical recurrence to a determinate past now masked, but a revivification of mindfulness of our constant ethical powers and abiding endowments. Before turning more directly to the potencies, a significant consideration in undertaking this “step back” is the issue of ethical nihilism that continues to haunt us. What I mean here is not, as Nietzsche puts it, the devaluation of the highest values, but rather the fact that the ethos of being

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in which we live has to come to terms with the pervasive circulation of counterfeit doubles of these values. The hidden anxiety about the valuelessness of these values haunts us. I mean: in one respect we seem to live in a time that seems hyperbolically ethical in its concern for multiple agendas of moral and political activisms, all promoting themselves as aiming to “make a difference”, as it is often put. And yet subtending the surface of hyperbolic ethical concern in our time is the spectre that there is no constant ground for ethical worth as such, beyond the dominant propagation of diverse agendas of “making a difference”. This, in fact, is connected with the weakening of our feel for the abiding endowments that are not the product of our self-constitution but that enable any ethical configuration in which we participate. Renewed finesse for these endowments re-opens our porosity to the promise of a constant ground as more than ourselves, a ground that also invests being as given with some worthiness for itself. Put differently, the issue of ethical nihilism cannot be divorced from the devaluation of being that we diversely witness in modernity, a devaluation connected with the divorce of being and the good (and in complex ways for philosophers, of metaphysics and ethics). If given being in itself is valueless, our sense of the ethos of being will participate in a similar worthlessness. Our ethical reconfigurations of our participation in this ethos will respond to, either expressing or hiding, this more original sense of valuelessness. Our articulation of the potencies of the ethical will be haunted by this sense of valuelessness. One might see our secretion of counterfeit doubles of the highest values as our protection against this haunting, even as an attempted exorcism of it. I see the “step back” as assisting a truer exorcism of the counterfeit doubles of ethical value. For it may allow us to address this issue: whether in relation to the ethos of being and our ethical reconfigurations of it we come upon a recurrent and abiding constancy in the offering of more inherent worth, in and through the potencies of the ethical. The configuration of the ethos of being as valuelessness is a spectre we ourselves have called up. But it is in the constantly renewed influx of the worth of the “to be”, via the potencies of the ethical, that the spirit of the ethical comes to us. Much more could be said about this, but here I can do no more than refer to a number of other publications where wrestling with this issue of the valuelessness of being is crucial.2

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II The ethos of being is one of promise, ethically speaking. Aristotle said, the good is what all things seek. But this is not simply because now all things lack the good; already we are with the good in a certain enigmatic way. This promise of the “to be” is not univocal but rather receives plurivocal articulation in terms of the potencies of the ethical. I will now try to give a sense of each of these potencies, understood as dynamical ethical endowment(s), not as merely abstract possibilities. We are endowed in receiving and being invested with these potencies. And we are plurally endowed in that these different potencies bring to explication the ethical promise of our ethical being. All of the potencies of the ethical come forth out of an initial immersion in the ethos of being where we are offered an opaque intimation of the surplus of the good. This intimation does not give us transparent cognition. I would say that first there is a certain idiocy to this participation. There is an elemental intimacy with the worth of being: before all determinate values, there is a pre-determinate sense of the good of the “to be” at all, which we participate in, and witness to in the fact that our being is itself a kind of affirmation of being. We taste something of this in tasting the sweetness of being at all: a morning freshness that is offered again and again, so much so that we take no notice after a while, though when it is not refreshed our life falls into despondency. It often comes back to us in a feeling that there is something true, an affirmation of the worth of being on which we can rely, in the nature of things. Again there is no determinate clarity about this; mostly it is in an unstated background, which may come into sharper focus under the pressure of different stresses of life. The word “idiocy” suggests something beyond our determinate reason, but it signals something singular that is both intimate and other at once. The idiotic is intimate but it is not autistic, since it offers the intimate sources of communicability and hence of relation to what is other to ourselves. For instance, consider how an “idiom” is a singular manner of communicating. Or consider how we think of a person’s idiosyncrasy as the singular signature of their character, a signature communicated singularly to others. The infant is born and howls but the howl is its selfaffirmation and its reaching out to life beyond itself. It words its affirmation of life in this howl–it is a scream of health, not horror. Those attending the birth are happy with this howl of health; silence would be ominous about the life of the infant. This idiocy of the good is especially important relative to the source of intimate worth in the human being. In

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our intimation of it we wake up to this intimacy. It is not merely indeterminate but there is more to it than any determinate value, and it is not defined by our self-determination. There is something enigmatic about this intimate otherness of being at all. We awake in a patience to this surplus otherness, a point especially significant for what I call metaxological ethics.3 We are awakened to something inexhaustible about the good of being at all. There is something too much about this for us. We are secretly sustained by it, but being so intimate with it, participating in it, we cannot get a fix on it. Often we are so overtaken by a sense of familiarity with it that our astonishment at its marvel droops and drops away. Something is at work in giving us, astonishingly, the gift of being, the elemental good of the “to be”. It is at work when we develop our powers and give our lives determinate shape. It is at work when we fall into perplexity and find ourselves troubled by something seemingly equivocal in what is good for us. It is at work when we deal with dilemmas of life which introduce division within and without. It is at work when we are tested by gifts and sufferings beyond our self-determination, soliciting a trust beyond our own efforts to be complete through ourselves alone. It is at work when generous others give us themselves in ethical meeting where our community with the stranger is irradiated by love. There is something about this surplus good that is beyond determinate measure and beyond the merit of our selfdetermination. Second, related to this intimacy, but incarnated in a more determinate embodiment, there is the aesthetic potency of the ethical. I cannot subscribe to the long-standing way the aesthetic and the ethical are divorced from each other, be it, say, in a Kantian or Kierkegaardian manner. There is an aesthetic givenness of the ethos of being to our senses and our bodies. The otherness of the ethos involves a showing of the worth of being which is aesthetic. The incarnate good of the world is in rapport with our response to goodness and our being as good. Our pleasure in being comes in here, and there are many ethical philosophies in which this pleasure is central: hedonism and epicureanism, for instance, in the ancient world, utilitarianism, in the modern. There are also ethical philosophies in which pleasure is the seductress against whose tempting allure we must harden ourselves. Of course, whether in the more positive form or the more suspicious or hostile, our partaking in the immediacies of pleasure requires some mediation. Thus the positive views of epicureanism enact ethical disciplines closer to a kind of contemplative appreciation of the pleasure, an appreciation that calls for the minimalization of the disturbances of the surprises of the body. The attitudes of the utilitarian

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involve a more calculative manipulation and control of such surprises, with the goal in view of the supposed maximalization of the pleasure for the greatest number possible. In more ascetical ethical philosophies, the mediation of the aesthetic potency is more often a negation that quarantines pleasure. One detects that tendency in Kantianism, for instance. The aesthetic potency, I suggest, is deeper than these more determinate ethical philosophies. Pleasure, as a “being pleased”, either with being as other or with ourselves as being, is often too superficially understood. Pleasure as manifesting the aesthetic potency is ontologically deep in manifesting the affirming of the “to be” as good, and in so far as this is expressed in our bodily being and its rapport with the world. We enjoy this in desire expectant and satiated, and even the disappointments of satisfaction cannot entirely kill the resurrection of its anticipation springing up afresh, as if for the first time. We may eat the same bread each day, but there can be the deep relish of fresh pleasure in this our daily bread. Often we live this aesthetic potency in our response to beauty; but we also create works of beauty. We bring to be, so to say, a courtesy of incarnation. The ethos of bodily being, as well as the “eco-system” as other to our will to mastery, are to be respected by metaxological ethics. Of course, none of this is univocally determinate and there is something equivocally indeterminate about pleasures. The old song has it: love is pleasing, love is teasing, love is a pleasure when first it’s new, but when it grows older, love grows colder and fades away with the morning dew. There is passing to this pleasure: it passes into us, it passes through and beyond us, it passes away. There is no absolute fixing of it. But something of the good of the “to be” passes in this “being pleased” of pleasure. Third, the equivocal indeterminacy suggests what I call the dianoetic potency. This reflects the need to seek some intelligible, law-like regularity to the ambiguities of the aesthetics of the good of the “to be”. This aesthetic showing is more full of equivocity than we can always manage, yet as we become discerning, we discover constancies and regularities. There is a movement that mediates the intimate singularities of aesthetic life, and does this through resort to what is more law-like or rule-governed. An ethical emphasis that respects these more general patterns and regularities is needed. There are many ethical systems in which this move to general rule or dianoetic law is enshrined, over against the seemingly inconstant fluidity of aesthetic pleasure. And this is very intelligible. The dianoetic potency is attendant to the intelligible

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constancies emergent in our being in the ethos. A certain respect for sameness and recurrence is needed. Contrary to quite a bit of postmodern rhetoric, this need not be understood as always reductive of diversity. There are intelligible bonds that hold diversities together, and that command or ask for respect, respect for the constancy as well as the diversity. The temptation, to be sure, is always the superimposition of orders on the surplus of being, or the surplus worth of our own aesthetic being, now disciplined in its tendency to waywardness. The law is to be respected and obeyed, and the inconstancy of life thus mitigated. This does not mean the dianoetic constancies are always adequately formulated by us. The laws can become tyrannical in dictating to the passage of life, in the process stifling the affirmation of being in the passing. The law then kills. We must be on guard against false fixations on rules at the expense of the affirmation of life, even though we seem to thus secure ourselves. Spurious dictations to life can be counterfeit doubles of dianoetic constancies that are shaping and enabling of our ethical being. Further again, and fourth, I would speak of the transcendental potency of the ethical in that some constancies occupy a special position of making a more universal claim than any generality that must reform itself in light of changing relativities. They govern ethical life in ways that make ethical life essentially possible and without which determinate formations of ethical life would cease to be ethical. Kant’s moral philosophy primarily stresses this transcendental potency in terms of good will, autonomy, the categorical imperative and the moral law. There is much to be said for Kant’s view but it tends to stress the side of the ethical self whose autonomy is not always adequately held together with the ethical intermediation with the other, and indeed with the givenness of the moral law. I would say, in a non-Kantian way, that the metaxological relation between self and other is transcendental in that regard: it is the condition of the possibility of more determinate forms of selving and of “being together”, forms of self-becoming and of being in community. Likewise, reference to the good itself as agapeic origin and ultimately as enabling the metaxological relation is transcendental: the ultimate condition of the possibility of the ethical between. This is not a “condition” at all; but if we call it a “condition of possibility”, this is more in a “Platonic” than Kantian sense: the being of the good and the relativity of the metaxological as “original sources of possibilizing”, presupposed by determinate approaches to the ethos and specific human formations of the ethical. One could say that Kant’s version of the transcendental potency recesses the idiotic-intimate and the aesthetic potencies. The latter cannot

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be fixed univocally enough for him. Equally he is unhappy with the dianoetic potency since it does not yield the exception-less universality he claims we need for morality. In the metaxological sense of the transcendental there is no need to think dualistically about the intimate and the aesthetic. Likewise, we can be more generous to dianoetic constancies if they are qualified by ethical finesse rather than moral geometry. Fifth, there is what might be termed the eudaimonic potency of the ethical. “Eudaimonia” is sometimes rather blandly translated as “happiness”. The ethical position we often associate with it, of course, is Aristotelianism. But there are more calculative forms of eudaimonism in modernity against whose more instrumental form Kant rebelled. Against bland happiness, I believe we should take seriously the reference to the daimon in eudaimonia: the good (eu) daimon. The daimon is a being between the mortal and the divine, at the limit of the mortal and on the threshold of the divine. Eros is a daimon, it is said in Plato’s Symposium: a metaxu between mortals and divinities, eros binds up the whole. The sense of the fullness of human flourishing is at stake. And this need not be pursued by means of a dualistic opposition of the rational and non-rational powers. With reference to the daimon, the eudaimonic potency takes up again and resumes the idiotic and aesthetic potencies. Equally it is not just transcendental in the Kantian sense since it brings us back to the full embodied nature of life as well as its full social embeddedness. There is a primordial “being pleased” with the fulfillment of powers: our determination of our powers otherwise indeterminate, such that what was being sought and implicitly loved in the idiocy comes into its own. In this one also comes into one’s neighborhood with the good of other-being: comes into fullness, and in coming into fullness, rejoices even the more that being is the inexpressible good that it is. There is a threshold, as well as completing character to the eudaimonic potency. This threshold of life is death. The fulfillment of power is easier said than reached, but all the travail seeks it, though too much travail darkens the secret directedness on the daimon. We have to come to terms with this darkening in the chiaroscuro of the ethos. Once again much more could be said but current restrictions preclude this. Sixth, the transcending potency refers us to our restless self-surpassing of limits, both in ourselves and what is other. As restlessly desiring the good we are not merely indeterminate; rather something surplus or overdetermined comes to expression in our being as exceeding itself. We are determinate and more than determinate, and much of what we are, as determinate, is itself the crystallization of this more-than-determinate power of self-surpassing. Plato and Nietzsche could be seen as

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philosophers who especially stress the transcending potency. I am thinking of the erotics of being in Plato; and in Nietzsche one recalls his stress on the fact that man is a being that is to be overcome. Going beyond: but to what? I would say this transcending potency cannot be fully understood in univocal terms; there is something equivocal about it. Thus there can be something heavenly about eros, Plato held, but also something tyrannical. It is glory and wretchedness, as Pascal thought. Nietzschean transcending takes form as will to power and this distinction of heavenly eros (eros uranios) and tyrannical eros (eros turannos) is not easy to discern. For that matter, the ethics of an Augustine or an Aquinas is replete with the transcending potency, though it is understood in both as oriented to God as the transcendent good that is the absolute end of all desire. There are dialectical philosophers like Hegel who will interpret this transcending power in terms of the self-mediation of reason, culminating in a spiritual sovereignty in which the division of the human and the divine is abrogated, and the human now seems to be the divine. Again the enigma of our immanent equivocity strikes home against such an immanent ethics. We find in the inward source of this transcending a strange otherness in innerness itself. The autonomous human being finds it cannot mediate with itself entirely. The enigmatic otherness is always there before we come to ourselves in more determinate form. There is something of mystery about the human power of self-surpassing itself. There is always something more than we can fix in our moving to something more, even as we are ourselves and nothing but ourselves. There is excess to that which we are seeking. Our immanent originality enables self-surpassing but it is not the product of that self-surpassing; the immanent originality is an endowed originality. Further, that towards which we orient ourselves in self-surpassing also seems beyond us, even as we seek to come closer to it in surpassing ourselves. Finally, relative to the transcending potency there is our wonder about transcendent good: not just our self-transcending but the good as transcendence itself. This matter is, of course, much contested in modernity where freedom, often primarily understood as autonomy, seems to have become the only uncontested good. Freedom as autonomy has become our “god”. I have argued in Ethics and the Between and elsewhere that our self-transcending cannot rest in self-relating immanence but points towards a sense of transcendence as other, which is both beyond us and most intimate in our deepest idiocy. Properly speaking, the transcendent good is not a potency, since if we affirm it, we affirm the fullness of life beyond potency, at least in the sense of unrealized possibility, though as such it is also the acme of all good and the endowing source of all ethical

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possibility. Metaxological ethics seeks to keep our living in the ethos open to transcendence itself, not just our self-transcendence: the ultimate power that possibilizes all transcending, indeed all being, and possibilizes it because transcendence itself is good. We might see something of this in the Platonic good epikeina tes ousias. The great monotheistic religions name this good as God. This transcendent good is also transcendental in a non-Kantian sense: as the ultimate enabling power of all “to be”, and all “to be” as good. It is worth recalling that Kantian and post-Kantian ethics has sometimes a diffident, sometimes a hostile attitude to this extraordinary name, God. This is bound up with the excessive stress on autonomy as identified with freedom and a phobia of anything heteronomous that suggests absolute superiority to us: the good as above us. I would say the point cannot be a dualism of immanence and transcendence, of our selftranscending and transcendent good as other. If there is a metaxological ethics, what is at stake is its naming of the ethos of being as the betweenspace wherein the ultimate good intimates itself in the idiotic, aesthetic, dianoetic, transcendental, eudaimonic and transcending concretions of life in the finite between. This good is communicated into the between, opening its finite otherness, and through this, opening to the selfbecomings of different beings, each becoming towards what is good for it. We are pointed to a community of the good beyond self-determination, a community already at work in the incognito of its surplus generosity, enabling the powers of self and other to be determining of themselves, giving them to be themselves, giving also the ethos of possibility wherein our immanent powers can be more truly realized.

III Once again, much more would have to be said about this; it is not just a matter of sheer assertion.4 But if we come back to the matter of the “step back”, I would argue that these potencies as constituting our ethical endowments enter into the formation of diverse ethical “systems” or (understandings of) moral orders. To understand these potencies, in this light, is more fundamental than a critique of “Christianity”, or “Platonism”, or “Kantianism”, or for that matter, “Nietzscheanism”. That understanding allows us to see these configurations of the ethos in new light, and not simply play one off against the other. These potencies recur throughout different ethical formations. As endowments there is a certain givenness to their being at work at all in our being, but there is also a certain empowering character to these endowments. They reveal a side

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which is received, and a side that calls for endeavoring. They mingle thus the patient and the active, allowing both for a kind of ethical gratitude for goods received and a constructive willingness to realize as fully as possible the enabling promise of goodness open to the future. I offer a brief indication of some more determinate configurations of the ethical potencies. As already indicated, hedonisms, ancient and modern, tend to stress the aesthetic potency. At the same time, one can see in them their resort to the dianoetic potency as a calculative means to optimize the pleasure of being, identified with happiness. Whether epicurean or utilitarian, there is not enough recognition of the transcendental, transcending and the transcendent. Also the eudaimonic tends to be reduced to the satisfaction of impulses with utilitarianism, and to the attainment of ataxaria with epicureanism. Aristotelian eudaimonism is much richer than either of these since it tries to give weight to the aesthetic, dianoetic and the eudaimonic, and all with the view to the full integrity of the human being excelling in virtue. Aristotelianism understresses the transcending and transcendent to turn the point of relevance away from the Platonic good to what is attainable in human community in the more mundane sense. Nevertheless, the stress on phronesis, as deeming what is fitting relative to the whole situation, both individual and communal, is something that is shared with Plato, who lives on in Aristotle regardless of different emphases. Aristotelian eudaimonism is transformed in Aquinas, given that the transcending potency is understood as the desire for God, and hence the transcendent good recalibrates the Aristotelian take on the other different potencies. Indeed also the sense of the idiotic, the intimate sense of the good of the “to be”, is affected by this recalibration. Kantian ethics puts the primary emphasis on the transcendental potency in such a manner that it becomes the essence of the moral, and while the other potencies are noted by Kant in some way or other, they do not enter essentially into the true determination of the moral as such. Kant is suspicious of the aesthetic and the wayward flux of impulses and desires: these are pathological, other than the true noumenal nature of the moral. Likewise, dianoetic generalities are not universal in the stricter exceptionless sense that is required by him. Kant’s sense of eudaimonism is shaped by the calculative utilitarianism of his time in the 18th century. Hence he lacks the richer sense we find in Aristotle, as well as the suppler sense of phronesis so needed in ambiguous ethical situations, suppleness that can be principled. There is no explicit granting of the transcending potency in Kant, though it is actually needed and presupposed in the movement between the sensuous and the supersensuous. Likewise, there is

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suspicion of God as a heteronomous ground of the moral law; though true to his own vacillating character, Kant will bring God back in at the end, as a kind of eschatological supplement to heal the immanent wound between virtue and happiness. There is no transcending either as erotic or as agapeic in his rationalistic scheme of things. Plato tends to stress the transcending potency, as erotically oriented to the transcendent good, and is perhaps ambiguous about the aesthetic. Nietzsche stresses the transcending and the aesthetic and is not only ambiguous about the transcendent but hostile. The difference between them is not in some simple contrast of Platonism and Nietzscheanism, but resides rather in how the entire range of ethical potencies is addressed, and not just the ones that are in the dominant. Thus Nietzsche will see the Platonic openness to transcendent good as set in opposition to the worth of immanent aesthetic life, our being embodied creatures, as well as to the erotics of entirely immanent creatures. Whether this is true or not, there is an issue between them as to the orientation of transcending to transcendence as more than our own self-surpassing. Whether we choose for the Platonic good or for the Nietzschean superman affects the entire configuration of the other ethical potencies also. I would suggest that we do not need what Nietzsche sought, namely, a transvaluation of all values; though in the main, he offered us a flawed critique of “Christianity” and “Platonism”, from the standpoint of a Dionysian will to power. What we need is less such a transvaluation as a renewal of discerning reflection on the ethical potencies as the basic (re-)sources of value, in terms of the plurivocal possibilities of the power of the “to be”. If we add Christianity to the mixture, I would say here that a given goodness of creation is crucial at the idiotic level. This is not a moral value reflecting our self-determining powers, but an ontological worth with ethical radiations. It is an intimate goodness to being as given to be, given to be by God as the ultimate origin and end of all finite goods. I would see Augustinian ethics, if we could speak thus, as transforming the Platonic eros, with something like the passion of Nietzsche, but this seeking of desire is to be true to the love of the living God. Augustine is notable for his sense of the idiocy of the human soul: the abyss of its radical intimacy, in which the mystery of the divine also communicates its mystery beyond the mystery of soul or self–God as interior intimo meo, in the marvelous wording of it. There is the fact too that while there is a transcending in Christianity, there is also a sense of the transcendent good, as itself transcending into creation itself, its agapeic communication of itself to the world of finite immanence as such. There are no real resources in Nietzsche to understand the meaning of agapeic transcending, whether

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applied to the human or the divine. While he exalts a form of erotic sovereignty, by contrast he can only see, at most, a kind of servility in Christianity: master versus slave morality. He does not see there is an agapeic service that frees beyond servility and sovereignty.

IV I mentioned metaxological ethics above, and this entails a further complicating, albeit enriching element to the consideration of the potencies of the ethical. The ethical potencies assume different definitions, depending on the dominance of this or that fundamental sense of being, or of being good. In Being and the Between, Ethics and the Between, and God and the Between I argue for four fundamental orientations to being, and being good: the univocal, the equivocal, the dialectical and the metaxological.5 The univocal tries to fix determinate sameness; the equivocal enters into differences, with the stress on a certain indeterminacy; the dialectical seeks the mediation of sameness and difference, with the stress on a self-determination inclusive of difference; the metaxological seeks a plurivocal intermediation of sameness and difference, with the stress on the overdeterminacy of the selving, the othering and the intermediating, an overdeterminacy more than determinacy, indeterminacy and selfdetermination. I believe this metaxological sense keeps us truer to the surplus givenness of the ethos of being, without foreclosing on our contribution to furthering the good in life. This means that relative to the ethical potencies, metaxologically understood, we need a fuller appreciation of the relation to otherness than dialectic offers, a more affirmative sense of the mystery than equivocity has, and a more open sense of determination than univocity fixes. This is truer to the human being, in its gifted being at all, and in the restless excess of its (sometimes) exorbitant selftranscendence, between finitude and infinity. What is at issue cannot be just a projection of the human good, if from the outset the human being is marked by an undergoing before it marks itself as an endeavoring. We are a suffering of being, and a suffering of the good, before we are a doing of the good more proper to ourselves. Metaxological ethics is not a substitute for God's mind, but a human essay, always in the between, to read the sometimes ambiguous signs of being good. As a suffering, as well as a doing, as an opening to the other, as well as a self-forming, it must be alert, on edge, to what comes to it from beyond itself. Otherwise it closes itself to traces of transcendence that dawn in the midst of things. The surplus of the good asks for plurivocity: not because we are poor, not

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because we are also rich in our poverty; but because there is something to the good of the between that is beyond our measure. We must do our best to stay true to what is given from it, and what is best in it. We need many ways. Nor need our ways be antagonistic to the One, if this One manifests the agapeic giving of the plural between, and the broadcast of the good of being. This fourfold sense of being enters into the shaping of different ways of being ethical that dwell more and more intensively with what is at play in the ethos of being. One would have to say that there is not just one approach which we must canonize univocally as the ethical: a teleological one, or deontological one, or virtue approach, or an ethics of will to power, or of alterity, and so forth. The point is not finally to say: this is the ethical; let the other ways go whistle. I think this would be to distort the plurivocity of being ethical, itself reflecting the plurality of the ethical potencies. The result need not be a pluralism indifferent to the issue of qualitative discrimination. Some configurations of the ethical potencies can show greater fidelity to the full promise of being ethical. In my view, the metaxological way, as trying to be faithful to the respective endowments of the ethical potencies, is truer to this promise than the other ways alone. In truth all mindfulness is really metaxological: it participates in, and becomes articulate as, a logos of the metaxu. We can be true in greater or lesser degree to what is promised in the between. To be human is to be metaxological: to be in the between, a between we do not first create, within which we become ourselves, though we never become complete masters of ourselves or the between. To be ethical is to be endowed with the potencies of the ethical in the milieu of the good, between the conditioned goods we find and create in the web of relativities, and the unconditioned good that is shown or intimates itself in the happening of being, and to whose promise we respond in the lives we live.

References Desmond, William, 1995. Being and the Between, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press. —. 2001. Ethics and the Between, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press. —. 2008. God and the Between, Oxford: Blackwell. —. 2013. “Ethics and the Evil of Being” in ed. Fran O’Rourke, What Happened in and to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Alasdair McIntyre, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 423-459.

CHAPTER SEVEN DO WITTGENSTEIN’S ETHICAL VIEWS HAVE ANYTHING TO OFFER FOR THE FUTURE OF ETHICS? PATRICK QUINN

Introduction In 1929, Wittgenstein made the following remark about ethics: “What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural” (Wittgenstein 1980, 3e). The relationship between ethics and the religious dimension is a recurring theme in Wittgenstein’s writings, and is also linked with happiness and with what constitutes a good life (subjects that are discussed in the ethical accounts of other philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle onwards right down to the present). It is also true that, while Wittgenstein’s writings on ethics are relatively few compared with those on his main interests in philosophy (such as the relationship between language, thought and behaviour), his deep interest in the subject warrants considerable attention from anyone interested in the direction of his thinking. Perhaps the most organised and formal presentation of his ethical views is contained in his “Lecture on Ethics”, given in 1929 to the Heretics Society in Cambridge. Of even greater significance are his earlier thoughts on ethics from 1916 which are contained in the last part of his Notebooks 1914-1916,1 written when he was a soldier in the AustroHungarian army during World War 1. The passages from the Notebooks addressed in this chapter offer some of the richest and earliest remarks on the subject by Wittgenstein. His thoughts and remarks on ethics here later re-emerge in a more succinct form in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.2 There are also his recorded remarks on ethics and its importance in Culture and Value,3 some of which once again echo those earlier passages

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while providing additional insights into his understanding of the subject in the 1930’s up to the time of his death in April 1951. In addition there are the conversations between Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann, recorded by the latter, where some of Wittgenstein’s earlier thoughts repeat points made in the Notebooks and Tractatus.4 We also have reports on his ethical remarks from some of those who knew him, notably his friend Con Drury, whose memoirs are contained in Rush Rhees’ Recollections of Wittgenstein.5 In addition, there is also an account of Wittgenstein’s ethics in Rhees’ Discussions of Wittgenstein.6 Finally, Norman Malcolm’s Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? is very useful in describing the religious concerns of Wittgenstein, which so often contextualised the latter’s understanding of ethics.7 In this chapter, I shall concentrate mainly on extracts from the Notebooks 1914-1916 and will also refer to his Tractatus which repeats, sometimes word for word, some of the statements made in the Notebooks. His “Lecture on Ethics” will also be discussed and some reference will be made to his ethical thoughts in Culture and Value. It would be a mistake to think that the somewhat limited amount of mention that ethics gets in Wittgenstein’s writings suggests a lower level of interest in the subject on his part compared with the other more philosophical topics examined by him. The opposite is in fact the case. As with his views on religious faith and Christian faith in particular, Wittgenstein’s interest in ethics was deeply felt and provided the backdrop to his way of life and thought generally, even more so, perhaps, than his religious views. This is especially evident in his Notebooks, where he explicitly situates the ethical views expressed there in the context of his thoughts about God and the meaning and purpose of life (Wittgenstein 1993, 11.6.1916), subjects that re-surface over and over again in the Tractatus and in a more condensed form in his “Lecture on Ethics” and the other writings already mentioned.

The General Context of Ethics The general thrust of his ethical thinking is set out in his Notebooks as follows: What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. That this meaning does not lie in it but outside it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good or evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world. The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. Just connect with this the

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Written as it was in the turbulence of war which grew more intensive in early May 1916, this is an important passage. Seeking to know the meaning of life and the importance of God, which Wittgenstein identifies with ethics, sets the tone for most, if not all, of his subsequent remarks on the subject. At an early stage in his “Lecture on Ethics”, for example, he substitutes Moore’s definition of ethics as “the general enquiry into what is good”, with his own description of ethics as “the enquiry into what is valuable, or, what is really important or...the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living” (Wittgenstein 1993, 38). All the above conclusions are to be found in some form in the earlier Notebooks, as are his references to God as the one who keeps us safe regardless of what happens. Feeling safe in the hands of God is akin to what the realm of ethics amounts to, he tells us in his Lecture (Wittgenstein 1993, 42). The Notebooks continue to explore these subjects in more detail, with Wittgenstein claiming, for example, that we find ourselves in the world whose meaning is problematic and must, he claims, lie outside of the world. Good and evil are connected to this through one’s will which confronts the meaning of life and of the world. This is what we call God, he says cryptically, and God as father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life with all that it entails. One is powerless to bend what happens in the world to one’s will and it is only by becoming independent of the world and by thus being in control of it, that we can “renounce any influence on its happenings” (Wittgenstein 1993, 73e). All of this, Wittgenstein concludes, contextualises and defines ethics. These remarks and those that immediately follow were recorded over a short period of consecutive days in early July, 1916. Wittgenstein claimed that ethics and happiness were closely linked and he shared Dostoevsky’s view that: [T]he man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence. Or we could say that the man is fulfilling the purpose of existence who no longer needs to have any purpose except to live. That is to say, who is content. (Wittgenstein 1993, 73e) 8

And perhaps this state of contentment is connected with what Wittgenstein says at this point in the Notebooks when he concludes this group of thoughts with the oft-quoted, if still puzzling, remark usually associated with Tractatus 6.521: “The solution of the problem of life is to be seen in

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the disappearance of this problem” (Wittgenstein 1993, 74e). Wittgenstein elaborates on this statement in the Notebooks (as indeed he does later in Tractatus 6.521), asking: Isn’t this the reason why men to whom the meaning of life had become clear after long doubting could not say what this meaning consisted in?

In the Tractatus, however, where the latter question is also raised, the answer seems to lead straight into what Wittgenstein calls the mystical: There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. The correct method in philosophy (my italics) would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said… (Wittgenstein 2007, 6.522)

Wittgenstein then tells us that: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical (i.e. meaningless), when he has used them - as steps to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. (Wittgenstein 2007, 6.54)9

The Tractatus then ends with his well-known remark: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (Wittgenstein 2007, 7). In contrast with this flowing and more cryptic Tractatus account, his Notebooks record his thoughts on the same issue as follows: To believe in God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.

It would seem that the references in the Tractatus to the mystical represent another way of referring to God or the supernatural and the Notebooks certainly contain a much more explicit theological account when we compare them with Wittgenstein’s more succinct and enigmatic references on these issues in the Tractatus and elsewhere. The difference here may also be connected to his growing awareness of what one cannot speak about but can only describe or depict by metaphor, analogy or illustration as in Tractatus 6.53. The silence which marks the theological and religious as that which shows itself, and about which we must therefore remain silent, is, earlier in the Notebooks (for example, 74e), more directly and

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explicitly explored in his initial attempts to delineate the foundation and nature of the ethical dimension in human life and thought.

Ethics and Happiness We have already seen that Wittgenstein states that the happy and content person is the one who fulfils the purpose of life, which is to live, and by doing so, facilitates the disappearance of the “problem of life”, as he puts it (Wittgenstein 1998, 73e ). More specifically, at the time of writing his ethical remarks in his Notebooks these thoughts may have provided him– as a soldier–with a way of coping with fear in the face of death. Such sentiments are found in Notebooks: A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy. For life in the present there is no death. Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact of the world.10 If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but nontemporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present. In order to live happily I must be in agreement with the world. And that is what ‘being happy’ means. I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: I am doing the will of God. (Wittgenstein 1998, 74e and 75e)

By contrast, living a “false” or “bad” life implies a fear of death: “Fear in the face of death is the best sign of a false, i.e. a bad, life” (Wittgenstein 1998, 75e). There are echoes of Plato’s writings about the trial and death sentence of Socrates (the Apology and the Phaedo), and the sentiments expressed by the Platonic Socrates that it is better to suffer harm than to inflict it. In Wittgenstein’s remarks on living a life of conscientious equilibrium, there are also reminders of the Republic’s understanding of justice and the obligation to witness the truth following the Cave narrative:11 When my conscience upsets my equilibrium, I am not in agreement with Something. But what is this? Is it the world? Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God. For example: it makes me unhappy to think that I have offended such and such a man. Is that my conscience? Can one say: Act according to your conscience, whatever it maybe? Live happy!

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There are resonances here of Aquinas’ radical view of conscience (an erroneous conscience is binding) and of Newman’s famous remark (“I’ll drink to conscience first and then to the Pope”) given Wittgenstein’s theological perspective on conscience.12 He elaborates on these views a little further on in his Notebooks (Wittgenstein 1998, 78e-79e) but first prefaces his series of remarks on living happily with the following insight into ethics and the will by arguing that “everything seems to turn, so to speak, on how one wants”.13 He then adds: It seems one can’t say anything more than: Live happily! The world of the happy is a different world from that of the unhappy.14 The world of the happy is a happy world. (Wittgenstein 1998, 78e)15

He next addresses the question as to whether ethics is concerned with reward or punishment and concludes that there must be some kind of ethical reward and punishment but claims that “these must be involved in the action itself”, adding that “the reward must be something pleasant, the punishment something unpleasant” (Wittgenstein 1998, 78e).16 There then follows another series of remarks on the happy life which ends once more with the conclusion that ethics is deeply mysterious, inexpressible and transcendental: I keep on coming back to this! Simply the happy life is good, the unhappy bad. And if I now ask myself: But why should I live happily, then this of itself seems to me to be a tautological question; the happy life seems to be justified, of itself, it seems that it is the only right life. But this is really in some sense deeply mysterious! It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed!17 But we could say: the happy life seems to be in some sense more harmonious than the unhappy. But in what sense? What is the objective mark of the happy harmonious life?” (Wittgenstein 1998, 78e)

This leads Wittgenstein to observe that: Here it is quite clear that there cannot be any such mark that can be described. This mark cannot be a physical one, but only a metaphysical one, a transcendental one. (Wittgenstein 1998, 78e)

Ethics is therefore transcendental, concludes Wittgenstein, in this section of the Notebooks.18 He rounds off his remarks by adding that: How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand. Only from the consciousness of the uniqueness of my life arises Religion – science – and art. And this consciousness is life itself. (Wittgenstein 1998, 79e)

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Once again, the proximity of his thoughts here on ethics, God and religion identify the context which determines for Wittgenstein how one should picture the ethical foundation of one’s attitudes and behaviour such that even if there were no other living being but oneself, ethics would still exist.

Ethics, Value, the Supernatural and the Subject If ethics, as Wittgenstein states, lies outside the sphere of facts and of the world generally and is a “condition of the world, like logic” (Wittgenstein 1998, 77e)–this world whose “sense (or meaning)… lies outside the world” (Wittgenstein 1974, 6.41)–then it follows that value itself is somehow likewise: “If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the sphere of what happens and is the case…It must lie outside the world” (Wittgenstein 1974, 6.41). Thus ethics cannot be expressed in propositional form, he tells us (Wittgenstein 1974, 6.42) since it cannot be put into words because “it is transcendental” (Wittgenstein 1974, 6.421). The same point is made later in Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics” where, once again, we are told that ethics is beyond the realm of facts19 since it deals with “a judgement of absolute value” (Wittgenstein 1993, 39). If the biggest book containing every fact and description of the world were to exist, he says, it would still not be a book on ethics nor could it have anything in it about ethical judgements.20 As he puts it: “The mere description of these facts will contain nothing which we could call an ethical judgement” (Wittgenstein 1993, 40). Wittgenstein goes on to assert that if someone could write such a book on ethics “which really was a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world” (Wittgenstein 1993, 40). Wittgenstein goes on to claim in his lecture that with ethics we are dealing with something of absolute value, of absolute good, something like the wonder that anything should exist at all. It is like the experience of absolute safety, regardless of what happens–comparable to feeling safe "in the hands of God” (Wittgenstein 1993, 42). It is beyond the world in every way it seems. These are extraordinary statements. After all, many of us might see ethics as representing a vision or code for living or way of living, signifying that we live “in the right way” or live “the right kind of life” by “doing the right thing” such as helping other people and the like. Indeed early on in his “Lecture on Ethics”, as we have seen, Wittgenstein himself uses such examples. Yet, he goes on to repeat the claim that what ethics is really about must be transcendent in nature, supernatural, inexpressible.21

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These superlative expressions, found in his Notebooks, Tractatus and in his Cambridge lecture, and elsewhere, may seem exaggerated to those who might even agree with Wittgenstein’s own definitions, for example that ethics means living the right kind of life et cetera. But what if those seemingly overdramatic and highly exaggerated descriptions that characterise Wittgenstein’s perception of what ethics “really” amounts to are true? What if our conventionally encouraged and chosen lower-key approach misses the “real” point of ethics? What if acting ethically is its own reward, the living out of a good and happy life, the only right justifiable life with all the mystery that Wittgenstein attributes to it? If it follows, as he also says, that the world “must be all one, as far as concerns the existence of ethics” (Wittgenstein 1998, 79e) and that we should live together in a harmonious state of happiness, then doesn’t this ethical vision merit some serious consideration, given the standing of its author? It is a religious vision, of course, with identifiable Christian significance, though surely not to be rejected on that account. There are some obstacles, of course, not least the problem of evil which Wittgenstein claims enters the world subjectively.22 He admits in the Notebooks to the difficulties of understanding clearly what he has just thought out and written (“I am conscious of the complete unclarity of all these sentences.” Wittgenstein 1998, 79e), although he immediately adds: Going by the above, then, the willing subject would have to be happy or unhappy, and happiness or unhappiness could not be part of the world. As the subject is not a part of the world but a presupposition of its existence, so good and evil which are predicates of the subject, are not properties in the world. Hence the nature of the subject is completely veiled. (Wittgenstein 1998, 79e)

More unclarity here, perhaps, though Wittgenstein insists that it is the willing subject, the I, who “is the bearer of ethics” (Wittgenstein 1998, 80e). He goes on to assert that: What is good and evil is essentially the I, not the world. The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious. The I is not an object, he says, I cannot confront it objectively – it “makes its appearance in philosophy through the world’s being my world. (Wittgenstein 1998, 80e)

Conscience Wittgenstein moves on to speculate as to whether anyone could be happy if he or she were not free, but had to suffer the miseries of the world

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and concludes that this implies “living the life of knowledge” (Wittgenstein 1998, 81e): The good conscience is the happiness that the life of knowledge preserves. The life of knowledge is the life that is happy in spite of the misery of the world. The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it (this kind of happy life) the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate. (Wittgenstein 1998, 81e)

More Questions Wittgenstein seems quite convinced that he is very close to understanding the nature of ethics itself and what it represents, despite its elusiveness by virtue of its transcendental nature and its religious-mystical character. This does, however, give rise to more questions such as the following: if we cannot speak about it but pass over it in silence, as he suggests, then how should we proceed with ethics? Does his understanding of ethics in its ineffability leave each of us to draw our own individual conclusions, to include the details of how we should live in an ethical way?23 Wittgenstein’s solution seems to be a religious one, which he identifies as giving glory to God and helping one’s neighbour. But do we need guidelines as to how to do either? Or is ethics to be prescribed in a particular religious code, which would somehow be inclusive of “outsiders” or the Other? Is Wittgenstein, like Levinas, providing us here with an ineffable model, something akin to the latter’s concept of the Face or is he suggesting an intuitive self-awareness in some Kantian sense of knowing where our duty lies and doing it, in terms of, for example, helping our neighbour?24

Some Specific Ethical Issues Such are some of the many questions that arise from Wittgenstein’s ethical views. He discusses one specific issue towards the end of his Notebooks which must have had a great deal of personal significance for him, namely the extremely disturbing event of suicide. Three of his brothers had taken their own lives, two of them before the First World War, while the third sibling did so in the course of that war. Wittgenstein describes suicide as “the elementary sin” which “throws a light on the nature of ethics” (Wittgenstein 1998, 77e). He states the issue in this way: “If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed.” This throws light on the nature of ethics for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one

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investigates, it is like investigating mercury vapour in order to comprehend the nature of vapours. He then voices his own uncertainty: “Or is even suicide in itself neither good nor evil?”25 The above remarks end his Notebook contents,26 which is not insignificant in itself. The underlying point here is how to handle life itself if, as he says earlier, the very purpose of life is to live it and this is what will or should make us happy. A student in a recent philosophy class of mine, who wasn’t aware of Wittgenstein’s views on the point of life as the living of it, argued independently that living life seems to be a basic ontological demand so if anyone were to ask what the point of life is, the answer must be, he suggested, that life as life is itself intrinsically worth living. The other issue (which is undoubtedly related to suicide also) for Wittgenstein concerns the ways in which we may be strongly influenced by our environment and the circumstances in which we make decisions, which include for Wittgenstein himself, the theologically and rather frightening possibility of predestination. According to Wittgenstein, being taught such a doctrine could not constitute an ethical upbringing because: If you wanted to bring someone up ethically while yet teaching him such a doctrine, you would have to teach it to him after having educated him ethically, representing it (the doctrine) as a sort of incomprehensible mystery. (Wittgenstein 1980, 81e)

The ethical point here is the importance of freedom as a necessary precondition for the possibility of ethical behaviour. However, Wittgenstein was a troubled man, as we know, who often suffered excruciating remorse, sometimes over his whole lifetime, for past actions which he regretted.27 His remorse for these actions was immense but there was also a lingering fear of being ultimately judged and found wanting. The freedom to choose can thus be a double-edged sword, despite the apparent ethical difficulties about how free anyone is to choose in circumstances which appear to be overwhelmingly compelling and oppressive, with all the consequences for personal responsibility that such situations contain. The problem of ultimate divine judgement was a religious and deeply troubling issue for Wittgenstein which was of such significance for him that even in 1950, in the year before his death, he worried about God’s judgement: How God judges a man is something we cannot imagine at all. If he really takes strength of temptation and the frailty of nature into account, whom can he condemn? But otherwise the resultant of these two forces is simply the end for which man was predestined. In that case he was created so that the interplay of forces would make him either conquer or succumb. And

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The interplay of these conflicting forces of good and evil within us, makes for the fraught and suffering form of life that we all come to experience, suggests Wittgenstein, who was all too conscious of his own human weaknesses, unworthiness and the failure to meet the high standards of honesty and integrity which he set for himself. For Wittgenstein, much of this was accompanied by the fear of being found wanting by God. In a remark to Drury in the late 1940’s, Wittgenstein stated a basic wish: “Now that is all I want: if it should be God’s will.” Then, quoting Bach’s sentiments on the title page of a book on music, which runs as follows: “To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefitted thereby” Wittgenstein commented: “That is what I would have liked to say about my work” (Rhees 1984, 168).

Wittgenstein and the Future of and for Ethics There is no doubt but that Wittgenstein raises some notable if familiar issues for ethics in the future, which may not be all that different from ethical issues discussed in the past and present. These include the theological or religious basis of ethics, the role of God in ethical attitudes and behaviour, ethical and religious codes and traditions, the troubling challenge of suicide, final judgement, the relationship between ethics and happiness, the mystery and problems of evil as we perceive them to be, and the importance of conscience–all of which are significant for ethical enquiry. The value of Wittgenstein’s contributions to future possible ethical debates may well be related to the strongly personal and intensely thoughtful emphasis which he brought to bear to his own investigations into the subject. His remarks on an underlying orderly world which for Wittgenstein is also related to ethical understanding and behaviour (which are not unlike the views of Leibniz) also ground his thinking about the ethical nature of our lives and its place in the order of the universe, despite ethics being supernatural: There cannot be an orderly or a disorderly world, so that one could say that our world is orderly. In every possible world there is an order even if it is a complicated one, just as in space too there are not orderly and disorderly distributions of points, but every distribution of points is orderly. (Wittgenstein 1998, 83e)

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This “material for thought”, as he calls it, carries the implication that we need to be clear about the connection that ethics has with the world in which we live. Apropos of this, one might say that, for Wittgenstein, the primary role of ethics is to bring order into our human behaviour and intentions so that we can live together in a happy harmonious life with others, valuing our existence for what it is and living as we should. If that is true, then the following statement of Wittgenstein’s about what needs to be done in the future for ethics becomes more urgent still: “now at last the connection of ethics with the world needs to be made clear” (Wittgenstein 1993, 84e).

Conclusion There is a growing awareness today that ethics is in crisis and one might wonder whether there is a strong and justifiable sense now that a real understanding of the nature of ethics has been irretrievably lost. Are we then like the one mentioned in Denis O’Driscoll’s poem, Faith, Hope and Loss, who feels the profound absence of something important which may be very difficult to rediscover? Let us hope not and that O’Driscoll’s last verse in the poem, which seems so applicable to our own time, offers us some of the hope that Wittgenstein’s efforts to understand the importance of ethics point to: Bliss consists of the smallest things….Unhappiness lies in what we miss. You are on your knees convinced that what seems irredeemably lost continues to exist, keeping faith that - given time and patience - it will be restored. (O’Driscoll 2004)

References Malcolm, Norman, and Winch, Peter, 1993. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, Oxon: Routledge. McGuinness, Brian, 1988. Wittgenstein A Life: Young Ludwig (19891921), London: Gerald Duckworth and Company Limited. —. ed., 1983. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Trans. Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited. Rhees, Rush, ed., 1984. Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. —. 1996. Discussions of Wittgenstein, South Bend, Indianapolis: St. Augustine’s Press.

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O’Driscoll, Dennis, 2004. New and Selected Poems, London: Anvil Press Poetry Limited. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1974. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. —. 1980. Culture and Value. Trans. Peter Winch, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. —. 1993. Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951. Eds. James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordman, Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. —. 1998. Notebooks 1914-1916, second edition. Eds. G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

CHAPTER EIGHT A VIRTUE ETHIC APPROACH TO BEARING AND REARING CHILDREN DAVID MCPHERSON

“Think Before You Breed”–so runs the provocative headline of an article in the New York Times by the philosopher Christine Overall, author of the recently published Why Have Children?1 The implication is that many people do not think–or at least do not adequately think–before they have children. Indeed, by using the reductive and rather disparaging language of “breeding” (as opposed to “procreating” or “having children”), the suggestion is that such people are acting more like nonhuman animals than fully rational agents. The main point of Overall’s article is that the question of whether or not to have a child is an important ethical question. This is first of all because children cannot consent to being brought into existence, an existence that will surely involve some degree of harm, even if it will also involve many benefits. Second, it is an ethical question since a society is impacted by each member’s choice about whether or not to have a child. Overall believes that many people in fact do not see this choice “as needing any thought or justification”. She thinks that this might be because “they think of it as the expression of an instinct or biological drive, like sexual attraction or “falling in love”, that is not amenable to ethical evaluation”. However, regardless of our biological inclinations, Overall says that we can–and many do–exercise control over whether to have children due in large part to the widespread availability of contraception and abortion. She continues: If we fail to acknowledge that the decision of whether to parent or not is a real choice that has ethical import, then we are treating childbearing as a mere expression of biological destiny. Instead of seeing having children as something that women do, we will continue to see it as something that simply happens to women, or as something that is merely “natural” and animal-like.2

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Overall contends that the burden of justification for having children in fact should rest “primarily on those who choose to have children, not on those who choose to be childless”. As it stands, she thinks the burden of justification is typically placed on the latter group, who are often thought of as simply being selfish.3 Although one may question the fairness of Overall’s charge that many people have children in a thoughtless manner, she is surely right that the choice about whether or not to have a child is an ethical one. But I do not believe that the burden of justification rests more on one side than the other. To say this is to beg the question with regard to the ethical issues involved, such as whether it would be selfish to not have children or irresponsible to have children. As is generally the case in the ethical life, whatever stance we take on an ethically contested issue requires justification. In this essay, I will articulate and defend a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic approach to bearing and rearing children. I will begin by discussing the neo-Aristotelian “ethical naturalism” of Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse, which seems to suggest a view of having children along the lines of non-human animal breeding as well as a view of human flourishing which requires one to be a parent, indeed, a good parent. I believe that this points to important limitations of this sort of ethical naturalism. I will argue that parenthood is not necessary for human flourishing because we are “meaning-seeking animals” who can have a number of meaningful projects and concerns that can be in tension and must be worked out through practical reason. However, I will argue that a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic does require of every human being the virtue of hospitality in being receptive to the “gift” of human life and the virtues of justice and benevolence in promoting the flourishing of such life. Moreover, for many people, I will contend, the best kind of life will involve bearing and rearing children. But further questions remain about whether coming into existence is in fact beneficial, first, for the child, and, secondly, for the wider human community in light of overpopulation concerns. In regard to the first issue, I will argue against the pessimistic view that it would be better if we were never born and defend the view of human life as a “gift”. In regard to the second issue, I will argue that it is best approached on an Aristotelian account of practical reason and I will suggest what this would look like.

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I. Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism and the Issue of Bearing and Rearing Children All neo-Aristotelians agree that ethics should be founded on claims about human nature. More specifically, neo-Aristotelians seek to provide an account of the virtues, which are the character traits that we need in order to actualize our human nature in a manner whereby we can be said to achieve eudaimonia, that is, human flourishing or fulfillment. In a broad sense, this attempt to found ethics on claims about human nature can be described as a kind of “ethical naturalism”. However, the dominant form of neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism goes a step further than this in offering a quasi-scientific account of human nature and human flourishing. As expressed in the works of Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse, ethical naturalism is the attempt to found ethics on considerations of human beings within the “natural, biological order of living things” (Hursthouse 1999, 206). Ethical evaluations of human beings are understood as being analogous to evaluations of members of plant and non-human animal species with respect to whether or not they are “good, healthy, specimens of their kind”, that is, whether or not they are wellfitted to fulfill the natural ends of their species (Hursthouse 1999, 195-7). Hursthouse writes: “[If] there is any truth in ethical naturalism, our ethical evaluations of ourselves ought to exhibit at least a recognizably similar structure to what we find in the botanists’ and ethologists’ evaluations of other living things” (Hursthouse 1999, 206). Likewise, in her account of ethical evaluations of human beings, Foot appeals to what she calls “Aristotelian necessities”–“that which is necessary because and in so far as good hangs on it”–which apply equally to humans and non-human animals.4 She writes: We invoke the same idea when we say that it is necessary for plants to have water, for birds to build nests, for wolves to hunt in packs, and for lionesses to teach their cubs to kill. These ‘Aristotelian necessities’ depend on what the particular species of plants and animals need, on their natural habitat, and the ways of making out that are in their repertoire. These things together determine what it is for members of a particular species to be as they should be, and to do that which they should do. And for all the enormous differences between the life of humans and that of plants or animals, we can see that human defects and excellences are similarly related to what human beings are and what they do…I am therefore, quite seriously, likening the basis of moral evaluation to that of the evaluation of behaviour in animals. (Foot 2001, 15–16; cf. 24–5)

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In short, for Foot and Hursthouse, ethical evaluations involve an appeal to a functional usage of the term “good” that denotes a thing’s being wellfitted to fulfill its natural ends or functions as a member of its kind. In developing their accounts of what it is to flourish or be good qua human being, Foot and Hursthouse begin by providing an account of the flourishing of plants and non-human animals. Foot articulates this in terms of the species-specific modes of living out the natural life cycle of maturation, self-maintenance (that is, survival), and reproduction (Foot 2001, 31–7; 41–2; 51). Hursthouse likewise discusses the natural ends of plants and non-human animals and builds up to an account of the natural ends of social animals: viz., (1) individual survival; (2) the continuance of the species; (3) characteristic freedom from pain and characteristic enjoyment; and (4) the good functioning of one’s social group (Hursthouse 1999, 202; 207). For Hursthouse, whether a particular social animal can be regarded as a good, healthy, flourishing specimen of its kind depends on whether it is well-fitted in its actions, emotions, and desires to attain these four naturalistic ends. In the case of human beings–who are rational social animals–it is important that these ends be pursued in a “rational way” through the use of practical reason and the development of the virtues (Hursthouse 1999, 208-10; 222). Now, given that Foot and Hursthouse want to found ethics on considerations of human beings within the “natural, biological order of living things”, where there is an appeal to a conception of human flourishing that is understood on analogy with the flourishing of plants and non-human animals, it would seem that both are committed to the view that reproduction (that is, fostering the continuance of the species) is a requirement if one is to flourish qua human being. Indeed, human flourishing would seem to require that one not only be a parent, but a good parent who enables his or her child’s (or children’s) flourishing qua human being. However, although Foot and Hursthouse maintain that an individual member of a particular plant or non-human animal species is defective (or fails to flourish) if it does not reproduce, they want to avoid making a similar claim with respect to human beings.5 Hursthouse maintains that for human beings the specification of the four natural ends of social animals provides criteria for character traits counting as virtues, but it does not provide criteria for what everyone must aim at in their actions (Hursthouse 1999, 211). For instance, she discusses both practicing homosexuals and monastic contemplatives and argues that so long as they possess the virtues required for best fulfilling the natural ends of social animals–such as temperance with respect to sexuality–then they do not actually have to fulfill the natural end of reproduction in order

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to flourish qua human being (Hursthouse 1999, 213-16). For her part, Foot writes: Lack of capacity to reproduce is a defect in a human being. But choice of childlessness and even celibacy is not thereby shown to be defective choice, because human good is not the same as plant or animal good. The bearing and rearing of children is not an ultimate good in human life, because other elements of good such as the demands of work to be done may give a man or woman reason to renounce family life. And the great (if often troubling) good of having children has to do with the love and ambition of parents for children, the special role of grandparents, and many other things that simply do not belong to animal life. (Foot 2001, 42)

In the last sentence Foot is pointing to the important distinction between breeding and procreating: whereas non-human animals instinctually breed or reproduce, human beings–when acting in their specifically human mode of being–reflectively and intentionally procreate on the basis of important values (for example, the value of a loving parent-child relationship and the value of the potential child), or they may choose not to do so because of other important values (for example, the value of a particular career). I think that Foot and Hursthouse are right to want to resist claiming that one cannot flourish or be fulfilled as a human being if he or she is not a parent. However, I also think that there is a tension here with the sort of ethical naturalism that Foot and Hursthouse endorse, where ethics is founded on considerations of human beings within the “natural, biological order of living things” and where there is a stress on the analogy between human flourishing and the flourishing of plants and non-human animals. Since character traits are regarded as virtues with reference to fulfilling our “natural ends”, it does not seem that they can in fact be so easily separated from the task of fulfilling these natural ends. Moreover, while I think Foot is right when she claims that human flourishing does not require us to be a parent because the good life for human beings is not the same as the good of plants and non-human animals, this point does not seem adequately accounted for in her ethical naturalism. As we have seen, for both Foot and Hursthouse ethical evaluations involve an appeal to a functional usage of the term “good” that denotes a thing’s being well-fitted to fulfill its natural ends or functions as a member of its kind. However, it does not seem that our ethical evaluations can in fact be straightforwardly derived from an account of our “natural ends”. First of all, there are many things that we might consider to be “natural ends” of various animal species, including human beings, which we think one is ethically required to avoid. For instance, it is natural for many animals to show aggression, to pursue dominance over others, to be

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promiscuous, and so forth.6 In general, non-human animal nature and human nature seem to be much more of a mixed bag than Foot and Hursthouse allow. In the case of human beings, it seems to be part of our evolutionary inheritance that we have been endowed with natural tendencies not only towards kindness, compassion, reciprocity, fidelity, and so forth, but also–at least in the case of some people and to some extent–toward narrow self-concern, sexual license, dominance, violence, hatred, and the like. On a Darwinian evolutionary account it is easy to see how each of these tendencies could in different ways be said to serve a function in the struggle for survival. But it is more difficult to work out how the good life should be understood and lived out in light of these diverse and incompatible natural tendencies.7 Moreover, even if we accept something like Hursthouse’s account of the natural ends of social animals it is not clear why it should be considered normative for a human being qua individual member of the species; that is, why should it be seen as an ethical evaluation that informs us of what we ought to be concerned with?8 There is a further difficulty with deriving a conception of the good life from an account of the natural ends of social animals: viz., human beings are distinctively the “meaning-seeking animal”.9 By this I mean that it is distinctive of our human form of life that we are concerned with our lives being meaningful; indeed, human beings are the kind of beings who can become concerned–and often are concerned–with ultimate questions about the meaning and purpose of their lives. Thus, for human beings, I contend, a flourishing or fulfilling life must be a meaningful one. Moreover, the concept of “meaningfulness” employed here should be understood to involve what Charles Taylor calls “strong evaluation”.10 Unlike weak evaluation, where something is judged to be good–that is, a “weak good”– simply in virtue of being desired, strong evaluation involves qualitative distinctions of value or worth in terms of higher and lower, noble and base, admirable and contemptible, sacred and profane, and so on, that are seen as normative for our desires, that is, they are “strong goods”. Thus, a meaningful life should be seen as a worthwhile life in the strong evaluative sense of the term where one is orientated towards strong goods. We can see then that our being meaning-seeking animals is intimately connected to our being strong evaluators. The way in which we are meaning-seeking animals and strong evaluators seems to be overlooked by Foot and Hursthouse because their version of ethical naturalism gives pride of place to a quasi-scientific, third-personal account of human flourishing, which is understood on analogy with the flourishing of plants and non-human animals. However, in order to appreciate the place of strong evaluation in human life we need

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a deeper exploration of the first-personal standpoint from within our human form of life.11 For instance, we need to take account of the way in which our understanding of flourishing or fulfillment–the latter is perhaps the better term since it does not have the same biological connotation–can be constituted by a strong evaluative sense of “the noble” such that we see ourselves as aiming at a nobler, higher, more meaningful mode of life. Here we can see a major disanalogy with the happiness or flourishing of non-human animals.12 It should be noted that Aristotle’s own view of eudaimonia is in fact a strong evaluative one: virtuous actions are performed “for the sake of what is noble, since this is the end characteristic of virtue” (Aristotle 2014, III.7.1115b11–12; cf. II.3.1104b29–35 and II.4.1105a29–34). Nobility is not an end separate from virtue, but rather it represents an evaluation inherent in the concept of virtue whereby it is viewed as a higher, nobler, more fulfilling mode of life.13 An important implication of our being strong evaluators is that it enables us to respond to the mixed bag problem of human nature. In particular, through strong evaluation we can identify which of our natural tendencies–for example, compassion as opposed to cruelty–represent what is noblest and best about us.14 However, another implication is that there are in fact many things that human beings can recognize as being worthy of pursuit in a strong evaluative sense, but not all of these things can be pursued in a fully compatible way. In other words, there are various strong goods that constitute the good life for us, but no life can fully include pursuit of all strong goods. For instance, we can recognize strong goods pertaining to human dignity, the virtues, personal development (for example, intellectual, artistic, athletic, et cetera), meaningful work, humanitarian activity, appreciation of artistic and natural beauty, religious devotion, friendship, family life, and so on. It is not difficult to see here how there could be tensions between these various strong goods such that the pursuit of some might be incompatible with the pursuit of others. As we have seen, Foot acknowledges something like this when she remarks that “the demands of work to be done may give a man or woman reason to renounce family life”, though I have argued that her brand of ethical naturalism cannot adequately account for why this is. Now, given that there are various strong goods that constitute the good life for us and given that no life can fully pursue all of these strong goods, I think it is best to understand the pursuit of the good life in terms of an effort to best realize in the course of our lives the various strong goods that we recognize.15 We should recall here that strong goods are goods that are normative for our desires. However, it needs to be clarified that this does not mean that we must actively pursue all strong goods in our lives. While

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there are indeed some strong goods–for example, respecting human dignity and cultivating the virtues–that should be actively pursued by everyone,16 there are also other strong goods–for example, great intellectual, artistic, or athletic achievement, family life, and particular kinds of meaningful work such as being a doctor, teacher, religious leader, humanitarian, et cetera–that we do not necessarily have to actively pursue in our lives, though we should at least be open to appreciating, admiring, or respecting these goods when we encounter them. Although the latter sorts of strong goods are not required of everyone, any adequate conception of the good life will include at least some of them. There will be a lot of individual leeway here with respect to which of these goods to pursue and to what extent. Often the contingencies of circumstance–that is, the social, cultural, historical, and biological circumstances that shape our particular talents, aptitudes, and proclivities– will play an important role in how we lead our lives: for example, in deciding who to befriend, who to marry, what communities to identify with, what talents to cultivate, what work to undertake, and so on. However, there are also better and worse ways of incorporating these strong goods within one’s life. Such judgments about what is better or worse will be a matter for practical reason within the context of a whole life: that is, it will be a matter of reasoning about what in fact best conduces to the good life. At this point, I want to turn to examine in more detail how parenthood can have an important role within the good life for human beings. In particular, I want to articulate an account of how parenthood–in its best form–is a strong good that can be a constitutive feature of a fulfilling and worthwhile life for human beings. .

II. Parenthood and the Good Life I have already suggested that parenthood is not necessary for human fulfillment and have argued that this is due to our being “meaning-seeking animals” who can have a number of meaningful projects and concerns that cannot be fully encompassed within one’s life in a compatible way. Thus, one may forgo having children because of the demands of being a doctor, a humanitarian, a priest, or something else of the sort, but still live a deeply meaningful and fulfilling life. Indeed, any life that is orientated towards certain strong goods–for example, virtuous activity, personal development, meaningful work, deep friendship, et cetera–can be considered a flourishing life apart from having children. Nevertheless, such a life, I contend, would still be missing out on an important human

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good. Indeed, any path of life–including that of being a parent–will come with some losses in terms of goods that are foregone for the sake of pursuing other goods.17 Although a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic of the sort that I am defending does not require one to be a parent, I contend that it does require of every human being the virtue of hospitality in being receptive to the “gift” of human life and the virtues of justice and benevolence in promoting the flourishing of such life. Moreover, for many people, I contend, the best kind of life will involve bearing and rearing children. Let me begin by discussing the basic requirement of hospitality toward the “gift” of human life. What this means is that all human beings should have a dispositional attitude of “welcome” towards children who come into world, whether they are one’s own child or those of others. This involves seeing and receiving children as “gifts”, that is, as being intrinsically valuable, which is often captured in terms of the strong evaluative notion of “the sacred”, as when people speak of the “sanctity of life”. When we regard human life as sacred or as having intrinsic dignity we experience a normative demand upon us for a certain attitude of reverence and concern. From this also follow the requirements of justice and benevolence towards children. In virtue of the sanctity (or dignity) of human life we owe to all children, as a matter of justice, the basic care needed not only to survive but also to flourish. Obviously parents will owe a special kind of direct care to their own children, but everyone owes at least an indirect form of care through promoting the social conditions–for example, a good educational system, “social safety nets”, safe neighbourhoods, et cetera–under which children can develop and flourish. Moreover, each of us should have a benevolent attitude towards children such that we are prepared to directly promote their wellbeing if we are called upon to do so in the various roles we may occupy, for example, as a teacher, a coach, a neighbour, a police officer, a physician, and so on. But one might wonder here: why does a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic require us to see children as “gifts”? The answer derives from my account of human beings as meaning-seeking animals. As I have argued, for human beings a flourishing life will be a meaningful life. Thus, given that it aims at a flourishing life, a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic requires a positive answer to the question of whether life has a meaning, that is, whether life is worth living. As David Benatar rightly notes, the question of whether to “create people” is in fact an “existential issue”. He writes: “this question is an existential question of fundamental importance because if all life is characterized, for instance, by either meaninglessness or suffering–or both–then creating any new lives becomes deeply

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problematic for existential reasons” (Benatar 2010, 9).18 I will return later to discuss Benatar’s pessimistic view that it would be better if we were never born and thus we should cease to procreate and allow the human race to become extinct. However, since a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic affirms that human life has meaning and is worth living, it is therefore also committed to affirming that human life is worth creating.19 In short, it is committed to seeing human life as a “gift”, that is, as something intrinsically valuable and which also involves many strong goods that make it worth living. On a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic perspective I believe that the best, most virtuous reason for deciding to bear and rear a child is that one regards the child’s life as something intrinsically valuable that benefits both the child and the parents, and that one intends both benefits. In other words, the gift of human life is seen as a gift both to the child and the parents. Now, it is sometimes claimed that one cannot properly be said to intend to benefit a child by bringing him or her into existence because, prior to doing so, there is no one to benefit.20 However, just because the child is not yet in existence does not mean that one cannot intend to benefit the child for his or her own sake. The thought would be something along these lines: “whoever my child turns out to be I intend to benefit him or her for his or her own sake by bringing him or her into existence”. The intended benefit here is not just bringing the child into existence, but also rearing him or her in a manner whereby he or she can best flourish. Although I think that the concern to benefit a child should be paramount in one’s decision to bear and rear a child, this will be closely connected with one’s own benefit. It is the nature of parental love that in wishing good to a child for his or her own sake a parent is also thereby wishing good for him or her self in virtue of identifying with the child and his or her good. As Aristotle would put it, the parent regards the child as “another self” (Aristotle 2014, VIII.12, IX.4, IX.9).21 Love or friendship generally involves regarding one’s friend or loved one as “another self” but this is especially the case with respect to one’s child given the biological connection and the involved process of bearing and rearing.22 Indeed, it is natural for people to see themselves as “living on” through their children. It is no surprise then that, at its best, the parent-child relationship–like other significant loving relationships–is experienced as deeply meaningful and fulfilling and as a strong good in its own right. Our natural human capacity and directedness towards this sort of relationship is something that through strong evaluation we can identify as being what is noblest and best about us. In short, it realizes an important part of our humanity.

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In many ways parenting fosters a deeper connection to our humanity, which I think is something to be strongly valued. Like other non-human animals, we are naturally equipped for bearing and rearing offspring, but in our own species-specific way. Thus, through bearing and rearing children we can participate more deeply in our species-being.23 This is especially true of mothers who are most intimately involved in the process of bearing a child, and also often in providing initial basic care such as breastfeeding. In general, parenting enables a deeper appreciation of the human life cycle and the importance of acknowledging and embracing human vulnerability and dependence as one is called upon to care for the needs of a vulnerable and dependent child and help them develop towards maturity.24 Moreover, as one grows old, the care-giving relationship between parents and children will often reverse. The parent-child relationship, at its best, is a school for the virtues not only for the child, but also for the parent. Indeed, many people have the experience of becoming better people as a result of having a child. Part of this is due to the desire to be a good example for one’s child in order to encourage him or her in the path of virtue. But there are also other aspects of the parent-child relationship that make it a school for the virtues for the parent. For instance, at its best, bearing and rearing a child requires and cultivates the closely linked virtues of courage, hope, and patience. First, the virtue of hope is important for bearing and rearing a child because parents need to be hopeful that their child will have good prospects for leading a good life even in the face of difficulties that the world will surely present. Second, parents need the virtue of courage to do what they can to help their child lead a good life and the virtue of patience in working through difficulties that the child faces. Last, but certainly not least, the virtue of courage is important for the mother as she goes through the difficulties of pregnancy and birth. The innocence and goodness of a child can also help to cultivate kindness, compassion, and tenderness in parents. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, the character Father Zosima teaches: Love children especially, for they…are sinless, like angels, and live to bring us to tenderness and the purification of our hearts and as a sort of example for us. Woe to him who offends a child. I was taught to love children by Father Anfim: during our wanderings, this dear and silent man used to spend the little half-kopecks given us as alms on gingerbreads and candies, and hand them out to them. He could not pass by children without his soul being shaken. (Dostoevsky 1990, 319)

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Zosima’s teaching is directed to everyone, but it especially applies to parents who are deeply involved in the lives of their children. Moreover, as Michael Sandel argues in his case against the genetic engineering of children, the best kind of parenting helps to cultivate the disposition to see and receive children as “gifts”, which I argued is required of everyone. Sandel writes: To appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, not as objects of our design, or products of our will, or instruments of our ambition. Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have. We choose our friends and spouses at least partly on the basis of qualities we find attractive. But we do not choose our children…That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what the theologian William F. May calls an “openness to the unbidden”. May’s resonant phrase describes a quality of character and heart that restrains the impulse to mastery and control and prompts a sense of life as gift. (Sandel 2007, 45-6)

Later, he remarks: In a social world that prizes mastery and control, parenthood is a school for humility. That we care deeply about our children, and yet cannot choose the kind we want, teaches parents to be open to the unbidden. Such openness is a disposition worth affirming, not only within families but in the wider world as well. It invites us to abide the unexpected, to live with dissonance, to reign in the impulse to control. (Sandel 2007, 86)

In summary, at its best, parenthood is a school for virtues such as courage, hope, patience, kindness, compassion, tenderness, hospitality (expressed in openness to and acceptance of human life as a gift), and humility. And of course it also requires the cultivation of practical wisdom. From the foregoing discussion it should now be clear why I think that for many people the best, most fulfilling kind of life will involve bearing and rearing children; viz., because: (1) the parent-child relationship, at its best, is deeply fulfilling and parenthood connects us more deeply to our humanity; and (2) parenthood, at its best, helps to cultivate and gives expressions to important human virtues. Parenthood is not without its challenges, and it will certainly require some sacrifices; nevertheless, for many it will still be seen as part of the best kind of life because of the strong goods that it involves. With that said, I would like to conclude this section by addressing the charge of selfishness that is sometimes levelled against those who choose to remain childless. I have already said that I think someone can live a

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meaningful and fulfilling life without having children. I do think that a requirement of any version of the good life will be some significant amount of other-regarding concern; hence, there are other-regarding virtues such as justice and benevolence. But I do not think that someone is selfish simply in virtue of being childless. Obviously someone who devotes his or her life to being a doctor or a humanitarian and in virtue of this does not have children cannot be said to be selfish when his or her aim is to benefit other people. There are also others who, for a variety of reasons, cannot or do not want to have children but nevertheless still seek to do good for others in accordance with the virtues, including the virtue of hospitality in being receptive to the gift of human life. I do not think such people should be considered selfish. Moreover, it should be said that having children does not necessarily save one from selfishness, since one can become a parent for selfish reasons–for example, where the child results simply from acting on sexual desire–and can act selfishly in relation to a child. Where I think the charge of selfishness is appropriate is in the case of persons who do not want to have children simply because they do not want it to put a cramp on their self-centred way of life.25 For instance, they see children as an inhibitor to a prestigious career, personal free time, world travelling, a consumer lifestyle, and so on. But the charge of selfish is appropriate here in virtue of the selfish way of life, and not simply because they do not want to have children. Such a person would be disinclined to any demanding forms of other-regarding concern and thus they can be considered selfish and lacking in virtue.

III. Responding to Challenges Now that I have argued that parenthood can play an important role in the good life for human beings, I would like to respond to a couple of challenges to my position. The first challenge pertains to my claim that coming into existence is a benefit to the child. The second challenge pertains to concerns about overpopulation. I will take up each in turn.

i. Better Never to Have Been? The first challenge comes from David Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. In contrast to my view of human life as a “gift”, Benatar argues for the extremely pessimistic view that for all human beings it would be “better never to have been”, the implication of which is that we should cease to procreate and thereby

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allow the human race to become extinct.26 He acknowledges that we cannot literally say that the “never-existent” are better off for never having been born since, obviously, there is no one who is being benefitted by nonexistence. Instead, Benatar means to claim that “coming into existence is always bad for those who come into existence”, that is, “although we may not be able to say of the neverǦexistent that never existing is good for them, we can say of the existent that existence is bad for them”. However, once we affirm that coming into existence can be harmful we can “speak loosely about never coming into existence being ‘better’” (Benatar 2006, 4; cf. 19ff). Benatar thus uses “never-existent” as a convenient term for referring to “possible people who never become actual” (Benatar 2006, 45). Benatar’s central argument in support of his view that it is better never to have been–that coming into existence is always a harm rather than a benefit–appeals to what he thinks is a crucial asymmetry between the absence of good things and the absence of bad things. He summarizes this argument as follows: Both good and bad things happen only to those who exist. However, there is a crucial asymmetry between the good and the bad things. The absence of bad things, such as pain, is good even if there is nobody to enjoy that good, whereas the absence of good things, such as pleasure, is bad only if there is somebody who is deprived of these good things. The implication of this is that the avoidance of the bad by never existing is a real advantage over existence, whereas the loss of certain goods by not existing is not a real disadvantage over never existing. (Benatar 2006, 14; cf. 30–49)

In other words, if the absence of bad things as a result of non-existence is “good” and the absence of good things through non-existence is “not bad”, then it follows that coming into existence is always a harm rather than a benefit; that is, it is necessarily “better never to have been”. Benatar thinks that the above asymmetry is given validation by the way in which it helps to explain four other asymmetries, which he believes are quite plausible and widely accepted. These other asymmetries are the following: (1) “[While] there is a duty to avoid bringing suffering people into existence, there is no duty to bring happy people into being.” (2) “Whereas it is strange (if not incoherent) to give as a reason for having a child that the child one has will thereby be benefited, it is not strange to cite a potential child’s interests as a basis for avoiding bringing a child into existence. If having children were

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done for the purpose of thereby benefiting those children, then there would be greater moral reason for at least many people to have more children. In contrast to this, our concern for the welfare of potential children who would suffer is a sound basis for deciding not to have the child.” (3) “Bringing people into existence as well as failing to bring people into existence can be regretted. However, only bringing people into existence can be regretted for the sake of the person whose existence was contingent on our decision…[We] cannot regret, for the sake of somebody who never exists and thus cannot thereby be deprived, a good that this never existent person never experiences. One might grieve about not having had children, but not because the children that one could have had have been deprived of existence. Remorse about not having children is remorse for ourselves–sorrow about having missed childbearing and childrearing experiences. However, we do regret having brought into existence a child with an unhappy life, and we regret it for the child’s sake, even if also for our own sakes. The reason why we do not lament our failure to bring somebody into existence is because absent pleasures are not bad.” (4) “Whereas, at least when we think of them, we rightly are sad for inhabitants of a foreign land whose lives are characterized by suffering, when we hear that some island is unpopulated, we are not similarly sad for the happy people who, had they existed, would have populated this island…The point is that we regret suffering but not the absent pleasures of those who could have existed.” (Benatar 2006, 32-5) I take issue with all of these supposed asymmetries, particularly with respect to the way in which Benatar thinks that they lend support to the view that it is always a harm to come into existence and not a benefit. I will first discuss why I take issue with these four supposed asymmetries before turning to discuss my disagreement with the supposed asymmetry between absent good and absent bad that is said to explain them. In regard to (1), I think that the use of “duty” is too vague and ultimately misleading as a way of characterizing the issue. In Kantian terms, we might wonder whether what is meant is a “perfect duty” or an “imperfect duty”. We can characterize this distinction as follows: a perfect duty is a duty that is strictly required of all persons (that is, it always has to be followed), whereas an imperfect duty is a duty that is not strictly

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required, but rather it identifies something morally admirable and praiseworthy about which we ought to be concerned to some extent. In fact, I think it is better to characterize this distinction in terms of different kinds of “strong goods”, as I did above, since this links into an account of the good life, which is needed for an intelligible view of moral motivation. As discussed above, strong goods are goods that are normative for our desires, but they can be normative in different ways. There are some strong goods–for example, respecting human dignity and cultivating the virtues–that should be actively pursued by everyone as a necessary part of the good life; these are akin to perfect duties. But there other strong goods–for example, great human achievement, family life, and particular kinds of meaningful work–that we do not necessarily have to actively pursue in our lives, though we should at least be open to appreciating, admiring, or respecting these goods when we encounter them and a good life will include at least some of them; these are akin to imperfect duties. Now, I certainly do not think that we are strictly required to bring happy people into existence because this would mean requiring everyone to have a child, even those who do not want one, which would clearly be wrong. However, I also do not think we are strictly required to avoid bringing suffering people into existence. It is not in fact clear here what counts as a “suffering person”, but presumably it is someone who suffers greatly. We know that all human beings suffer to some extent, and some suffer greatly; but human beings are still capable of living meaningful lives in spite of suffering (though it is possible that for some people the experience of significant suffering could make them call into question life’s meaning).27 I do think that one ought to strive to minimize suffering, but this must be balanced against other strong goods in play. For instance, we should not violate human dignity in order to minimize suffering. Thus, it is not permissible to kill off the whole human race in order to prevent future suffering people. Indeed, I do not think that one should kill any person in order to prevent his or her future suffering. We must also balance our obligation to minimize suffering with other considerations pertaining to the intrinsic value of human life and its potential quality. We may know that all human life will involve suffering, but if we think that life is a gift–that is, a strong good–and that there are good prospects for the quality of a potential life–that is, for a life that includes many strong goods–then we might have good reason to bring a child into existence. However, a lot will depend here on practical reason within the context of a particular life. This is in part because we cannot know in advance exactly how things will turn out. But we will also have to reason about how to best incorporate the various strong goods we recognize within our life. It is this

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way of thinking in terms of various strong goods and how best to incorporate them within our life that is overlooked by Benatar’s vague talk of “duty”. We may not have a strict duty to have children, but on the neoAristotelian virtue ethic perspective that I have developed we should at least have an attitude of welcome towards children as gifts or strong goods, and for some, depending on the shape of their life, there will be good reason for having children. In short, there is no real asymmetry between our reasons for and against having children. In regard to (2), I have already argued against the claim that one cannot intend to benefit a child by bringing him or her into existence. As previously stated, just because the child is not yet in existence does not mean that one cannot intend to benefit the child for his or her own sake. One can have the thought: “whoever my child turns out to be I intend to benefit him or her for his or her own sake by bringing him or her into existence”. Thus, there is no asymmetry in our ability to appeal to a potential child’s interests as a basis for deciding whether to have or not to have a child. As for Benatar’s worry that this would give people greater moral reason to have more children, I would again say that the strong good of benefitting a child by bearing and rearing him or her must be weighed against other strong goods in the context of a particular life. For some this will mean having children, for others it will not; but we have no reason to think that it should lead anyone to the conclusion that he or she should have as many children as possible. Benatar is certainly right that if we can intend to benefit a child through procreation we have greater moral reason for having children than if we cannot intend benefit; but this is simply because a moral reason for having children must include an intention to the benefit the child. In regard to (3), I think that one can experience regret for the sake of a potential child that one could have had. The thought could be: “whoever my child would have been I regret not having benefitted him or her for his or her own sake by bringing him or her into existence”. Obviously this requires imagination, whereas regretting the existence of a child who is in existence does not. Nevertheless, it is not an unintelligible thought, and indeed, it seems like one that those who are not childless by choice can have. However, the proper contrast with regretting a child’s existence would seem to be the feelings of joy and gratitude for a child’s existence, where one feels joy and gratitude that this child came into existence.28 This can lead one to think about the counterfactual case in which this child did not come into existence and how terrible and regrettable this would be–both for one’s own sake and for the child’s sake–in light of one’s present joy, gratitude, and love for the child. Indeed, this seems like a

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fairly common thought of parents who feel joy, gratitude, and love for their child. We might imagine someone saying: “I’m so grateful for my child. How terrible it would’ve been if the contingencies of life had been different and he or she did not come into existence. What a loss that would have been.” In regard to (4), I do not think that Benatar establishes his claim that we regret suffering but not the absent pleasures of those who could have existed. I think it is in fact better to think here not just about absent pleasures, but also about the absence of other good things, especially strong goods such as great human achievements, meaningful work, meaningful relationships, a life of virtue, and so on. In order to properly evaluate whether we have reason to regret the absence of such goods for those who could have existed, we should think not of some unpopulated island, but rather of a world in which no human beings existed. From our standpoint now the thought that the human race will become extinct can be experienced as being deeply regrettable and indeed tragic because it would mean the absence of the strong good of human life–where human life is seen as being sacred or having dignity–and the various strong and weak goods that can be realized within such a life. Now, since I think we have reason to question each of the four supposed asymmetries above, we therefore also have reason to question Benatar’s claim about there being a crucial asymmetry between the absent bad and the absent good in non-existence, which he thinks is validated by the way in which it can explain the other four asymmetries. To recall, this supposed crucial asymmetry is stated as follows: “The absence of bad things, such as pain, is good even if there is nobody to enjoy that good, whereas the absence of good things, such as pleasure, is bad only if there is somebody who is deprived of these good things”. We might wonder here how the absence of bad things can be said to be good if there is no one for whom it is good. This is the same problem that Benatar already recognized with regard to saying that the “never-existent” are better off for never having existed. As aforementioned, what Benatar means is that “coming into existence is always bad for those who come into existence” and because of this we can “speak loosely about never coming into existence being ‘better’”. Similarly, when he states that the absence of bad is good even if there is nobody to enjoy that good, he says that this judgment is made “with reference to the (potential) interests of a person who either does or does not exist” (Benatar 2006, 30). Regarding those who exist, he thinks that this judgment can say something about counterfactual cases in which they do not exist:

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Of the pain of an existing person, [this judgment] says that the absence of this pain would have been good even if this could only have been achieved by the absence of the person who now suffers it. In other words, judged in terms of the interests of a person who now exists, the absence of the pain would have been good even though this person would then not have existed. (Benatar 2006, 31)

Regarding those who do not exist, Benatar thinks that the absence of pain is good “when judged in terms of the interests of the person who would otherwise have existed”. He further remarks: “If there is any (obviously loose) sense in which the absent pain is good for the person who could have existed but does not exist, this is it” (Benatar 2006, 31). Given what I have argued above with respect to the other four supposed asymmetries, it should be clear that if we are speaking “with reference to the (potential) interests of a person who either does or does not exist” then I do not think that there is any asymmetry between the absence of bad and the absence of good. If we consider the counterfactual case in which an existing person does not exist, I think we can say that, judged in terms of the interests of the existing person, the absence of the good things of his or her life–for example, loving relationships, human achievement, meaningful work, et cetera–would be “bad”, rather than “not bad” as Benatar claims. Likewise, in regard to those who do not exist, we can say that the absence of the good things of life would be bad when judged in terms of the interests of a person who otherwise would have existed. In short, once we have rejected the other four supposed asymmetries that Benatar thinks are explained by the supposed asymmetry between the absent bad and the absent good in non-existence, we have no reason to accept this latter asymmetry. In case people are not convinced by his asymmetry argument, Benatar gives another argument that he believes provides independent grounds for thinking that coming into existence is always a serious harm and not a benefit and thus that it would be better never to have been. He seeks to establish the claim that “even the best lives are not only much worse than people think but also very bad” (Benatar 2006, 14; cf. 61). Benatar acknowledges that most people do not think that their lives are bad on the whole; in fact, most people think that their lives are quite good on the whole. However, he contends that “there is very good reason to doubt that these self-assessments are a reliable indicator of a life’s quality”, and indeed, “it is quite possible that we could be engaged in a mass selfdeception about how wonderful things are for us” (Benatar 2006, 64; 100). Benatar appeals to several features of human psychology that he thinks

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can account for the favorable self-assessments that people often make regarding the quality of their lives.29 First, there is the “Pollyanna Principle”, which is the human tendency towards optimism. Benatar cites a number of psychological studies that suggest that human beings tend to: (1) recall positive rather than negative experiences from the past, (2) exaggerate in their projections of how good things will be in the future, and (3) have an overly positive assessment of their current well-being. Second, there is the psychological phenomenon of adaption or accommodation, which is the tendency to adapt to life’s disappointments by adjusting one’s expectations. Third, there is a tendency for self-assessments of well-being to be based on comparisons with others, which means that they are “a better indicator of the comparative rather than actual quality of one’s life”. This overlooks the negative features of life that are shared by everyone. Benatar concludes: The above psychological phenomena are unsurprising from an evolutionary perspective. They militate against suicide and in favour of reproduction. If our lives are quite as bad as I shall still suggest they are, and if people were prone to see this true quality of their lives for what it is, they might be much more inclined to kill themselves, or at least not to produce more such lives. Pessimism, then, tends not to be naturally selected. (Benatar 2006, 69)

Benatar goes on to describe how human life is a “world of suffering” that includes (among other things): death; hunger and thirst; bowel and bladder distention (as they become filled); tiredness; stress; thermal discomfort; itchiness, the aches, pains, and lethargy of chronic ailments, aging, and disability; allergies; headaches; frustration (that is, unsatisfied desires); irritation; colds; menstrual pains; hot flashes; nausea; hypoglycemia; seizures; guilt; shame; boredom; sadness; depression; loneliness; bodyǦ image dissatisfaction; the ravages of AIDS, of cancer, and of other such lifeǦthreatening diseases; and grief and bereavement (Benatar 2006, 71–2; 74–6; 88–92). So how should we respond to Benatar’s argument here for the claim that “even the best lives are not only much worse than people think but also very bad” such that existence is always a serious harm and not a benefit? In her response to Benatar, Christine Overall writes: There’s something far-fetched about the idea that I and virtually everyone who says she or he is happy to be alive can be badly mistaken about the quality of our lives…It seems unlikely that the vast majority of us is guilty of false consciousness. Benatar cannot possibly know this of every single human being who is happy to have been born…Moreover, it is

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presumptuous for him to suppose that he (along with the few who may agree with him) is the only person who fully understands the human situation and has the appropriate response to it. (Overall 2012b, 108)

Although it may be true that in some people there is a tendency toward optimism and painting too rosy a picture of their lives, it does not follow that they are badly mistaken about the quality of their lives or that there is widespread false consciousness about how bad things really are. Here it seems to be Benatar who is guilty of exaggeration, that is, of painting too gloomy a picture of human life. Certainly all human life involves some suffering, and some human beings suffer greatly, but to describe human life as a “world of suffering” where existence is a serious harm for everyone such that it is better never to have been is surely overblown. The vast majority of people are able to find life meaningful and worthwhile even in the face of suffering, including great suffering (though, sadly, some people do succumb to despair). Indeed, Overall notes that: We often undergo certain kinds of pain (bad) precisely because of the greater happiness (good) that we will thereby gain…This process is evident wherever we human beings expend great physical, psychological, or intellectual effort, sometimes to the point of suffering, in order to attain an outcome that we strongly value–an athletic achievement, for example, or a spiritual insight, moral growth, creative product, or scientific or philosophical finding [or, we might add, an expression of love]. (Overall 2012b, 112)

This is due, I believe, to the way in which human beings are strong evaluators and thus meaning-seeking animals, as discussed above. As strong evaluators, we experience the world in light of qualitative distinctions of value, and thus we are able to live for the sake of strong goods that are characterized in terms of the noble, the admirable, the sacred, and so on, and which are seen as being normative for our desires. Thus, human beings are concerned to live a meaningful or worthwhile life, where this is understood in terms of being orientated towards strong goods, such as the fulfillment of human potential, love and respect for others persons, the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, and so on. It is especially such strong goods, rather than mere pleasure or desirefulfillment (that is, weak goods), which enable us to see life as worthwhile and fulfilling even in the face of suffering. I think it is important for potential parents to consider what kind of world they will bring a child into. But I do not think this world can be adequately described as a “world of suffering”. Although it certainly involves suffering, it is also a “world

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of meaning”. As I have argued above, I think this is what a neoAristotelian virtue ethic needs to affirm.

ii. Overpopulation At this point I would like to turn to discuss the second major challenge that I think needs to be addressed. Even if one grants my argument up to this point that bearing and rearing children can be beneficial in important ways for both children and parents, one might still question whether having children is beneficial for the wider human community in light of concerns about overpopulation. As Overall notes, the decision of whether to have children is a “deeply social decision” because the cumulative effect of each person’s decision on this matter has “sweeping social implications” at the local, national, and international levels (Overall 2012b, 174-5). One of the most pressing issues here is how overpopulation has a detrimental effect on the overall quality of life within a particular community, and ultimately within the global community. Overpopulation occurs whenever a population exceeds the carrying capacity of a community, which might be the local, national, or global community. The “carrying capacity” of a particular community refers to its capacity, both in the short term and the long term, to enable its members not only to survive, but also to flourish in terms of overall quality of life. We know that, in developing nations, millions of children die every year of preventable causes (Overall 2012b, 176-7). This may be remedied in part by greater generosity from developed nations, but that is unlikely to be sustainable. In general, there is a growing concern about the depletion of natural resources and the need for more sustainable ways of life. Although there is room for debate about what constitutes the carrying capacities of the planet and of particular communities, it is certainly the case that the human population cannot continue to grow without causing major problems. There have been some trends of decreased birth rates over the last fifty years–especially with increased access to birth control and sex education–that have provided some reasons for optimism that we can move towards a stabilized population size.30 However, there is no guarantee here, and so it remains important to consider how we should think about whether to have children in light of concerns about overpopulation. I would like to consider here Overall’s argument for a moral limit of one child per person, which in the case of a couple means one for each person and so possibly two per family. Overall first argues against those who think that westerners who are educated about the problem of

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overpopulation have a responsibility to cease procreation altogether, at least until the population size stabilizes. Overall gives what I believe is a good Aristotelian reason against this policy: “Given the centrality of childbearing and child rearing to human existence, an obligation not to have any children at all would be a huge sacrifice, one that is too much to expect of anyone who wants to have children” (Overall 2012b, 181). In other words, such a policy would seem to violate a crucial component of human nature and thus inhibit the flourishing of many human beings. Overall also notes that people are not likely to adhere to such a policy. Next, she argues against those who think that there is an obligation for couples to have no more than one child, as is legally required for most couples in China. First, she again notes that such a limit to procreation would still be a major hardship for many people and would be unlikely to be followed. Second, she says that such an obligation would implicitly negate one person in the couple: “a moral rule of only one child per couple says, in effect, “You ought not to replace yourself”” (Overall 2012b, 182). Third, she remarks that there are potential problems of raising children without any sibling relationships given the benefits of such relationships. Fourth, she says that such a policy could lead to widespread sex selection of a particular favored gender (likely boys over girls). Finally, it could lead to overburdening a child with caring for two aging parents in societies where there are not adequate provisions for the elderly. In light of these criticisms Overall suggests that a moral responsibility to limit oneself to “procreative replacement”–that is, one child per person and at most two per family–makes most sense (she does allow that people could increase family size through adoption, fostering, or the formation of blended families). Overall emphasizes that this should be a moral rather than a legal responsibility, and she argues for it in the following way: All persons get to (try to) have a child of “their own”, if they want one, and the value of every adult is implicitly endorsed through the fact that each one is allowed to reproduce herself or himself. Such a responsibility implies that every person is sufficiently valuable as to be worth replacing…Because one child each is already close to the reproductive norm in many developed countries, it is more likely to be accepted and acted upon. In addition, for those couples for whom the sex/gender of the offspring matters…there would be two opportunities to have the kind of child they want. (Overall 2012b, 183)

This one child per person policy could also provide a remedy to the problems in the one child per couple policy with respect to siblings and caring for elderly parents. Moreover, if everyone limited herself or himself to procreative replacement this would certainly solve the problem of

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population growth. Indeed, Overall notes that it would in fact result in population decline since some people would have no children and some couples would have only one. On the face of it, there is much that seems sensible about the one child per person policy, especially if we are concerned with the issue of overpopulation. However, I think she makes too much of the importance of individuals replacing themselves through having a child. I think this is a strange way to think about having children, as it sounds as if each parent gets their own child (for example, Johnny is Dad’s replacement, while Suzy is Mom’s replacement). This seems to express an individualistic and possessive mindset that is at odds with the communal nature of family life at its best. The ideal familial situation is where children see themselves as belonging to both parents equally, and the parents see themselves as belonging to each of the children. I think parents do often appropriately see themselves as “living on” through their children because of seeing them as “another self”, but they only need one child in order to do this. The importance of one-to-one replacement seems to be more about maintaining a stable population size. The main problem I have with Overall’s argument for a limit of one child per person is that she wants to claim that it is a moral rule or obligation that should be followed by everyone. Although I think her suggestion is one that should be considered by all who intend to be parents, nevertheless, I think that the decision about whether to become a parent or not is ultimately a matter for practical reason, where this is understood in Aristotelian terms: viz., it is a matter of reasoning about what one should do in his or her particular situation in order to achieve, through the practice of the virtues, the good life for one’s self and for others with whom one shares in community (which includes local, national, and international communities). Because each person’s situation is different, I do not think that we can give a hard and fast rule about how many children one should have. However, this does not mean that one cannot be mistaken and even blameworthy in his or her practical reasoning. One is mistaken and perhaps blameworthy in his or her practical reasoning if he or she acts in a way that prevents or mars the good life for one’s self and for others within whom one shares in community. But in order to make judgments about whether a person is on the right track in his or her practical reasoning we need to know more about his or her particular situation. Some people may be especially suited for parenting, while others may not be or may find themselves drawn to other strong goods–for example, a particularly meaningful form of work–such that they forego parenting. If a

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couple is especially suited for being parents and they are able to properly care for a child and not detract from the good of others, then this could provide some justification for them having more children than others who are not suited in this way (for example, they might be justified in having three or four children, rather than two or one or none). Indeed, for such people it may be a hardship to prevent them from having a larger family, just as Overall thought that it might be a hardship for some people to have only one child per couple or to not have any at all.31 As we saw, she claims that because one child per person is “already close to the reproductive norm in many developed countries, it is more likely to be accepted and acted upon”. This assumes that everyone is similarly constituted in his or her proclivity to the task of parenting, which is clearly a mistaken assumption. It is understandable that Overall would want a rule that applies to everyone, but human life is more complicated than this. I think it is important to consider what the reproductive norm is in a society, but this is because it will be an important factor in determining how many children it may be practically wise for one to have. If one lives in a country where the population is decreasing (as in some places in Western Europe), then he or she might be justified in having more children. If one lives in a country that is overpopulated such that resources are scarce and there are poor prospects for quality of life, then it may be practically wise to have fewer children or perhaps no children at all. Overall worries that if someone thinks that he or she is justified in having more children because the population is decreasing in his or her country then “there is no way of ensuring against the possibility that others might reason likewise” (Overall 2012b, 184). However, I think this is a weak response since it seems very unlikely that everyone would think likewise given people’s different proclivities to parenting. But if some others do think likewise, then this would just have to be taken into account as constituting a new reproductive norm. In addition to considering the reproductive norm in a particular society, we also need to consider the reproductive norm around the world. Moreover, we need to consider the “carrying capacity” of our own society in particular and the planet in general. As aforementioned, I think there is some room for disagreement about such carrying capacities, and to properly determine what they are will itself be a matter of practical reasoning at a communal level. However, one thing that will certainly make an important difference here is whether or not one’s own family is committed to living in a sustainable manner and to avoiding overconsumption so as to avoid contributing to an overburdening of the carrying capacities of one’s society and the planet.

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I want to conclude by emphasizing again the importance here of the virtue of hospitality, which, as discussed, requires an attitude of welcome towards children such that they are regarded as “gifts”. Too often discussions about overpopulation can express or give rise to a thinly veiled misanthropy. However, such misanthropy must be shunned since it has the effect of undermining legitimate social concern. Concerns about overpopulation should always be situated in the context of a fundamental hospitality towards new human beings. Our goal should be to make the world a welcoming place for all future human beings who are brought into existence.

References Annas, Julia, 2005. ‘Virtue Ethics: What Kind of Naturalism?’ in ed. Stephen M. Gardiner, Virtue Ethics, Old and New, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Aristotle, 2014. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. C. D. C. Reeve, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Benatar, David, ed., 2010. Life, Death, & Meaning, 2nd ed., Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. —. 2006. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, New York: Oxford University Press. Cottingham, John, 2003. On the Meaning of Life, New York: Routledge. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 1990. The Brothers Karamazov. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, New York: Everyman’s Library. Foot, Philippa, 2001. Natural Goodness, New York: Oxford University Press. Hursthouse, Rosalind, 1999. On Virtue Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press. MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1999. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, Chicago: Open Court. McDowell, John, 1998. Mind, Value, and Reality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McPherson, David, 2012. ‘To What Extent Must We Go Beyond NeoAristotelian Ethical Naturalism?’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86:4, 627–54. Midgley, Mary, 1984. Wickedness, New York: Routledge. Overall, Christine, 2012a. ‘Think Before You Breed’, The Stone, June 17, 2012 [a philosophy blog of the New York Times], accessed at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/think-before-youbreed/.

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—. 2012b. Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sacks, Jonathan, 2011. The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning, London: Hodder & Stoughton. Sandel, Michael, 2007. The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sandler, Lauren, 2013. ‘The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children’, Time magazine, August 12th, 2013. Taylor, Charles, 1985. Human Agency and Language, New York: Cambridge University Press. —. 1989. Sources of the Self, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vanier, Jean, 1998. Becoming Human, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Williams, Bernard, 1995. Making Sense of Humanity, New York: Cambridge University Press. Willott, Elizabeth, 2002. “Recent Population Trends”, in eds. David Schmidtz and Elizabeth Willott, Environmental Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER NINE A PREGNANT SPACE: LEVINAS, ETHICS AND MATERNITY MARY SHANAHAN

In this chapter, I will carry out a preliminary exploration of the notion that pregnancy and maternity, when read through the Levinasian concepts of responsibility and otherness, can be understood to be a mode of ethical development. It is my contention that the pregnant body is representative of a potentially ethical space in which the responsibility of the self for the Other is keenly felt. For in pregnancy the Other is literally in the same, making his or her “absent presence” felt with each fluttering kick. A new space–the foetus–is engendered within an existing space–the mother’s body–and will argue that the necessary but incomplete link1 between these two spaces “houses” the potential for ethical development. In effect, a potentially ethical and responsible relationship dwells within the pregnant body. In order to maintain a clear focus throughout, I will exclusively consider the case of a wanted (whether planned or unplanned) pregnancy as an example of this potential being actualised.2 However, it seems to me that Levinas does not satisfactorily engage with the concepts of responsibility and otherness via a consideration of pregnancy and maternity. While he pays a great deal of attention to the undoubtedly important themes of fecundity, paternity and the father-son relationship,3 he shows scant regard for the ethical potential of maternity. This in spite of his characterisation of the transcendent as an “absent presence” and his claim that the Other is “in” the same. Thus I seek to show that the Levinasian ethical framework is somewhat lacking given his, at best, cursory treatment of maternity.

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The Feminine and Maternity in Levinas: A Brief Overview The main thrust of my comments here will focus on Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. I shall begin with Totality and Infinity where, in the main, the notion of femininity is evoked over and above that of maternity or pregnancy and almost always within the context of eros or masculine fecundity. Here the feminine is characterised as strange but welcoming, voluptuous but “inviolable” (Levinas 1961, 236; tr. 258), chaste but somehow threatening. In short, the woman of Totality and Infinity appears to veer between being a goodly maiden and a Keatsian “belle dame”. But what is it that is so strange and threatening about the feminine for Levinas? Certainly, as Levinas points out, the feminine is other than the masculine; he refers, for example, to the “alterity of the feminine” (Levinas 1961, 249; tr. 271). But what is it about such alterity that causes him to treat of it so tentatively? It would seem that there is something of an elephant in the room underlying–or perhaps overshadowing–these comments: the question of the potency of maternity. The first clear intimations of such an “elephant” are to be found at quite a late stage in Totality and Infinity when Levinas notes of fecundity that: “…the encounter with the Other as feminine is required in order that the future of the child come to pass…” (Levinas 1961, 245; tr. 267). Here we see an implicit reference to pregnancy and maternity as a “requirement”, that is, something that must be endured if one is to propagate a child. And yet reducing maternity to the status of a “requirement” does not take account of the ethical potential that is brought about from within the state of pregnancy. Interestingly, a little earlier on in the same text (but this time situated within the context of eros), Levinas remarks that the feminine “presents a face that goes beyond a face” (Levinas 1961, 238; tr. 260). I suggest that, although Levinas does not do so, it is possible to read the potentiality of pregnancy into this comment. What I am proposing is that the face presented, a face which appears to go beyond the face of the feminine Other who is encountered, is that of her child (or her potential child). The feminine face is effectively two-faced, suggesting both herself and her maternal or pregnant potential (an ethical potential, as I hope to demonstrate). Earlier on again, this time within the context of his discussion of the dwelling or the home, Levinas suggests that the feminine is “welcome in itself” (Levinas 1961, 131; tr. 157). Side-stepping his rather more controversial, on first reading at least, claim that “every home in fact

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presupposes a woman”4 (Levinas 1961, 131; tr. 157-8), I want to consider the notion of the feminine welcome in a little more detail. To whom is this welcome extended? To the stranger who enters the home and seeks hospitality? To the masculine Other with whom, certainly as Levinas presents it, she shares this dwelling? Or is this welcome extended, to paraphrase Levinas, “towards someone else entirely”? Is it towards the stranger whose being is not yet in the world but who is nevertheless expected, desired and, upon arrival, welcomed? In short, I suggest that it is the latter: the welcome awaits the child. Moving on to Otherwise than Being, it must be noted that, unlike the somewhat hesitant intimations of Totality and Infinity, there are several explicit references to maternity contained within this text, the majority of which occurring within the context of Levinas’ consideration of sensibility. Unlike the goodly maiden/belle dame feminine of Totality and Infinity, the woman of Otherwise than Being is particularly vulnerable, somewhat thematised as she is by her maternity. Levinas notes, for example, that “vulnerability…refers to maternity” (Levinas 1974, 89; tr. 71). And yet once again there is something somehow implicitly threatening about this “vulnerable” state as Levinas presents it. To be sure, pregnancy, though a particularly impressive and unique power of the feminine,5 is not presented as a desirable situation to find oneself in. One such example of this approach is the following remark: Is not the restlessness of someone persecuted but a modification of maternity, the groaning of the wounded entrails by those it will bear or has borne? In maternity what signifies is a responsibility for others, to the point of substitution for others and suffering both from the effect of persecution and from the persecuting itself in which the persecutor sinks. Maternity, which is bearing par excellence, bears even responsibility for the persecuting by the persecutor. (Levinas 1974, 95; tr. 75)

This rather loaded comment merits some “unpacking”. Firstly, maternity and suffering are directly equated with one another. Secondly, the themes of ethical responsibility and substitution are said to be “signified” by maternity. Thirdly, although this is not stated outright, maternity is quite clearly presented alongside of pregnancy and childbirth here (consider the references to persecution, groaning and wounds). The implication seems to be that, although maternity/pregnancy is not an easy or, therefore, desirous state, it is an incredibly significant and potent one. And yet in spite of this clear attempt to link maternity to one of his arguably seminal concepts– responsibility–and to one of the core themes of Otherwise than Being–

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substitution–little attempt is made by Levinas to flesh out the ethical potential of this “bearing par excellence”. Just one page later, Levinas again implicitly suggests something of this ethical potential by noting that: “[t]he sensible–maternity, vulnerability, apprehension–binds the node of incarnation into a plot larger than the apperception of the self. In this plot I am bound to others before being tied to my body” (Levinas 1974, 96; tr. 76). Granted, a significant portion of the substance of these remarks relates to Levinas’ critique of phenomenology but, at the same time, the idea of being “bound to others” carries great weight in the present discussion of the ethical potential of maternity. In pregnancy, the mother-self is literally bound to the Other who grows within her via the umbilical cord but she is also “bound” in a more metaphorical and, ironically, Levinasian sense: the call to responsibility that this Other constantly reminds her of and calls (or, sometimes, kicks) her to. Admittedly, this does not entirely fit the context of a pre-embodied binding on first reading but, if we recall that Levinasian responsibility is consistently characterised as antecedent, as preontological, then we find that we have a somewhat better “fit”.

Paternity and Fecundity: Intimations of Maternity Levinas has considerably more to say about the related themes of paternity and fecundity than he does about maternity and he quite blatantly accords the former themes much greater philosophical significance than he does the latter. As Sarah Allen astutely points out: “…the role of the feminine in fecundity remains a supporting role, subordinate to the transcendent movements of what can only be described as a masculine subject” (Allen 2009, 234).6 I suggest, however, that the feminine is considerably more than “an attendant lord [lady]” in the grand scheme of bringing forth a child. Unsurprisingly the crux of the paternity-fecundity issue for Levinas is the begetting of a child (a son, to be a little more specific) for it is with this child that the possibility of infinite time is opened up to the self (or the male self, the father, as Levinas envisages it).7 While maternity is always implied, Levinas reduces the uniquely feminine power of pregnancy to a “requirement”, with the child’s mother acting as an “associate”8 of sorts. For him, the spotlight should be shone on the father’s fecund paternity rather than the mother’s pregnant potential. And yet several of the remarks that Levinas makes about paternity would slot very nicely into a consideration of the ethical implications of maternity. Consider, for example, his claim that in paternity: “My child is

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a stranger (Isaiah 49), but a stranger who is not only mine, for he is me” (Levinas 1961, 245; tr. 267). During the getting-to-know-you period that is the nine months or so of pregnancy (admittedly, this can feel rather onesided), one’s child is certainly experienced as a “stranger” but, more curiously, as a “familiar stranger” who is both of and in oneself. Of course, the unborn child is a stranger to her or his father too but there is a particular manner in which this strangeness is experienced that is unique to the mother who carries this welcome but also waiting-to-be-welcomed stranger.9 Something of this strangeness is also echoed later on in the text when Levinas defines paternity as follows: “the way of being other while being myself” (Levinas 1961, 258; tr. 282). Such a definition surely likewise applies to maternity and, more specifically, pregnancy. The expectant mother experiences her thoughts, her body, and her senses as both her own and not her own. In the latter stages of her pregnancy, for example, her body is pushed and pulled involuntarily and from within by the precious stranger who dwells there. This body which had beforehand largely done what she had wanted it to do is, in pregnancy, also subject to the will of a foreign body that, as Christine Battersby notes, has been “[generated] from within [her] own flesh” (Battersby 1998, 7). And there is also the added confusion of the often differing movement-desires of this self and Other, these two spaces, the one within the other. The definition of transcendence that Levinas offers in his consideration of fecundity and paternity is similarly open to the potency of maternity. Towards the end of Section V, Part C, he describes transcendence as “the for the Other” (Levinas 1961, 247; tr. 269). This manner of conceptualising the transcendent most certainly appeals to the ethical potential of paternity for, as Levinas has already pointed out in this section of Totality and Infinity, with the child the infinite, and ergo my infinite responsibility for her or him, is made present to me and I thus become aware of that which has always been. However, it is also the case that in pregnancy the mother’s being is not simply for herself but for-the-Other in a uniquely feminine way. With this in mind, I return to a consideration of pregnancy proper in the hope of explicating its ethical potential more significantly.

The Evocation of Maternity as Ethical Development As I have been arguing, the event of pregnancy is very much an othering process and this “troubling talent for making other bodies” (Haraway 1991, 253) is likewise “troubling” in an ethical sense. The expectant mother is very much troubled: she is concerned about her health,

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the changes in her body and mind, the health of her developing child, the impending prospect of giving birth, and thoughts about how she will be a parent to this child. However, she is also “troubled” by the child himself or herself, by the call to responsibility that he or she–within her womb as Other-emits. In The Gift of the Other: Levinas and the Politics of Reproduction, Lisa Guenther sums this up rather nicely when she notes that: [The expectant mother]…bears this Other who remains a stranger despite her bearing, unseen and perhaps even violent: kicking at her ribs, altering the shape of her body, shifting her bones from within. She bears this weight of the Other not because she enjoys the pain as such, but because she looks forward with hope to the arrival of the child. She bears the pain of the Other for the sake of the Other; in this bearing, she becomes responsible for the child, for the child’s responsibility, and even for the pain that the child inflicts. (Guenther 2006, 211)10

The mother-self’s being is no longer experienced by her as a being merely for herself but as a being for another. This embryonic Other is literally under her skin, making his/her presence, and correlatively her responsibility for her/him, felt even in the absence of his or her “worlded” being. With each kick, with each movement of his/her arm or leg, and with each turn, the foetus calls out to his or her mother, silently but physically telling her: “I am here. Take care of me.” Aside from the intimations of the “troubling” nature of pregnancy–the physical pain and the consistent call to responsibility–to be seen in these remarks, several other notions that I have already referred to are also iterated here. These are the following: the link between pregnancy and the Levinasian account of substitution (“She bears the pain of the Other for the sake of the Other”) and pregnancy as welcome (“she looks forward with hope to the arrival of her child”). Substitution, itself a very troubling notion, is, as I have pointed out, one of the central philosophical moves of Otherwise than Being and is not especially cashed out in terms of pregnancy by Levinas. However, in agreement with Guenther, I contend that there is much to suggest that it can, and indeed should, be. Consider, for example, the following remark by Levinas: “the substitution of the one for the other does not signify the substitution of the other for the one” (Levinas 1974, 201; tr. 158). While I remain quite suspicious of the notion that in substitution I can take the place of another,11 there is something about pregnancy that causes me to be somewhat sympathetic towards the notion that “the one for the Other” does not necessarily signify its opposite. For, as Levinas put it in a 1968

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interview (though, again, not within confines of a much-needed consideration of maternity): “…therefore, I am responsible, and may not be concerned about whether the Other is responsible for me” (Levinas 2001, 130-139). Again, while I am uneasy about the wider application of this line of thinking, it seems to me to be quite congruent with the ethical potential of pregnancy. The mother’s awareness of her growing child (the Other) leads her to feel ever more responsible for this new being who is emerging from within her and which she will, with the passing of time, literally bring forth into the world. Whilst this Other is effectively something of an “absent presence” (the mother knows that s/he is within her but, as yet, the child is not fully “here” in the world), s/he makes her/his absent presence known quite forcibly. The mother experiences morning sickness, nausea, extreme tiredness, an enforced changing of her body, the stretching of her skin, an undesired altering of her taste buds, and the moments of emotional instability that occur due to the many hormonal changes occurring within her body. To borrow from Heidegger, the mother (self) experiences herself, her own body, as the “uncanny” and, for a time at least, she no longer feels at home with her body (indeed, with herself) because it is now no longer simply for her but for another being entirely. And yet, welcoming the yet-to-be-welcomed child, she will do everything that she can to ensure that this new being, an alien in her body, is nourished and sustained (for example, by altering her diet and her exercise regime) because she feels responsible for this Other who is both of her and not of her, because she (“the One”) is for her child (“the Other”). It is an inescapable responsibility but, at the same time, it is a responsibility that she is happy to take on. In effect, what we see here is that she responds positively–ethically–to the demands of this as yet unknown Other.12 By the child’s very constitution as Other, s/he demands that she (the mother) take up her responsibility. But what of the development of the mother-self’s awareness of this transcendent and ethical responsibility? In the case of pregnancy, the space between the self (mother) and the Other (foetus) occurs within the “space” of the mother’s body; a space is created in the same (the mother) by the Other (the foetus) and, as the Other literally grows within her, more of her space must be shared. Thus, in a curious way, the “space” for the ethical, as ethical responsibility, grows likewise; the mother’s pregnant body (the literally pregnant self) thus becomes something of an embodied space for the ethical and yet that space itself is also transcended by the ethical as responsibility.

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But does this language of growth and development accord with the Levinasian account of responsibility? It must be noted that, for Levinas, responsibility is both infinite and antecedent, already waiting for me even if I do not realise that this is the case. It cannot be added to and I certainly cannot hope to empty out my portion of this “jar”, no matter how hard I might work at behaving ethically towards another. So can I then justifiably assert that the mother-self’s responsibility for her unborn child grows and develops? It seems to me that Levinas uses language that suggests something of this possibility albeit once again, not in relation to maternity or pregnancy. Consider, for example, the following sentence from Totality and Infinity: “The increase of my exigencies with regard to myself aggravates the judgment that is borne upon me, increases my responsibility” (Levinas 1961, 74; tr. 100-101; my emphasis). I suggest that, while the mother’s ethical responsibility for her child cannot actually increase (because such responsibility is both antecedent and infinite), her awareness of it, and thus her responsiveness to it, can and does; hence: her ethical responsibility for her child, in the sense of her awareness of it, can be said to “increase” with the growth of her child both inside and outside of the womb. What is occurring here is that the mother’s awareness of her responsibility is developing alongside the development of her child. As this responsibility is an ethical responsibility, the more actively aware she becomes of this responsibility (that is, the more that she engages positively with the Other–her child), the more she can be said to be developing ethically. But she cannot do so alone, for the Other (the child) is necessary for her maternal ethical development–were it not for his or her “calling” to her (or, indeed, this kicking of her ribs), then she would not be alerted to her ethical responsibility and she could not take up the possibility of ethical development. Her ethical development, then, is not something that she can carry out alone–she requires that another (her child) makes her aware of her responsibility and, alongside all of the others, continues to do so. Something of this can also be seen in a remark from “The Trace of the Other”. In this seminal essay, Levinas–though, unfortunately, once again not referring to maternity or pregnancy–observes that: “The relationship with another puts me into question, empties me of myself, and does not let off emptying me–uncovering for me ever new resources” (Levinas 1967, 187-202; tr. 345-359).13 Although this is just one sentence, it is, I think, fertile ground for the evocation of maternity. As I have already suggested, the expectant mother experiences herself as uncanny, unfamiliar and not quite herself; once the child arrives, these feelings may well persist, for her

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life has been dramatically, though, in the main, pleasantly, altered. She is, therefore, “put into question” by this Other who dwells, sometimes quite forcibly, within her. And, although I do not think that it is the case that she is entirely “emptied” of herself, she may well feel as though she has been at times. Finally, as the foetus develops, and is then born and grows outside of the womb, her ethical responsibility continues to be felt ever more keenly and is experienced as growing or developing in the manner in which I have been suggesting. She thus, potentially at least, “uncovers ever new resources” within herself as her relationship with her child maintains its ethical timbre.

Concluding Remarks As I stated at the outset, this chapter purports to be nothing more than a preliminary investigation into the ethical potential of maternity. Thus I have certainly not addressed everything that can be said about the ethical and transcendent potential of pregnancy and/or maternity. However, I have suggested that the Levinasian system, when read through such lenses, contains a greater ethical “space” than he accounts for. Certainly, I agree with Levinas’ contention that the associated concepts of the masculine and paternity are incredibly important for the events of reproduction and parenthood. However, I am somewhat bemused by how little potential he sees in the likewise associated concepts of the feminine and maternity/pregnancy. As I have suggested, there are several key Levinasian notions that fit rather snugly into an exploration of the ethical potential of maternity and pregnancy. The concepts of responsibility, substitution (although a more moderate version than Levinas promotes) and his conception of transcendence as “for the Other” are some of the most “fertile” in this regard. Given that the former and latter of these are evoked in different manners within the context of discussions of paternity and fecundity, it is most perplexing that Levinas does not see fit to extend the same courtesy, indeed welcome, towards maternity. It has not been my intention throughout this chapter to suggest that paternity and fecundity are not philosophically significant, and it is not my intention to do so now. However, it is my view that the ethical potential of the transcendence of maternity can shed significant light, indeed could have contributed to the fuller development of, Levinas’ philosophy of ethical primacy. The space for the ethical which grows within and between the spaces of the mother-self and the foetus is unfortunately something of

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a silenced “absent presence” in his work, but it is also a presence that nevertheless calls out to be heard.

References Allen, Sarah, 2009. The Philosophical Sense of Transcendence: Levinas and Plato on Loving Beyond Being, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Battersby, Christine, 1998. The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Chanter, Tina, ed., 2001. Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, University Park: Penn State Press. Cummings, E. E., 1977. Selected Poems: 1923-1958, London: Faber & Faber. Guenther, Lisa, 2006. The Gift of the Other: Levinas and the Politics of Reproduction (SUNY Series in Gender Theory), Albany: State University Press. Haraway, Donna, 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books. Irigaray, Luce, 1984. Éthique de la différence sexuelle, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill, 1993, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, London: Athlone Press. Kristeva, Julia, 1980. Desire in Language, ed. Leon Roudiez. Trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press. —. 1991. ‘Questions to Emmanuel Levinas’ in ed. Margaret Whitford, The Irigaray Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Levinas, Emmanuel, 1961. Totalité et infini: essai sur l’extériorité, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, 1969, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. —. 1964. ‘La signification et le sens’, in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 69 (2), 125-156. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, ‘Meaning and Sense’ in ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak et al., 1996, Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings, Indiana: Indiana University Press. —. 1967. ‘La trace de l’autre’ in Emmanuel Levinas, En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 187-202. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, ‘The Trace of the Other’ in ed. Mark C. Taylor, 1986, Deconstruction in Context: Literature and Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 345-359.

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—. 1974. Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, 1998, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. —. 2001. ‘Being-Toward-Death and “Thou Shalt Not Kill”’, trans. Andrew Schmitz, in ed. Jill Robbins, Is It Righteous To Be?, Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press, 130-139. Rich, Adrienne, 1995. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, New York & London: Norton. Shanahan, Mary, 2011. The Wisdom of Love at the Service of Love: Mediated Transcendence in Plato and Levinas. Unpublished thesis.

CONTRIBUTORS

Stephen J. Costello is a philosopher, practising analyst, and Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute of Ireland: School of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. He is the author of The Irish Soul: In Dialogue; The Pale Criminal: Psychoanalytic Perspectives; What are Friends For?: Insights from the Great Philosophers; 18 Reasons Why Mothers Hate Their Babies: A Philosophy of Childhood; Hermeneutics and the Psychoanalysis of Religion; and, The Ethics of Happiness: An Existential Analysis. His forthcoming book is entitled Philosophy and the Flow of Presence: Desire, Drama and the Divine Ground of Being. William Desmond was born in Cork, Ireland. He is currently professor of philosophy at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as well as David Cook Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University, USA. He taught at Loyola University in Maryland before going to Leuven where he was Director of the International Program in Philosophy for thirteen years. He is the author of many books, including the trilogy Being and the Between (winner of the Prix Cardinal Mercier and the J. N. Findlay Award for best book in metaphysics, 1995-1997), Ethics and the Between (2001), and God and the Between (2008). Other books include: Is There a Sabbath for Thought?: Between Religion and Philosophy (2005) and Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Art and Philosophy (2003). He has also edited five books and published more than 100 articles. He is past president of the Hegel Society of America, the Metaphysical Society of America, and the American Catholic Philosophical Association. His most recent book is The Intimate Strangeness of Being: Metaphysics after Dialectic (2012). The William Desmond Reader also appeared in 2012. John Dillon studied Classics at Oxford, and subsequently completed a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, joining the faculty there in 1969. In 1980, he took up the Regius Chair of Greek at Trinity College Dublin, and remained in that post until his retirement in 2006. He is founder and Director Emeritus of The Plato Centre, Trinity College Dublin. His many publications include: Iamblichi Chalcidensis Commentariorum Fragmenta, (1973; reprinted with corrections in 2010); Iamblichus of Chalcis, The Letters (with Wolfgang Polleichner, 2009);

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Salt and Olives: Morality and Custom in Ancient Greece (2004); The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (2002); Iamblichus. De Anima. Text, translation and commentary (with John Finamore, 2002); The Middle Platonists (1977; 2nd ed. 1996); and, Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism (1993). David McPherson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Creighton University (Omaha, Nebraska, USA). He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI, USA). His areas of research specialization are in ethics, applied ethics, and philosophy of religion. His main research project is to develop a “revised” neo-Aristotelian ethical perspective that is linked up with concerns about the meaning of life and spirituality. His work has been published in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy and Theology, The Review of Metaphysics, and Journal of Business Ethics. Ian Leask is Lecturer in Philosophy at Mater Dei Institute, Dublin City University. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Belfast. He is author of Being Reconfigured (2011) and Questions of Platonism (2000). He has also edited several books, including: John Toland’s “Letters to Serena” (2013), The Taylor Effect: Responding to a Secular Age (with Eoin Cassidy, Alan Kearns, Fainche Ryan and Mary Shanahan, 2010), and Givenness and God: Questions of Jean-Luc Marion (with Eoin Cassidy, 2005). Patrick Quinn is Head of the Department of Philosophy at All Hallows College, Dublin. He is also a member of the Associate Faculty, National College of Ireland, and at University College Dublin. He is author of Philosophy of Religion A-Z (2005) and Aquinas, Platonism and the Knowledge of God (1996). He has also published several articles on philosophy and education. He is a Faculty Member of The Plato Centre, Trinity College Dublin. He has also presented philosophy and educational radio and television programmes on RTÉ. Kevin Sludds is an award-winning poet and philosopher. As a metaphysician, his translations and analyses have been published in book/article form and cited internationally. As Managing Director of ectiethics.com, he has provided consultancy and training in Europe, Africa and India on topics which include The Ethics of Responsibility–CSR in Action, Business Ethics or Ethics in Business–A Critical Distinction and Improving the Ethical Profile of Your Business. He has taught philosophy

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at Trinity College Dublin, National University of Ireland Maynooth, and is Head of Department of General Studies at Baze University, Abuja, Nigeria. Colm Shanahan is a Research Scholar at The Plato Centre, Trinity College Dublin, where he is currently completing his Ph.D. He received his B.A. (2007) and his MLitt (2010) from University College Dublin. His recent publications include: ‘Plato’s Symposium: Virtue as a Lesser Good?’ (Philosophia 2012). Mary Shanahan is Lecturer in Education (Religious Education) at St. Angela’s College, Sligo. She has also taught philosophy, religious education and religious studies at: University College Dublin, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Mater Dei Institute (Dublin City University), St. Patrick’s College (Drumcondra), Church of Ireland College of Education, and St. Patrick’s College (Thurles). She received a B. Ed. from Mater Dei Institute of Education (2004) and an M.A. in Philosophy from University College Dublin (2005), where she also completed her Ph.D. (2011). She is co-editor of The Taylor Effect: Responding to a Secular Age (with Ian Leask, Eoin Cassidy, Alan Kearns and Fainche Ryan, 2010) and has published several articles on Plato and Levinas respectively. She is also a Committee Member of the Irish Philosophical Society, a member of the Irish Centre for Religious Education, and a member of the Council for Justice and Peace, Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

NOTES

Chapter One Plato: The Humanity of Ethics 1

That Socrates recounts a conversation he once had with Diotima has interested and intrigued many scholars. R. E. Allen suggests that the reason Plato uses Diotima is that it would be inappropriate for Socrates to give a speech in praise of eros since he seems to be allied to it in Alcibiades’ speech. Allen states that the relationship between Socrates and love in this speech is as such that, when Alcibiades praises Socrates, love “will turn out to fit Socrates himself” (Plato 1991, 46). F. M. Cornford refers to this as a “masterstroke of delicate courtesy” (Cornford 1967, 71) because it allows Socrates to indirectly criticize Agathon, the man in whose honour the symposium has been held. Yet, I suggest that, while these points may, in part, be persuasive, the true significance of Diotima is that, with her, Plato’s understanding of love steps outside of the pederastic tradition. It is for this reason that I am in agreement with Halperin when he states that Diotima “signals Plato’s departure from certain aspects of the sexual method of his contemporaries and thereby enables him to highlight some central features of his own philosophy” (Halperin 1990, 113-151). For an interesting feminist perspective on the role of Diotima in the Symposium, see Irigaray 1994 and Hawthorne 1993. 2 Although the language of lover and beloved is used in the text, it is clear that, when we consider the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, Plato is developing a new conception of love. Thus, he rejects some of his contemporaries’ theories of love but must use these terms (erastes and eromenos) in order to be understood by his audience. As Kenneth Dover states: “Since the reciprocal desire of partners belonging to the same age-category is virtually unknown in Greek homosexuality, the distinction between the bodily activity of the one who has fallen in love and the bodily passivity of the one whom he has fallen in love with is of the highest importance” (Dover 1978, 16). This, of course, means that the beloved is the one who gratifies and that the lover is the one who is gratified for his wisdom. 3 C. D. C. Reeve has also noted the transformative aspect of love, stating that: “[a]gain this cognitive achievement [marked by the progression on the ascent] is matched by a conative one” (Reeve 2006, xxxii). 4 The capacity to generate vice is considered in the text at 205d: “the whole of desire for good things and for happiness is “the supreme and treacherous love”, to be found in everyone”. 5 Ralph Wedgwood makes an observation which is in the same vein as Sheffield’s, see Wedgwood 2009.

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Yet the manner in which Sheffield holds this to be the case places the assisting of another as a secondary good to that of knowing the Form. For a comprehensive discussion of my issues with Sheffield’s position see Shanahan 2012. 7 As Irwin suggests: “Plato speaks of the effects of love as ‘educating’ or moulding” (Irwin 1995, 311). The educational aspect of the Platonic love relationship is also identified by John M. Rist who characterises it as: “[the] pupilmaster relationship” (Rist 1964, 24). Or, as Paul Freidländer puts it: “Diotima envisages the way of love as guidance of young boys, as an act of education” (Freidländer 1969, 68). In relation to the effect that virtue has on this educational framework, Werner Jaeger asserts that: “[e]ven in the first speeches about Eros, Plato brought out the fact that Eros implies a yearning towards moral beauty...” (Jaeger 1989, 194). 8 The idea of preventing the passions from dominating the soul has been commented upon widely in the literature on Plato. Commenting on how Plato understands the nature of the philosophical way of life, John Cooper states that such a life would involve “the attendant restriction of bodily gratification and the curtailment of other sorts of pleasant pursuits” (Cooper 1999, 138-149). The reason behind this view is, as W. K. C. Guthrie states, that: “[a]n unreflective pursuit of pleasure may only lead to future misery” (Guthrie 1968, 103). Sean Sayers, commenting on Plato’s Republic, also notes that the consequences of acting morally do “indeed lead to true happiness even if it is not rewarded with riches and reputation” (Sayers 1999, 18). 9 However, Terence Irwin argues that the Platonic lover comes to love or value his beloved by reproducing what he values about himself within his beloved. As Irwin puts it: “if B really carries on what A regards as valuable about A, then A has good reason to care about B in the same way that A cares about A” (Irwin 1995, 311). This means that, if B is the candidate to carry on the work of A, which, of course, A values, then A will love this aspect of B in the same way as A loves this aspect of A. Yet, Socrates states “What a nuisance my love for this man [Alcibiades] has become!” (213c), and so Socrates’ love for Alcibiades seems to be present in the absence of what Irwin mentions. 10 I am borrowing this phrase from Tina Chanter, who has published a book under this title (see Chanter 1995). 11 For these reasons, I cannot agree with Cooper when he contends that: “the ultimate object of pursuit, yet [it] lies outside the world.” The main difficulty that I have with Cooper’s argument here is the way that it treats of moral or just interaction between people. As Cooper goes on to state: “...no worldly thing or activity can because of its own properties, because of what it is, interest the just man; anything interests him only as a means of coming nearer to the good itself” (Cooper 1999, 148). It seems to me that the activities of this world, moral action notwithstanding, are somewhat underplayed by Cooper here. 12 This idea of physical beauty acting in such a capacity is suggested in the text by Alcibiades when he states that: “Socrates is in love with beautiful young men and is always around them, and overwhelmed” (216d). It is clear that Socrates is not in pursuit of sexual experiences with these men and so I read this statement with Diotima’s counsel in mind: “he loves and cares for the other person, and gives

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birth to the sorts of words…that will make young men into better men” (210c). As such, the beauty of others generates Socrates’ capacity to gain knowledge and so the other’s beauty acts as a kind of muse for him. Hence, Socrates’ desire to be around others is not motivated by sexual desire but by a desire for the development of knowledge. 13 The point that I am driving at here regarding how the good of virtuous character positively effects both members of the Platonic love relationship is encapsulated by A. W. Price when he writes that: “The lover’s potential ideas and virtues are to become actual as part of the mental life of both lover and beloved” (Price 1989, 28). 14 In a manner sympathetic to my own position, Thomas Gould has argued that: “In the Symposium Plato offered a way up by means of a correct use of personal love” (Gould 1981, 91). I would add that the type of personal love at work here is best described as philia. 15 I argue that, in the Symposium, Plato is concerned with both philia and eros. Therefore, my account of “possession” is somewhat at odds with that of Charles H. Khan, who holds that: “Because Eros, as the most potent form of desire, can play a decisive role in fixing the goal of a human life, it is of much greater significance for Plato than the concept of ‘philia’” (Khan 1998, 260). 16 This flies in the face of Gregory Vlastos who argues that we are motivated towards knowledge (see Vlastos 1981). Contrarily, I suggest that we are motivated by the knowledge that we have already attained. 17 As I have been arguing, the problem with Alcibiades’ attempt is, I suggest, that he lacks the necessary commitment to being virtuous. 18 Commenting on Plato’s Phaedrus, Griswold also notes that: “If there is no idea of soul, then there is no anamnesis of the soul qua soul, and self-knowledge cannot in principle be recollective in that sense…” (Griswold 1996, 89). 19 Interestingly, in the Republic (at 443c-444a and 444c-d) Plato states that it is just actions that generate the inner harmony of the parts of the soul, which he takes to be justice (defined as each man doing his own, see 443c). The trouble with this definition, as Irwin argues, is ultimately bound up with the manner in which Plato understands the health of the soul as this just or harmonious state. As Irwin states (noting Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1003a34-6): “they produce a condition of justice in the soul...[but, regarding the health analogy, Irwin continues] no doubt healthy medicine is productive of health, but healthy appetites and complexions are not productive, but indicative, of health...” (Irwin 1979, 210). Yet, surely, the “habitually acted” just actions would condition a sense of value for justice within the soul, and, in this sense, justice would indeed issue from just actions. The point that I am driving at is that an understanding of justice as inner harmony is nonsensical, for Plato, without reference to participation in a wider context. As Nickolas Pappas explains: “...[j]ust actions are both ‘symptomatic’ and contributing ‘causes’ of justice in the soul, unjust ones both symptoms and causes of injustice” (Pappas 2003, 86).

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Chapter Two Plotinus’ Doctrine of the Sage in its Historical Context 1

This chapter is based on a paper given by me at a seminar on Virtue Ethics at the University of Copenhagen on May 4th, 2010. 2 Though “the serious man”, or “the man of moral weight, or depth”, would more closely represent the sense of the Greek term. 3 Dillon 1996, in Gerson 1996, 315-35. 4 For example, Andrew Smith, ‘The Significance of Practical Ethics in Plotinus’ in Cleary 1999; Schniewind 2003; and most recently, Song 2009. 5 I must say that I like the suggestion (originally, I think, advanced by H. D. Saffrey in the CNRS Vie de Plotin volume) that she was the (otherwise attested) widow of the Emperor Trebonianus, who had reigned from 251 to 253. 6 I hesitate as to whether to capitalize Intellect (nous) here, but on balance have chosen not to, as the reference is to the intellect in us, as well as to the hypostasis Intellect. At this stage of a successful spiritual ascent, they would, of course, be merged. 7 Cf. Bodeüs 1973. 8 To megiston mathéma, sc. the Good, a reference to Plato, Rep. VI 505a2. 9 He actually seems to make effective use here of a dictum of Epicurus: “Great pains quickly remove us from life; while long-lasting ones have no magnitude” (Fr. 447 Usener). 10 For speculations on the nature of this, see Grmek 1992. 11 Plotinus here recognises the argument, which would have been maintained by the Peripatetics (Man is a “politikon zôion”, as Aristotle would say) as well by in popular opinion, of the essentially social nature of man, but he is not impressed by it. He recognises this belief also at IV 9 [8], 3. 1-9, in the context of a discussion as to whether, or in what way, all souls are one. 12 For example, from Smith, in the article listed in note 4 above. 13 Listed above, note 3. 14 That is to say, the ensouled body.

Chapter Three The Ethical Dimension of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy: A Logotherapeutic Reading 1

This article is based on a talk entitled, ‘Philosophy as Therapy: A Logotherapeutic Reading of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy’, which I delivered at the Philosophy, Therapy and Wellbeing Conference, United Arts Club, Dublin on May 4th 2013. 2 It is a pity that Plato’s model of mental health and Frankl’s development of it is not taught to our mental health professionals, who have no knowledge of this ancient philosophical pedigree and precursor to modern psychiatric practice.

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3

Boethius was a prominent 6th century philosopher, public figure and exceptional Greek scholar under the Gothic emperor Theodoric. Born in Rome, he was a member of an ancient and aristocratic family who fell from favour and was imprisoned in Pavia. His father had attained to the consulship, as would Boethius’ two sons. His family exerted huge influence. He married Rusticiana, daughter of Symmachus, Prefect of Rome and Head of the Senate. Boethius himself was a senator by the age of 25 but was imprisoned by King Theodoric the Great who thought he was conspiring with the Eastern Roman Empire. He was executed in 524. Boethius is recognized as a martyr for the Catholic faith, his feast day being October 23rd. He was declared a saint by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1883. 4 In a private communication. 5 For Frankl, the very pursuit of these material things is that which thwarts their attainment. 6 Found within The Consolation are themes that have echoed throughout the Western canon: the female figure of wisdom that informs Dante (a kind of archetype of the Wise Old Woman), the ascent through the layered universe that is shared with Milton, the reconciliation of opposing forces that find their way into Chaucer’s The Knight's Tale, and the Wheel of Fortune so popular and prevalent throughout the Middle Ages. 7 Actualising attitudinal values in relation to part of what Frankl calls “the tragic triad” of human existence. 8 Frankl would ask us this: rather than fighting or fleeing from fear, what would happen if we actually and actively wished that the things we feared most would happen? Frankl argues that desire cancels out fear and he found that this approach (an essential part of the logotherapeutic technique) cured many people suffering from various anxieties and phobias. He called it “paradoxical intention”. 9 The distinction between pleasure and happiness here accords with the logotherapeutic perspective of viewing pleasure as somatic and happiness as psychical. Joy as spiritual happiness would thus be noetic. See Costello 2010 for a fuller treatment of the subject. 10 “So what happens is that when a man abandons goodness and ceases to be human, being unable to rise to a divine condition, he sinks to the level of being an animal” (Boethius 1969, 125).

Chapter Four Ontological Conscience, Christian Parallels and the Path to Authenticity 1

Only because Dasein is concernfully in-the-world is it that one’s Self can be called to its capacity-to-be (Seinkönnen). This term is translated by Macquarrie and Robinson as “potentiality-for-Being”, however, this is a rather prosaic designation and, as Dreyfus points out, “[is] misleading, since können signifies a know-how, not just a potentiality” (Dreyfus 1991). 2 The word “Situation” (Situation) is written by Heidegger with a capital “S” to distinguish it from “situation” (Lage) with a lower-case “s”, that is, the public das

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Man common situation, “For the “they” . . . the Situation is essentially something that has been closed off. The “they” knows only the ‘general situation’” (Heidegger 1992, 346). 3 The word “resoluteness” (Entschlossenheit) is used to convey the radical shift or transformation from inauthenticity to authenticity, the shift from how anxiety is perceived as threatening and from which one flees, to an acceptance of Dasein’s nullity and death as an essential structural component of its way of being. The German word Entschlossenheit comes from entscliessen which originally meant “to open, unlock, to unclose” and, thus, resoluteness has the double meaning of disclosure (erschliessen) and “to reach a decision” (sich entschliessen), to “unlock one’s mind”, so to speak. This play on prefixes, which is common in Being and Time, allows Heidegger to construct the following, “Resoluteness [Entschlossenheit] is a distinctive mode of Dasein’s disclosedness [Erschlossenheit]” (Heidegger 1992, 343). 4 The linguistic parallels that exist in German between Schuld and Schulden haben unfortunately do not emerge in the English translation, compare Haugeland 2000, 65, in Wrathall and Malpas 2000 for more. 5 See Heidegger’s 1920-1921 lectures on religion, published as Volume 60 of the Gesamtausgabe (Heidegger 1995) and singularly as The Phenomenology of Religion (Heidegger 2004). 6 For a more comprehensive examination of Heidegger’s treatment of anxiety see Sludds 2011. 7 Da-sein’s emerging or standing out from beings stems from the word ex-ist which originally had this active dimension, from the Latin sisto (to stand or set) and ek (out or beyond), a resonance which has been lost over the centuries. 8 This is a crucial term for Schleiermacher in his opening definition of religion in The Christian Faith: “The common element in all howsoever diverse expression of piety by which these are conjointly distinguished from all other feelings, or, in other words the self-identical essence of piety, is this: the consciousness of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in relation with God” (1999, 12; italics my own). 9 Its opposite is “orthotes”, a word which Woods tells us, “is truth as correctness of representation, right formulation that corresponds to what is the case” (1990, xv). 10 It clearly cannot for those who experience Being as indifferent; for to use the word “God” means that one has taken up an attitude towards Being which is an attitude of faith. 11 John Skinner tells us that: “we can recognize the contemplative as a man in Christ’s image called to die to himself in order to live more fully” (1995, 52). 12 It is worth noting that Christians were originally known as those of “the Way” (Acts, ix.2), and that it was Heidegger’s chosen motto for the Collected Edition (Gesamtausgabe) that it be called “Ways, not works”.

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Chapter Five Critique and Ethos 1

See Foucault 1984, 246: “…there is the problem raised by Habermas: if one abandons the work of Kant…one runs the risk of lapsing into irrationality. I am completely in agreement with this, but at the same time our question is quite different…” 2 Although a comparative reading is beyond the scope of this chapter, we can note that Foucault also gave extended consideration to Kant in his 1984 ‘Courage of Truth’ lecture series. See Foucault 2009. 3 For fuller discussion, see Revel 2005, passim.

Chapter Six The Potencies of the Ethical: On the Sources of Being Good 1

I use the word “system” here in a convenient and latitudinarian way to refer to a more or less consistent ensemble or set of ethical values, and not to a closed totality. 2 See Desmond 1995, Desmond 2001, Desmond 2008, and Desmond 2013. 3 I will mention this again in passing, and briefly return to it for clarification at the end. 4 See again Desmond 2001 and Desmond 2008. 5 The relevant ethical considerations are set forth more extensively in Desmond 2001. In addition, I mention that the fuller concretions of these potencies assume immediate, self-mediating and intermediating forms, forms dealt with more fully in Parts III and IV of Desmond 2001. Immediate concretions have to do with the effective givenness of value, before we mindfully participate and contribute to its enrichment. Our participation takes on a self-mediating form, and hence in Part III, I deal with the self-becoming of the good in humans, through an unfolding of different forms of ethical selving: from rudimentary desire and its self-insistence, through to the release of freedom beyond autonomy, which comes to shape in community of agapeic service. Finally, in Part IV, I explore the forms of social intermediation which most fully concretize the promise of the ethical potencies, as well as the richest possibilities of the fourfold sense of being. In different communities, from the family, through the network of use and serviceable disposability, to the communities of erotic sovereignty and of agapeic service, the full ethical promise of the ethos gets more richly concretized. In the consummate community of agapeic service we get a sense of the meaning of the promise of the ethical already incognito is the given ethos of being. We are pointed beyond the ethical to the religious community.

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Chapter Seven Do Wittgenstein’s Ethical Views have anything to Offer for the Future of Ethics? 1

See Wittgenstein 1993, 36-44. See, for example, Wittgenstein 1974, props. 6.41, 6.42, et cetera up to and including prop. 7. See also McGuinness 1988 on this period of Wittgenstein’s life and thought. 3 See Wittgenstein 2007, 3e, 34e, 81e and 84e. 4 See McGuinness 1983, 68 et seq., 92 et seq., and 114 et seq. 5 See Maurice O’C. Drury’s ‘Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein and Conversations with Wittgenstein’, in Rhees 1984, 76-171. 6 See especially Chapter 8, 94-103. 7 See especially 7-23. 8 As is well known, Wittgenstein was concerned about suicide, especially because of his brothers’ deaths. 9 My italics. 10 See also Wittgenstein 1974, 6.4311. 11 This is not to suggest that Wittgenstein had read these dialogues. As far as we know, Plato’s Theaetetus was the only one that Wittgenstein was familiar with. 12 While Wittgenstein had read Newman, he does not seem to have read Aquinas. 13 Aren’t there similarities here with Wittgenstein’s later statement in Culture and Value, 17e, that it is our determination to see things in a particular way that results in our noetic difficulties? 14 See Wittgenstein 1974, 6.43. 15 Wittgenstein follows up this last statement by asking whether “There can be a world that is neither happy nor unhappy?” (Wittgenstein 1998, 78e). 16 See also Wittgenstein 1974, 6.422. 17 See Wittgenstein 1974, 6.421. 18 Wittgenstein 1993, 79e. See also Wittgenstein 1974, 6.421. 19 See Wittgenstein 1993, 39. 20 See Wittgenstein 1993, 39. 21 As Wittgenstein puts it: “Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts: as a teacup could only hold a teacup full of water [even] if I were to pour out a gallon over it.” (Wittgenstein 1993, 40) 22 “Good and evil only enter through the subject. And the subject is not part of the world.” (Wittgenstein 1993, 79e) 23 One might remark here on Jesus’ general claim about loving God and one’s neighbour, which may seem too general yet those who subscribe to this view may well understand it for what it is. 24 See Rhees 1984 and Drury’s memoir statement about Wittgenstein’s remark on helping our neighbour as our way to God. 25 Earlier in this passage and on a very different subject, he explores whether or not one should will good or will evil, or not will at all. Should one simply not want 2

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anything for one’s neighbour? He once again ends ambiguously stating that “in a certain sense not wanting is the only good.” (Wittgenstein 1993, 77e) 26 After which there are three appendices unrelated to the foregoing, Appendix 1, which contains a summary of logic, Appendix 2, notes dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway, April 1914, and Appendix 3, which contains extracts from Wittgenstein’s letters to Russell, 1912-1920. 27 A notable example of this was his deep regret and need for forgiveness for striking a pupil during his period as a schoolteacher in Austria (he struck a boy prone to epilepsy who promptly had an epileptic fit). Wittgenstein, in a highly anxious state, confessed this grave sin, as he saw it, to some friends in the 1940’s, long after the event had occurred, to their astonishment.

Chapter Eight A Virtue Ethic Approach to Bearing and Rearing Children 1

See Overall 2012a and 2012b; the article draws from the introduction to the book. While I do not know if Overall chose or endorsed the headline for her article, these comments certainly seem to lend support to the reductive and disparaging language of “breeding” in the headline. Later on in the article she also refers to the nineteen children of a particular family as a “brood”. 3 Interestingly, Overall concludes the article by saying that she and her husband, after much reflection, chose to have two children, whom they adore. 4 Foot borrows this notion of “Aristotelian necessities” from the work of Elizabeth Anscombe. 5 Aristotle in fact held that being childless “disfigures blessedness” (Aristotle 2014, I.8.1099a30–1099b5). 6 See Midgley 1984 and Annas 2005. 7 See Williams 1995, Chapter 9; cf. Hursthouse 1999, 256-65. I discuss this issue in more detail in a forthcoming article, ‘Cosmic Outlooks and Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics’. 8 McDowell raises this sort of question with his thought-experiment of the “rational wolf” (McDowell 1998, 169-73). 9 I borrow this term from Jonathan Sacks. See Sacks 2011, Chapter 1. 10 See Taylor 1985, Introduction and Chapters 1–2, and Taylor 1989, Part 1. 11 I take up this issue more fully in my article “To What Extent Must We Go Beyond Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism?” (McPherson 2012). 12 Aristotle recognizes this disanalogy when he writes that: “we do not say that an ox, a horse, or any other animal whatsoever is happy, since none of them can share in this sort of [noble] activity” (Aristotle 2014, I.9.1099b30–2; see also X.8.1178b24–32). 13 John McDowell has also pointed out the importance of the category of “the noble” in Aristotle’s view of eudaimonia (McDowell 1998, 9–10; 26; 91–3; 169). 14 As John Cottingham puts it: “[To] play its necessary guiding role, human nature…has to mean more than just a collection of contingent facts about the sort 2

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of creatures we humans have evolved to be: instead, it has to embody a normative ideal of what is noblest and best within us” (Cottingham 2003, 71). 15 “Achieving” the good life is always a matter of degree. Since there will always be some strong goods that cannot be fully encompassed within a particular life we can say that no human “perfectly” achieves the good life. 16 In other words, these are the sine qua non of the good life for human beings. 17 See note 15. 18 Benatar in fact distinguishes between lives worth creating and lives worth living (that is, continuing); see Benatar (2006, 22–28; cf. 211–21). He thinks that a life can be worth living (because we acquire interests in living from being alive), even though it is not worth creating. As will be seen, in my view, life being worth living and life being worth creating are connected. 19 This means that if life is indeed ultimately meaningless then a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic perspective would no longer be viable, and only a significantly reduced form of ethics based on what one happens to care about would be possible. I discuss this in more detail in ‘Cosmic Outlooks and Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics’. 20 For instance, Overall writes: “what makes procreation an odd “gift” is…the fact that the recipient does not yet exist. In this one case, the gift creates the recipient, and there is no particular being on whom the “gift” of existence is bestowed” (Overall 2012b, 57). Likewise, Benatar says: “Children are brought into existence not in acts of great altruism, designed to bring the benefit of life to some pitiful non-being suspended in the metaphysical void and thereby denied the joys of life. In so far as children are ever brought into existence for anybody’s sake it is never for their own sake” (Benatar 2006, 129–30). 21 On a couple of occasions in his discussion of friendship in Books VIII and IX, Aristotle in fact appeals to mothers as exemplifying key features of the best kind of friendship: viz., being more concerned with loving than being loved (VIII.8), wishing good for a friend for his or her own sake, and identifying with his or her good (IX.4). 22 Since I am concerned with the question of whether to create a new child, I am not addressing the more complicated case of the relationship to an adopted child. But clearly this should also be the same sort of deep loving relationship, though without the biological connection. 23 Although I have criticized views that put too much stress on the analogy between human and non-human animal flourishing, I do think there are some important similarities since we are after all part of the animal world. 24 See Vanier 1998 and MacIntyre 1999. 25 See Sandler 2013. 26 Regarding why he does not think that suicide is necessarily an implication, see Benatar (2006, 22–8; 211–21). See also note 18. 27 This raises the difficult issue of “cosmodicy”, that is, the attempt to justify life in the world as meaningful and worthwhile in the face of suffering (recall my earlier agreement with Benatar regarding how the question of whether to create people is an existential issue). How one comes down on this issue will depend upon his or her overall worldview. However, as I have argued above, I think a neo-Aristotelian

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virtue ethic requires that one does think that life can be justified as worthwhile and meaningful. 28 I should mention here that I do not think that one should regret a child’s existence since this stands opposed to the virtue of hospitality in welcoming children as gifts, which I think a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic perspective requires. We might regret certain bad things that befall a child, but we should not regret the child’s existence. 29 See Benatar 2006, 64–9. 30 See Willott 2002. 31 It should be clarified that saying something is a hardship does not necessarily override other considerations. It may be a hardship to help someone in need, but one might still be morally required to do so. The fact that something is a hardship just needs to be part of the equation in considering what ought to be done.

Chapter Nine A Pregnant Space: Levinas, Ethics and Maternity 1

Necessary because, without such a link, the foetus will not survive but incomplete because, though the Other (foetus) is in the self (mother), they are never entirely the same. A gap persists between them which, as I shall argue throughout this chapter, opens up a space for the ethical. 2 In this chapter, my position is outlined exclusively with reference to maternity in the case of wanted pregnancies (whether planned or unplanned). This, of course, leaves open to discussion the issues of unwanted pregnancies, abortion, and the situation of the adoptive mother’s ethical development with regard to her adopted child (for she may, of course, also be a mother to biological children). While I will not be addressing those issues here–to do so would require substantially more comment than one chapter will permit–it is my intention to outline my position in relation to such in subsequent publications. 3 See, for example, Levinas 1961, Section II Part D, “The Dwelling”, and Section IV Part C, “Fecundity”. 4 In side-stepping this aspect of Totality and Infinity, I do not wish to suggest that it should be overlooked or that it is not important. It is rather the case that this issue, in itself, merits a full chapter and so it is a point that I shall return to in a subsequent publication. It should also be noted that there have already been several fine publications on Levinas’ curious depiction of the feminine, notably: Irigaray 1984 (see especially, ‘The Fecundity of the Caress’), Irigaray 1991, and Chanter 2001. 5 Adrienne Rich, for example, has commented on how, having had a child, a woman may “[experience her] own body and emotions in a powerful way” (Rich 1995, 37). In other words, the woman is struck by the realisation of her potency and not, as Levinas’s limiting observation would have it, by her utter vulnerability (though she may well experience moments of such even in her powerful state). 6 This is indeed a surprising position, for how can the masculine have entered into this fecund relation of transcendence except by way of the openness of the

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feminine in nurturing and giving birth to (bringing forth) the son (the new being) with whom the father is intimately concerned? Whilst the later Levinas moves away from this exclusively masculine subjectivity, even this does not go far enough in terms of respecting, indeed honouring, the transcendence of maternity and birth. 7 Cf. Levinas 1961, 246 (tr. 268): “The relation with the child–that is, the relation with the other that is not a power, but fecundity–establishes relationship with the absolute future, or infinite time.” 8 See Levinas 1961, 249 (tr. 271), where Levinas comments that “the alterity of the feminine is associated with it [the “transcendence of fecundity”]”. 9 Although not writing about pregnancy, the poet e. e. cummings has expressed something of the sentiment that I am pointing to in I Carry Your Heart: “here is the deepest secret nobody knows/ (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the and the sky of the sky of the tree called life; which grows/ higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)/ and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart/ I carry your heart(I carry it in my heart)” (Cummings 1977). Interestingly and as we saw earlier, while Levinas’ evocation of maternity likewise equated it with some pain and suffering, Guenther presents these aspects in an affirming manner that accords maternity much ethical significance: “She bears this weight of the Other not because she enjoys the pain as such, but because she looks forward with hope to the arrival of the child.” 10 In Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas develops the concept of the “third party” (introduced in Totality and Infinity) by linking it to the no less problematic additional concept of the substitution. He writes: “It signifies an inequality in the oneself due to substitution, an effort to escape concepts without any future but attempted anew the next day. It signifies a uniqueness, under assignation, of responsibility, and because of this assignation not finding any rest in itself … The self is sub-jectum; it is under the weight of the universe, responsible for everything” (Levinas 1974, 147; tr. 115-16). Levinas argues that whilst one can substitute oneself for the Other, one cannot ask that the Other will do likewise for oneself; the third cannot take my place though I may take his or hers. And yet it is precisely this, the core feature of substitution, that, it seems to me, results in a radical limitation of the Other’s ethical potential by the “ethical” self. To sum up my concerns in brief: in the first place, it strikes me that it is simply not possible to substitute myself for the Other without doing significant damage to myself. In the second place, the very idea of taking another’s place, when envisaged as a taking on of their guilt and of their responsibility, strikes me as ethically problematic. In the third place, even notionally the term “substitution” implies something of a replacement which, as I see it, is neither ethical nor viable in Levinas’ schematic. I have provided an extensive discussion of this in Shanahan 2011, see especially “Chapter 5, Subjugated Subjectivity and the Lack of Mutual Ethical Development: An Analysis of Levinasian Mediated Transcendence”. 11 Julia Kristeva has commented that the ethical importance of pregnancy can be located in its context of love (love between mother and developing child). She writes that such love is “openness to the Other” (Kristeva 1980, 144).

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In “Meaning and Sense”, Levinas again appeals to the idea of an “emptying” of the self: “The relationship with the other puts me into question, empties me of myself and empties me without end, showing me ever new resources” (Levinas 1964, 125-156). The idea of the self emptying (kenosis) itself of itself is also prevalent in the Christian theology of the suffering Christ on the cross. See, for example, St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians where he writes that: “Who [Christ] being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but emptied himself, taking the form of servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as man.” (Phil. 2:6-8). One might well speculate that it is this idea that Levinas has in mind when he appeals to the idea of the self emptying itself of itself.

INDEX abortion ................................87, 138 absent presence........... 114, 120, 122 actions…5, 6, 8, 12, 28, 83, 90, 93, 130 actualize ...................................... 89 aesthetic…xi, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 aesthetics ..................................... 65 agapeic service .....................71, 134 Agathon ............................ 3, 28, 128 Alcibiades…5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 37, 128, 129, 130 aletheia ........................................ 46 Allen, R. E............................15, 128 Allen, Sarah............................... 117 alterity .......................... 72, 115, 139 altruism ..................................... 137 anamnetic .................................... 29 Anaxagoras.................................. 33 Anfechung.................................... 46 Annas ........................... 25, 112, 136 antecedent...........................117, 120 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View......................... 53 anxiety…35, 37, 41, 43, 45, 47, 48, 62, 133 apatheia..............................x, 16, 24 Aquinas, St. Thomas…28, 38, 67, 70, 78, 126, 135 archai .......................................... 61 arête ............................................ 29 Aristotelian…xii, 60, 69, 88, 89, 95, 108, 110, 112, 136, 137 Aristotelian eudaimonism ........... 70 Aristotelianism ..................60, 66, 69 Aristotle…14, 15, 26, 27, 37, 62, 70, 74, 93, 96, 112, 130, 131, 136, 137 arkhé ........................................... 18

ascent…3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 32, 128, 131, 132, 156 assujetissement ............................ 57 Augustine, St. ............ 32, 67, 71, 85 Auschwitz .................................... 39 Ausgang ..................... 54, 55, 56, 58 authentic selfhood........................ 49 authenticity .........41, 42, 44, 57, 133 autonomy ....................... 66, 68, 134 Bacchic .................................... 9, 13 Barrett, William ........................... 41 Battersby, Christine ................... 118 Baudelaire.................................... 55 bearing…xii, 20, 88, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 103, 107, 116, 119 bearing and rearing children ........ 88 beautiful…2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 129 beautiful bodies ................. 2, 10, 11 beauty…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 17, 35, 36, 37, 65, 93, 107, 129 Beauty .......... 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 37 Being…21, 23, 27, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 71, 73, 115, 116, 119, 122, 123, 125, 126, 132, 133, 134, 139 Being and Time…xi, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 133 Bekümmerung .............................. 45 beloved…3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 128, 129, 130 Benatar, David…95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 112, 137, 138 benefit…96, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106, 137 benevolence ............... xii, 88, 95, 98 Bible ...................................... 47, 49

144 birth…2, 3, 7, 9, 35, 63, 97, 108, 118, 129, 138 body…3, 4, 6, 10, 17, 18, 19, 23, 37, 64 Boethius…28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 131, 132 breastfeeding ............................... 97 breeding.................... 87, 88, 91, 136 Brothers Karamazov, The …97, 112 care…xi, 13, 30, 35, 37, 41, 51, 95, 97, 98, 110, 119, 129, 137 Carthusian, A. ............................ 42 categorical imperative ................. 66 Chanter ................. 14, 123, 129, 138 character…2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 21, 63, 67, 69, 70, 82, 89, 90, 91, 97, 98 Chaucer ................................31, 132 child…xii, 87, 88, 90, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 137, 138, 139 childbirth ................................... 116 childless.................. 88, 98, 103, 136 children…xii, 10, 21, 35, 87, 88, 90, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 136, 137, 138 children of the mind .................... 10 Christ ...................... 46, 47, 133, 140 Christian…xi, 22, 33, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 60, 75, 81, 132, 133, 140 Christianity…xi, 32, 33, 44, 45, 49, 60, 69, 71 Chrysippus .................................. 16 Cleanthes ..................................... 16 Cleary, John J. ................ 25, 27, 131 Cloud of Unknowing, The …47, 49 community…xii, 64, 66, 69, 88, 107, 110, 134 compassion ................. 92, 93, 97, 98 conative ...................... 4, 5, 128, 156 concealment ................................ 46

Index conscience…41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 78, 81, 84 contemplating .......................... 2, 12 contemplation…2, 8, 10, 11, 12, 42, 47 contraception ............................... 87 Cooper, John M. ............ 14, 15, 129 Cornford, F. M........................... 128 Cottingham, John............... 112, 136 counterfeit doubles ................ 62, 66 courage .................23, 24, 59, 97, 98 Critical Philosophy ................ 53, 56 critique… 52, 55, 56, 58, 69, 71, 117 Consolation of Philosophy, The. ..x, xi, 28, 31, 39, 131 Culture and Value …74, 75, 85, 135 Cummings, e. e. ......................... 139 daimon ......................................... 66 Dante ................................... 31, 132 Darwinian .................................... 92 das Man ............................... 41, 133 Dasein…41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 132, 133 death…20, 32, 33, 35, 41, 43, 48, 52, 67, 74, 78, 83, 106, 133 Demiurge ..................................... 17 demotiké kai politiké .................... 23 dependence ............................ 46, 97 desire…x, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 13, 37, 38, 65, 67, 70, 71, 97, 99, 107, 128, 130, 132, 134 desires…4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 57, 70, 90, 92, 93, 101, 106, 107, 118 Desmond, William…xi-xii, 15, 73, 125, 134 development…1, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 21, 53, 54, 58, 90, 93, 94, 114, 120, 121, 122, 130, 131, 138 dianoetic .........60, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70 Diotima…2, 3, 6, 14, 15, 27, 128, 129 disclosedness ....................... 41, 133 disclosure................. 42, 46, 48, 133 Discussions of Wittgenstein ......... 75 divine…17, 18, 29, 33, 38, 66, 67, 71, 74, 83, 132

An Ethics of/for the Future? doctrine of salvation .................... 32 Doctrine of the Sage ...............x, 131 Dostoevsky, Fyodor ..... ..76, 97, 112 Dover, Kenneth ......................... 128 Dreyfus, Hubert ....................49, 132 Drury, Maurice ............... 75, 84, 135 duty ...................... 82, 100, 101, 102 educate .....................................6, 10 education…4, 6, 9, 11, 12, 108, 126, 127, 129 ego 28, 36, 46 egrégoruia ................................... 18 eigen ............................................ 44 embodied…x, 4, 5, 6, 67, 70, 117, 120 emotions ...................................... 90 Enlightenment, the…51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58 Ennead .............................16, 26, 27 Entschlossenheit ........................ 133 epicureanism ..........................64, 69 Epicurus ...............................37, 131 erastes ....................................... 128 eromenos ................................... 128 eros…1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 67, 71, 115, 128, 130 Eros…7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 66, 129, 130 eros turannos............................... 67 eros uranios................................. 67 erotic sovereignty .................71, 134 eschatological .........................45, 70 ethical…x-xiii, 16, 17, 36, 41, 44, 51, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 126, 134, 138, 139 ethical issues ..........................84, 88 ethical life.........................60, 66, 88 ethical naturalism .............88, 89, 91 ethical potencies…60, 70, 71, 72, 134 ethical responsibility ..........120, 121 ethical system .................... xi-xii, 60

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ethically…46, 48, 57, 62, 81, 83, 88, 91, 120, 121, 139 ethics…x-xiii, 1, 8, 22, 24, 32, 41, 51, 58, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 89, 90, 91, 114, 126, 137 Ethics and the Between…xi, 60, 68, 71, 73, 125 ethos…23, 51, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 134 eudaimonia .........19, 66, 89, 93, 136 eudaimonic ................ 60, 66, 68, 69 eudaimonism ................... 66, 69, 70 everydayness ............................... 41 evil…18, 20, 33, 38, 39, 75, 76, 81, 82, 83, 84, 135 excellences .................................. 89 existence…xii, 46, 48, 57, 76, 81, 84, 87, 88, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 111, 123, 132, 137, 138 existential…29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 46, 47, 95, 137 existential analysis ................. 30, 31 existentialia ................................. 46 experience…10, 11, 12, 18, 42, 47, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 80, 83, 95, 97, 102, 103, 107, 133 face, the…32, 43, 78, 82, 97, 107, 109, 115, 130, 137 factical ............................. 42, 45, 48 facticity .................................. 43, 48 faith…32, 33, 44, 47, 48, 75, 85, 132, 133 Faith, Hope and Loss .................. 85 fallen.................................... 41, 128 fallenness ................................ xi, 48 family…xii, 91, 93, 94, 102, 108, 109, 110, 111, 132, 134, 136 father…xiii, 5, 13, 75, 76, 114, 117, 118, 132, 138 father-son relationship ........ xiii, 114 fecundity…xiii, 114, 115, 117, 118, 122, 139

146 femininity .................................. 115 Ferrari, G. R. F. ........................... 14 flourish ......... xii, 90, 91, 95, 96, 108 foetus…114, 119, 120, 121, 122, 138 Foot, Philippa...88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 112, 136 Form…2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 25, 32, 129 Form of Beauty…2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 formal indicators .........xi, 44, 48, 49 formale Anzeige...................... xi, 42 Forms .......................................8, 13 Foucauldian ................ 52, 53, 54, 58 Foucault, Michel…xi, 30, 40, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 134 Frankl, Viktor…x, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 125, 131, 132 freedom…24, 36, 47, 57, 68, 83, 90, 134 Freidländer, Paul ..................14, 129 Freud, Sigmund ..................x, 28, 29 friend .............................. 75, 96, 137 friendship ........... 36, 93, 94, 96, 137 generating virtue............................ 6 generosity .............................69, 108 genetic engineering ..................... 97 Gerson, Lloyd P. ............ 25, 26, 131 Gesamtausgabe ....................49, 133 gift…xii, 64, 88, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 137 gifts .......... 64, 95, 98, 102, 111, 138 givenness .................. 64, 69, 72, 134 God…x, 16, 17, 23, 24, 26, 32, 33, 38, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 112, 125, 126, 133, 135, 140 good…xii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 46, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 89, 90,

Index 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 128, 129, 130, 134, 135, 137 Good, the …18, 20, 27, 28, 29, 32, 94, 131 good life…93, 94, 97, 98, 102, 110, 137 goodness…5, 38, 39, 64, 69, 71, 97, 107, 132 gospel .................................... 47, 48 Gould, Thomas .................... 14, 130 gratitude............................... 69, 103 Griswold, Charles ...................... 130 Grmek, M. ........................... 26, 131 Ground of Being .................. 29, 125 Grunderfahrung........................... 42 Guenther, Lisa ........... 119, 123, 139 guide ......... 2, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 47 guilt ..................39, 41, 43, 106, 139 Guthrie, W. K. C. ................ 14, 129 Hadot, Pierre................................ 30 Halperin, David M. .............. 14, 128 happiness…3, 5, 7, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 66, 69, 70, 74, 76, 81, 84, 93, 107, 128, 129, 132 happy…32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 63, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 100, 101, 102, 106, 120, 135, 136 Haraway, Donna ................ 118, 123 harm…78, 87, 100, 101, 105, 106, 107 harmonious soul .......................... 12 Hawthorne, Susan ................ 14, 128 hedonism ..................................... 64 Hegel, G. W. F..................... 67, 125 Heidegger, Martin…xi, 29, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 61, 120, 123, 132, 133 Heideggerian ................... 47, 48, 50 Heideggerianism .......................... 30 hermeneutical circle..................... 46 hermeneutics.......................... 43, 48 homosexuality ........................... 128

An Ethics of/for the Future? hope…33, 35, 39, 45, 55, 85, 97, 98, 115, 118, 119, 120, 139 hospitality…xii, 88, 95, 98, 99, 111, 116, 138 human…x, xii, 3, 20, 21, 28, 29, 30, 35, 36, 44, 45, 46, 48, 63, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 73, 77, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 130, 132, 136, 137 human being…x, xii, 63, 68, 69, 72, 88, 90, 91, 92, 95, 106 human flourishing…xii, 67, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 human life…xii, 35, 44, 77, 88, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 99, 104, 106, 110, 130 human nature…xii, 89, 92, 93, 108, 136 human person............................... 30 humanist ...................................... 52 humanistic ................................... 30 humanity ..........................57, 96, 98 Hursthouse, Rosalind…88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 112, 136 I Carry Your Heart .................... 139 idiocy .......................... 63, 67, 68, 71 idiotic, the…... 60, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71 immanence .............................68, 71 imperfect duty ........................... 101 inauthenticity .................. 42, 44, 133 incarnation............................65, 117 Incarnation .................................. 32 individual…2, 3, 4, 16, 20, 32, 38, 70, 82, 90, 92, 94 inner man, the .............................. 19 intellect ......... 18, 23, 24, 42, 45, 131 Intellect .......................... 17, 25, 131 intermediating ......................71, 134 interpersonal love .......................... 1 intimacy ............................63, 64, 71 intuition ............................ xi, 42, 44 Irigaray, Luce ....... 14, 123, 128, 138 Irwin, Terence .............. 14, 129, 130 Jaeger, Werner ............... 14, 30, 129

147

Johannine..................................... 47 judgements ............................ 55, 80 justice23, 24, 28, 38, 78, 88, 95, 98, 130 Justice .................................. 29, 127 Kant, Immanuel…xi, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 66, 70, 134 Kantian…51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 58, 60, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 82, 101 Kantianism ...........54, 56, 60, 64, 69 kerygma ............................ xi, 42, 45 Khan, Charles M........................ 130 Kierkegaard, Søren ...................... 29 Kierkegaardian ............................ 64 kindness........................... 92, 97, 98 knowledge…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 32, 44, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 81, 129, 130, 131 können ....................................... 132 Kristeva, Julia .................... 123, 139 Lady Logotherapist................ 33, 34 Lady Philosophy .............. 31, 33, 34 law 65, 66, 70 laws ....................................... 36, 65 ‘Lecture on Ethics’ ….74, 75, 76, 80 Leibniz, Gottfried ........................ 84 Letter to the Philippians............. 140 Levinas, Emmanuel…xiii, 82, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 127, 138, 139 Levinasian…xiii, 114, 117, 119, 120, 122, 139 life…xi-xii, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 29, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 121, 126, 129, 130, 131, 135, 137, 139 logic ............................... xii, 80, 136 logos ................................ 30, 61, 72

148 Logos......................................19, 33 logotherapeutic… . x, 28, 33, 39, 132 logotherapist .....................31, 32, 38 logotherapists .............................. 29 logotherapy…xi, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 39, 40, 125 love…1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 64, 65, 71, 87, 91, 96, 97, 98, 103, 107, 128, 129, 130, 139, 156 lover…3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 128, 129, 130, 156 loving…1, 4, 7, 8, 91, 96, 105, 135, 137 MacIntyre, Alasdair............112, 137 Macquarrie, John… .. 46, 47, 49, 132 Malcolm, Norman ....................... 75 Mangel ........................................ 41 Marinoff, Lou .............................. 31 Mark, St....................................... 48 maternity…xiii, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 138, 139 Matthew, St. ................................ 47 McDowell, John .................112, 136 McGuinness, Brian ...............85, 135 McPherson, David…xii, 112, 126, 136 meaningful life .......................92, 95 meaningful projects ................88, 94 meaning-seeking animals…88, 92, 94, 95, 107 mediating................................... 134 mediation..........................64, 67, 71 meleté .......................................... 23 mental health .................. 28, 29, 131 mercy........................................... 39 metaphysical... …52, 54, 61, 79, 137 metaphysics .... …32, 56, 61, 62, 125 Metaphysics…14, 43, 49, 123, 125, 126, 130 metaxological…63, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72 metaxu ....................................66, 72 Middle Ages ............... x, 30, 33, 132 Midgley ..............................112, 136 Milner, Marion ............................ 43

Index Milton, John .............................. 132 mindfulness ........................... 61, 72 mineness ...................................... 47 misanthropy ............................... 111 moderation........................... 5, 6, 22 modernity…x, xi, 30, 49, 51, 52, 55, 62, 66, 68 mood...................................... 46, 48 Moore, Sir Thomas ........ 32, 76, 136 moral…8, 10, 11, 21, 31, 32, 60, 61, 62, 66, 69, 70, 71, 89, 100, 101, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 129, 131 moral values ................................ 60 morally ...................... 101, 129, 138 mortal ...................29, 34, 35, 38, 66 mother…97, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 138, 139 mothers ................................ 97, 137 Murdoch, Iris ............................... 36 natural ends ............... 89, 90, 91, 92 naturalism .............88, 89, 91, 92, 93 neighbour..........82, 84, 95, 135, 136 neo-Aristotelian…88, 89, 95, 96, 102, 107, 126, 137, 138 neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic ........ 95 Neoplatonic ................................. 32 never-existent ...................... 99, 104 Newman, John Henry .......... 78, 135 Nietzsche, Friedrich…61, 67, 70, 71 Nietzschean ..................... 60, 67, 70 Nietzscheanism............ xi, 60, 69, 70 noble .................35, 92, 93, 107, 136 non-human animals…87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96 noölogical ........................ 28, 29, 30 normative…92, 93, 95, 101, 107, 137 Notebooks…74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 86 nous ........................................... 131 obligation..............78, 102, 108, 110 O’Driscoll, Denis......................... 85 Olafson, Frederick A. .................. 41 One, the ................... 18, 24, 72, 120 ontological … . xi, 41, 44, 46, 71, 83

An Ethics of/for the Future? ontologically.....................41, 57, 64 Order of Things, The…51, 52, 53, 59 orthotes ..................................... 133 Other, the…xiii, 14, 59, 82, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 138, 139 otherness…xiii, 63, 64, 68, 69, 72, 114 Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence ........................115, 139 Overall, Christine…58, 87, 88, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 136, 137 overpopulation…xii, 88, 99, 107, 108, 109, 111 paidia .......................................... 21 paignion .................................20, 21 pain…21, 22, 90, 100, 104, 107, 119, 139 paizôn .......................................... 20 Pappas, Nickolas ..................15, 130 Paradise ....................................... 32 parent…xii, 87, 88, 90, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 109, 110, 118 parent-child relationship .............. 97 parenthood …xii, 88, 94, 98, 99, 122 parenting ..........xii, 96, 97, 110, 111 parents…xii, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 103, 107, 109, 110 Pascal, Blaise .............................. 67 passions .. …x, 6, 16, 22, 23, 33, 129 passive subjection........................ 57 paternity .. …xiii, 114, 117, 118, 122 patience ................ 39, 63, 85, 97, 98 Paul, St. ................................45, 140 perfect duty ............................... 101 Peripatetics ................................ 131 peristatikôs .................................. 24 personalist ................................... 30 persons ....... 9, 34, 99, 101, 107, 109 Phaedo .............................17, 22, 78 Phaedrus .................. 14, 15, 17, 130 phenomenologically .................... 48 phenomenology ....................30, 117 Phenomenology of Religion, The133

149

philia ....................... 1, 2, 9, 13, 130 philosophical counselling ............ 31 philosophical lovers ....................... 9 philosophy…9, 13, 19, 21, 23, 30, 31, 32, 33, 48, 51, 52, 54, 56, 66, 74, 77, 81, 83, 112, 122, 125, 126, 127, 128 physical…10, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 16, 17, 19, 22, 24, 25, 79, 107, 119, 129 Plato…x, 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 23, 28, 29, 31, 32, 39, 40, 66, 67, 70, 74, 78, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135 Platonic…1, 2, 7, 11, 14, 15, 22, 23, 29, 30, 32, 39, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 78, 129, 130 Platonic love .................... 1, 11, 129 Platonism ............25, 27, 69, 70, 126 Platonist ................................. 17, 33 pleasure…8, 9, 37, 38, 64, 65, 69, 100, 104, 107, 129, 132 Pleasure ....................................... 64 Plotinian .................x, 16, 17, 25, 27 Plotinian Sage .................... x, 16, 27 Plotinus…x, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 131 pluralism ...................................... 72 politikon zôion ........................... 131 Porphyry ................................ 16, 18 possibility…6, 10, 42, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 66, 68, 69, 83, 111, 117, 121 postmodern .................................. 65 potencies…x-xi, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 134 potencies of the ethical…xi, 60, 62, 73 potentiality ................... 24, 115, 132 power relations ............................ 57 power-relations ........................... 57 practical reason…xii, 88, 90, 94, 102, 110 practical reasoning ...110, 111

150 practice…xi, 16, 31, 32, 36, 41, 51, 58, 60, 110, 131 predestination .............................. 83 pregnancy…xiii, 97, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 139 pregnant …xiii, 5, 114, 115, 117, 120 preontological............................ 117 procreating .............................87, 91 procreation ............. 3, 103, 108, 137 Providence................................... 39 Pseudo-Dionysius ........................ 32 psyche .....................................30, 36 psychiatric ............................31, 131 psychoanalysis ............................ 29 psycho-physico-spiritual unity... . 29 psychosynthesis ............................ 29 psychotherapy ........................29, 30 punishment .............................38, 79 question…16, 23, 24, 43, 46, 47, 48, 51, 54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 77, 79, 87, 88, 95, 102, 104, 107, 115, 121, 134, 136, 137, 139 rational…12, 13, 24, 35, 46, 54, 67, 87, 90, 136 rational agents ............................. 87 reason…xii, xiii, 5, 6, 10, 23, 24, 29, 31, 32, 33, 42, 46, 63, 67, 77, 88, 91, 93, 96, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 108, 111, 128, 129 Recollections of Wittgenstein .... ..75 Reeve, C. D. C. …11, 15, 112, 128, 156 reflection ......... xi, 8, 60, 61, 71, 136 relationship…xi, xiii, 2, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 51, 54, 56, 74, 84, 91, 96, 97, 98, 114, 121, 128, 129, 130, 137, 139 religious…xii, 33, 42, 46, 48, 74, 75, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 93, 94, 127, 134 reproduce.................... 6, 90, 91, 109 reproduction ........... 90, 91, 106, 122

Index Republic…15, 22, 28, 32, 40, 78, 129, 130 resoluteness .................... 43, 45, 133 responsibility…xiii, 34, 41, 83, 108, 109, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 139 Rhees, Rush ................................. 75 Rist, John M. ................. 15, 26, 129 Russell, Bertrand ....................... 136 Sacks, Jonathan ................. 112, 136 sacred................................... 95, 107 Saffrey, H. D. ............................ 131 Sage, the ...........x, 16, 20, 21, 22, 24 Sandel, Michael ............. 97, 98, 112 Sandler, Lauren ................. 112, 137 Sarkany, Peter.................. 30, 31, 40 Sayers, Sean ........................ 15, 129 Scheler, Max.......................... 29, 30 Schleiermacher, Friedrich.... 50, 133 Schniewind, Alexandrine…. 27, 131 Schuld .................................. 41, 133 Seinkönnen ................................ 132 self…xi, xiii, 1, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24, 28, 30, 35, 36, 37, 41, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 82, 90, 92, 96, 105, 106, 110, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 130, 133, 134, 138, 139 self-determination…63, 64, 69, 71 self-development ........................... 1 self-interested ............................ 1, 8 selfish .............................. 88, 98, 99 selfishness.............................. 98, 99 self-mediating ............................ 134 sense-perception .......................... 18 sexual activity ................................ 6 sexual desire .............................. 130 sexual gratification ........................ 5 sexual pleasures ............................. 6 sexuality ...................................... 90 Sheffield, Frisbee C. C. ................. 1 sin…82, 136 Situation ........................ 41, 42, 132 Skinner, John ....................... 50, 133

An Ethics of/for the Future? Smith, A. ........................ 27, 59, 131 social intermediation ................. 134 society ......................................... 87 Socrates…2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 21, 22, 32, 33, 40, 78, 128, 129 Socrates-Diotima…2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 13 Song, Euree ..........................27, 131 Sorge ......................................27, 41 soul…x, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 45, 47, 48, 71, 97, 129, 130, 139 Soul…19, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 39, 40, 125 souls .......................................... 131 spirit............................ 28, 29, 34, 62 spiritual…28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 44, 47, 67, 107, 131, 132 spoudaia ...................................... 20 spoudaios ..................... x, 16, 21, 24 spoudazein................................... 20 state of addressedness.................. 47 Stoic Sage.................................x, 16 Stoic-Cynic.................................. 21 Stoics ................ x, 16, 19, 21, 26, 30 stranger, the ..........................64, 116 strong evaluation ..............92, 93, 96 strong goods92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 110, 137 student ................................7, 11, 83 subjectivation .............................. 57 subjectivity ...........................58, 139 subjectivization ........................... 57 substitution ......... 116, 119, 122, 139 suffering…22, 29, 32, 34, 35, 72, 83, 95, 100, 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 116, 132, 137, 139, 140 suicide… .. 82, 83, 84, 106, 135, 137 supernatural…xii, 74, 77, 80, 84, 135 Symposium…x, 1, 7, 9, 14, 15, 66, 127, 128, 130 synamphoteron ............................ 19

151

system…29, 30, 53, 60, 61, 65, 95, 122, 134 Taylor, Charles…92, 112, 123, 126, 127, 136 teacher ......................... 7, 11, 94, 95 teachers .................................. 10, 11 telos ............................................. 16 temperance .............................. 5, 90 tenderness .............................. 97, 98 ‘they’, the.................. 41, 44, 45, 48 Theaetetus............................ 23, 135 theological… ..32, 43, 46, 77, 78, 84 theology ................... 32, 47, 48, 140 third party .................................. 139 Timaeus ....................................... 17 Totality and Infinity…115, 116, 118, 121, 123, 138, 139 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . 74, 85 transcendence…xiii, 30, 36, 68, 70, 72, 114, 118, 122, 138, 139 transcendent Power...................... 57 transcendental…x, xi, 19, 52, 53, 60, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 79, 80, 82 transcending…xi, 60, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 tri-dimensional ontology. …x, 28, 30 Trinity, the ................................... 32 true man ....................................... 19 true virtue ...................... 2, 9, 12, 13 ultimate meaning ......................... 29 unborn child............................... 118 uncanny ....................... 18, 120, 121 uncoveredness ............................. 46 Un-eigenlichkeit .......................... 44 utilitarianism.................... 64, 69, 70 value…3, 6, 8, 11, 13, 36, 54, 56, 60, 62, 63, 71, 80, 84, 91, 92, 102, 107, 109, 129, 130, 134 valuelessness ............................... 62 values…8, 36, 42, 60, 61, 62, 63, 71, 91, 129, 132, 134 Vanier, Jean ....................... 113, 137 vice .................................. 4, 39, 128 virtue…xii, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 19, 22, 23, 24, 33, 36, 38, 39,

152 41, 44, 69, 70, 72, 82, 88, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 102, 104, 107, 111, 129, 137, 138 virtue ethic…xii, 88, 95, 96, 102, 107, 137, 138 virtues…xii, 16, 22, 23, 24, 33, 39, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 102, 110, 130 virtuous action ........................10, 12 virtuous character…2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 130 virtuous interaction.................... 6, 9 virtuousness ................................... 4 Vlastos, Gregory ....................1, 130 Voegelin, Eric ........................30, 40 vulnerability ................. 97, 116, 117 vulnerable .............................97, 116 Was ist Aufklärung? .........51, 54, 56 weak evaluation........................... 92 Wedgwood, Ralph ...... 7, 13, 15, 128

Index welcome…95, 102, 111, 115, 118, 119 wellbeing ..................................... 95 wicked ......................................... 38 wickedness ............................ 38, 39 will to power.................... 67, 71, 72 Williams, Bernard ............. 113, 136 Willott, Elizabeth............... 113, 138 wisdom…4, 7, 8, 11, 23, 98, 128, 132, 156 Wisdom ................................. 4, 124 Wittgenstein, Ludwig…xii, 30, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 135, 136 woman ..............32, 91, 93, 115, 116 womb ................................. 119, 121 women ......................................... 87 worldliness .................................. 48 Zeno....................................... 16, 33