The Reasons of Love

Reposting, because I'm discussing this book in my class today. The title has become pleasantly fused in my mind with "The Hazards of Love" from The Decemberists--enjoy!

What a lovely book. The second chapter has a rather compelling objection to the sort of view of the good life that I defend in my book The Weight of Things. I defend what Parfit calls "the objective list view." There are intrinsically good ingredients, like happiness, autonomy, self-expression, morality, etc., that make a life good. Their goodness imbues a life with goodness.

Frankfurt points out that a person needn't care about those things, however intrinsically good they may be. Our lives don't go well unless we care about something, or (he goes further) in fact we love someone or something. It's not just for the pleasure that love is important, but because only with love do we view something as a "final end." That is, we view who and what we love as important for their own sake, and not just for the sake of something else.

Frankfurt takes loving children as the purest form of love. Parents love infants and young children (do my 12 year olds count? yes!) in this sort of ultimate way. Keeping your kids happy and healthy matters for itself, and for no other reason. Thus, it always seems unquestionably worth putting your energy into their well being. You're not pulled between that and other things, not uncertain of the worth of caring for your kids. In fact, he makes a surprising analogy between love and logic. Taking care of children is something we do "of necessity," like we draw a conclusion from a valid argument "of necessity." In both cases, there's an end of ambivalence. What must be thought, said, done, is completely clear.

I'm sticking to my guns and saying that a life cannot go well without the ingredients like happiness, autonomy, self-expression, morality, etc.--none of which are guaranteed just because we love someone or something. But I rather like the idea that love provides momentum.

It really does seem like love for children is in a class by itself. Frankfurt's analysis is required reading for parents who change their lives around to make more time for their children. I think women come under way too much fire for quitting or cutting back on jobs, to give their full attention to young kids. If the love we have for children has such a special quality and significance--and it does!--then why wouldn't it be perfectly rational to clear all the space you can to enjoy that period of your life? It makes sense when mothers do that, and when fathers do too.

Frankfurt only means to offer love for children as the paradigm case. There is also love for other people, things, and activities. That's what he says, anyway. I have a hard time coming up with other examples where love has that clarifying quality--giving unquestionable worth to efforts and activities. If you love playing the violin, or reading, or writing, or fighting for human rights...does any of that create the same feeling of unquestionable worth that caring for your own child does? Is loving the violin really anything like loving your child?

Maybe. I'm not sure. The second chapter of this book is a marvelous paean to the love of children. Whether it really succeeds in making the case that love is fundamental, the driving force in any good life, is something I'm going to have to think more about.

Experience Machine Survey

This semester I've added a new component to my class on the good life and the meaning of life: an attempt to discover the public's intuitions on 10-20 cases and thought experiments that drive philosophers' views in both areas.  In another month, I'll be putting the whole survey online.  But for the moment, your comments are welcome on the way we've formulated questions (2), (3), and (4). If you think the formulation is problematic in any way, pray tell.

The first question is based on Robert Nozick's famous Experience Machine thought experiment.

(2) Suppose there were an experience machine that could stimulate your brain so that you felt as if you were living any life you wanted.  You could choose whatever you wanted--the ideal life of a surgeon, an entrepreneur, an actor--whatever.  Brilliant and trustworthy scientists could program the machine to stimulate your brain so it seemed as if you were living that life.  After choosing to plug in, your body would wind up floating in a tank, but you would feel as if you were living just the life you wanted. You wouldn't remember plugging in--it would just feel as if life continued, only better.

Would you choose to plug in to the Experience Machine?  YES   NO

Comments about that formulation most welcome.

The next question is inspired by a paper by Felipe De Brigard.  The general idea is to compare people's willingness to plug in to secure happiness (the original scenario), with their willingness to unplug to secure happiness.  People are asked to believe they are already living a virtual life -- they plugged in many years ago, and their memory of doing so was erased.  Here's the way we've formulated this question--

(3)  Guess what?  You actually were given the choice in question (2) 10 years ago. You've been plugged in to the Experience Machine for all these years.  You chose an option called "normal life," which is why things haven't gone quite perfectly for you. In fact, you are plugged in right now. You are not looking at a real computer screen, but only experiencing an illusion generated by the Experience Machine. Brilliant life-forecasting scientists can tell you if your dreams will be fulfilled if you decide to unplug from the Experience Machine and start living a real life.  Suppose your dream is _______ (imagine the blank filled according to your personal dreams).  The scientists tell you that your dreams will be fulfilled if you unplug.

Would you choose to unplug from the Experience Machine?  YES   NO

The question has to say something about the real world people will be returning to and we've done that differently than De Brigard does.  In one version, he simply said life in the real world would be very different from life in the experience machine.  In another version, people were told they would get to be an artist living in Monaco. We've created a version that's more the mirror image of the original.  Like in the original thought experiment, the choice to change (now from the Experience Machine to reality) gives you the life of your dreams.

De Brigard found that people are as reluctant to leave the Experience Machine as they are to plug into it. He attributes that to "status quo bias."  That's what's making them refuse to unplug in the second scenario and refuse to plug in to begin with.  So much for Nozick's view that we want contact with reality, he thinks.

But I think our question is fairer, since it preserves the temptation to switch that was part of the original thought experiment.  Without that, status quo bias is being elicited more strongly in the second scenario. It's not fair, then, to reason that if it's behind people's reactions to the second scenario, it's also behind their reaction to the first.

Suppose people say NO to both questions.  Perhaps status quo bias is the reason, and Nozick was wrong about our desire for contact with reality. But there's another possibility.  Status quo bias could swamp people's reactions.  They just want life to go on as usual. They're change averse.  It's possible that they also do want contact with reality.  Do they?  Perhaps we can find out by offering a choice between two highly novel options, so there's no possibility of going on as usual.  That's the idea behind this choice--

(4) You've always wanted to go to Antarctica, and a wealthy benefactor has decided to pay for the $20,000 super-deluxe trip. At the last minute, the donor offers you a choice between the best real trip to Antarctica that money can buy, and plugging into the Experience Machine for an even more flawless trip.  It's all the same to the donor, as the cost to her is $20,000 either way.  She advises you that on the real trip, there are possible negatives that cannot be controlled.  You will take a ship from Peru to Antarctica, possibly experiencing sea swells. If you plug in to the Experience Machine, it will seem as if you are having a perfect trip. There will be no sea swells.  If you plug in, trustworthy scientists will unplug you at the end of the trip.  They will also erase the memory that you plugged in and it will seem to you as if you remember a real -- and perfect -- trip.

Would you choose the real trip or plug into the Experience Machine?  REAL    PLUG IN

Granted, if people think they start off in the real world, and they choose REAL here, they're preserving the status quo in some sense.  But not in an experiential sense.   So it seems to me this ought to reduce the role of status quo bias.  A good showing for REAL will at least strongly suggest that Nozick was right, and people do desire contact with reality.

That's what I'm thinking, anyway. Your thoughts about it welcome.

Know Thy Elephant

I'm having my students read The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt--a wonderfully interesting, insightful book (even if very wrong in spots!).  The metaphor that runs through the book is that we are not just the rider on top of an elephant, but the combination of rider and elephant.  The graphic I used in class this week--

Haidt's advice to the person aiming for a better life might be summed up: Know thy elephant.  In short, beware of the unconscious (or semi-conscious), automatic, gut level reactions that determine how your life is going, most of the time.  Don't fall for the illusion that the conscious, reasoning, deliberate part of yourself is your whole self, and your real self.

Some of your elephant is just like everyone else's elephant--like the part that instinctively goes through life trading favors for favors.  Most of the time, it's all well and good to be that way.  I take care of your cat, when you're out of town, you take care of my cat.  Excellent. The trouble is that the instinct to reciprocate can be used by people who want to take advantage of us.  Beware little gifts in those direct mail appeals, and mints that come with the restaurant bill.  Beware of much more serious situations in which favors come with strings attached...

Anyhow... I got to thinking about interactions that don't seem to fit the "tit for tat" mold. There's also the response to favors that says "pay it forward" instead of "pay me."  A student had a nice story like this--he had only a $100 bill in an airport and the waitress wouldn't take  it for a cup of coffee. The guy next to him paid the bill and just said "pay it forward."  He was satisfied to think the favor would be repayed to someone else. 

What about traffic etiquette?  You're in a line of traffic and someone needs to get in--they're in a lane that's closing, or coming out of a parking lot.  What do you get in return for being the one to let people in? Two answers came from my class--it's pleasant to get a "thank you" wave.  Second answer: it just feels good to let people in.  So you do something for another driver, and essentially you give yourself the reward--you pat yourself on the back. You are essentially playing "tit for tat" with yourself, with the other driver external to the transaction. (Hmm....)

I don't think Haidt is claiming that all of our kindness to strangers falls into the category of "tit for tat," but it's interesting to consider, case by case, how much of it does.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Does Philosophy Help?

I kind of like to think that studying philosophy can help--e.g. by taking my class on the meaning of life, students can actually think better about life decisions, head in a better direction, etc.  Well, maybe ... at least some of the class has "helping" potential.  The trouble is, alongside my desire to think about real life issues and help, I also have a strong interest in puzzles, paradoxes, and philosophy just of the sake of philosophy.  We have done a lot of that this semester--lately entertaining three puzzles of existence that are just fun, if you have a slightly twisted sense of fun.  What's so bad about being dead?  What's so good about coming into existence?  Would it really be all that great to live forever?  People have to tackle these questions with a large helping of Woody Allen-esque black humor (see "Love and Death").  The problem  is, Real Life can step in and at least temporarily exclude the possibility of that kind of humor.    The life of a college student isn't always quite the carefree thing you'd want it to be. (Enough said...)

For philosophy in a very, very helping key, here's a new book by Mark Vernon.  It comes with a quiz. I haven't seen the book, but the chapter titles are enticing.  Cheerful too.  Not one chapter about death!

***

Right, there's a joke in there, relating to my poll.  My blog evidently doesn't have a lot of superatheist readers, but it's hard to say for sure. Over a thousand people visited the blog in the last week, but just 27 took the poll.

Self-Love

My self-love poll revealed that 17 readers of this blog love themselves and 15 don't.  (In my class of 25 undergraduates, 24 said they love themselves.)

Why did I ask? Harry Frankfurt's chapter on self-love in The Reasons of Love took me by surprise.  He starts by questioning why Kant inveighs against self-love.

When all is said and done, what is so embarrassing or so unfortunate about our propensity to love ourselves?  Why should we regard it with any sort of righteous sorrow or distaste, or presume that it is somehow a dreadful obstacle to the attainment of our most proper goals? Why should we think of self-love as being at all an impediment to the sort of life at which we ought reasonably to aim?

The surprise was the implication that most people do love themselves.  I'd always taken Kant's worries about self-love non-literally.  Self-love is nothing more than following one's own inclinations, instead of being obedient to principle. It's not really loving yourself!  But Frankfurt, both here and throughout the chapter, takes for granted that people do love themselves.  And not in some strange, alternative sense, but in the same sense that they love other people.

So I got to thinking about this. First thought--definitely not. What you feel for a child (love, no doubt about it) is nothing like what you feel for yourself.  On second thought, it occurred to me that the truth about this doesn't have to be obvious. You can love something and not know it.  For example, the events of 9/11 revealed feelings for the US I really wasn't aware of having.  In the weeks and months after that day, I was shocked to discover (me, patriotic?) that I loved my country.   So you could find out you love yourself, even if your initial reaction is skeptical.

Frankfurt's story about self-love makes it seem more of a real possibility.   Loving another person, he says, is loving what they love.  If Sam loves x, y, and z, then loving Sam is loving those things.  Don't say "ridiculous" too quickly.  There's something to this, even if it's not the whole story about love. (How could it be the whole story?  We love little babies, and what do they love?)  When you start to love someone, it's true there's a lot of "You love Woody Allen?  So do I!!"

But then Frankfurt's account of love entails that loving yourself is just loving whatever you love in the first place. If I love x, y, and z, loving myself is simply loving x, y, and z. Huh?

Initially this does sound vacuous--in fact badly vacuous. But Frankfurt's discussion made me (amazingly enough) like the theory.  He asks us to reflect on what it takes to really love x, y, and z.  It takes caring about them unambivalently--loving x, and not also hating x.  And loving x, but also endorsing that love--being pleased by that love and making sure it continues.  In other words, to truly love x, y, and z is to be wholehearted about them.  Once you think about what love is, it's not so crazy to think loving yourself just boils down to really loving whatever you love.  Self-love turns out to be wholeheartedness, on his account.

Put in that light, maybe self-love is not so weird.  The story even comes with some personal advice. Do you spend a lot of time doing things about which you are ambivalent?   The Frankfurtian counselor would stay "STOP!  Do what you love. Then you'll love yourself."  I like it... and love the book.

Wanting but not Caring

Harry Frankfurt's book The Reasons of Love is perfect reading for today's miserable over-connector.  Practically ever week I read about someone who obsessively reads blogs, checks e-mail, texts, checks Facebook, and tweets--and can't take it any more.  Here's Charlie Brooker in The Guardian on being assaulted by Google Instant, and Gary Shteyngart is just as hilarious in a NYT column called (brilliantly) "Only Disconnect."

So what does this have to do with Frankfurt?  He has an appealing view about what it is to care about something--it's to both want it, and to want to want it.  You care about something when you're pleased by your desire for it, and you would be disappointed if the desire ebbed, and you'd even fan the flames somehow, to get the desire to return.  Clearly, we want to read blogs, check email, and the rest, but do people want  to want to do those things?  Here's from that Charlie Brooker column:

Last week I realised the internet wants to kill me. I was trying to write a script in a small room with nothing but a laptop for company. Perfect conditions for quiet contemplation – but thanks to the accompanying net connection, I may as well have been sharing the space with a 200-piece marching band.

I entered the room at 10.30am. [snip] By 1pm I'd written precisely three lines of script. Yet my fingers had scarcely left the keyboard. My brain felt like a loose, whirring wheel that span with an audible buzz yet never quite touched the ground.

That final sentence couldn't be more perfect. "Never quite touched the ground..."  Exactly!

So stop, why don't you? That's what I think every time I read one of these harangues about the evils of our hyperconnected world.  Stop whining and do something about it!  The thing is, all these connections are potato-chippish and addictive, especially for someone sitting at a computer all day, waiting to have Deep Thoughts. So doing something about it might mean doing something drastic--like chucking the computer out the window.

OK, so we do stuff we merely want to do, but don't care about. So what?  According to Frankfurt, so a lot.  His answer to the perennial question "how are we to live?" is: with care.  If your waking hours are filled with doing what you want to do, but not what you care about, then you're not living well.

Irony alert:  yeah, yeah, I'm writing a blog post here, and you're reading it. We can see that.  We're not stupid!

Dead People

Strange but true story at ABC news: 91 year old woman digs up and lives with the bodies of her dead husband and twin sister.  Because she missed them.  Aww!  And then the authorities came and took them away.

What was the harm, really?  It couldn't have been a disease issue. People handle corpses every day--the dead animals they eat. If they were removed to protect the feelings of the bereaved, that can't make sense--she was evidently the primary bereaved.  Most plausible explanation--the husband and sister wouldn't have wanted it.  We respect people's preferences, even when they're not around anymore to care.

Speaking of the dead.  I've been thinking about Stieg Larsson, the Swedish author who didn't live to see his three unpublished novels become international bestsellers.  (I just read and much enjoyed the first one.) Which brings to mind Aristotle's famous question about whether posthumous events make any difference to whether a person's life went well.  He says: maybe some, but not enough to change a life from good to bad or bad to good.

OK, that sounds nuanced and judicious, but granting that events can matter to the dead, it's kind of hard (understatement) to say how they matter.  Does Larsson's posthumous success ennoble his life? Or is it a tragedy, because he never got to know about it or enjoy it?  Was the unearthing of the husband and sister bad for them (because...eww!) or good for them (because it gave the wife/sister solace)? One of the distinctive things about the dead is that it's very hazy what's good and bad for them!

The Happiness Curve...

... is shaped like a U, according to this article (a lot of other research says this as well).

On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.

Talk about counterintuitive! As you get married, have kids, rise in your career, shouldn't you be getting happier and happier?  But on average, it's not so. I can't wait until I'm drooling and decrepit. That's when I'm going to be really, really happy.

The Passage of Time

The semester's over, it's grey and rainy out. I'm reading a long book about death and killing. It's the perfect time for an existential crisis!

Having just taught my course on the meaning of life, I've been reading good writing on life and death by the best philosophers around, past and present, people like Peter Singer, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Sartre, Richard Taylor, Victor Frankl, and my favorite despairing novelist, Leo Tolstoy. Oh yes, and I wrote a book that grapples with such things. With all that to draw on, I really ought to have contempt for a one sentence lyric from singer/songwriter James Taylor, he of the pretty songs, right? But here it is--the cure for what ails us, all in one sentence:

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

Many of the above heavyweight thinkers worry a great deal about things coming to an end, like a semester, a holiday, a stage of life, the whole of a life. The problem is really time and it's awful tendency to ship things off to the past. Can't we just stop the whole thing for a moment? Sorry, but no. Or latch on to things that last for an eternity, like God and heaven? A nice thought, but I suspect there isn't anything like that. The solution is surely enjoying the passage of time.

What exactly would that be like? What is it to enjoy not just moments, or a bunch of moments (an hour, a weekend), but the passage of time? Whether James Taylor said it or a philosophical luminary, I'm going to have to think about it!

****

Truth in posting. This is a slightly revised rebroadcast, but I was thinking about that sentence again. As my kids get ready to graduate from elementary school in a few weeks, it keeps coming to mind. Funny--I first ran into it in the front office of their school, where it was attractively inscribed on a bench. Maybe the people in charge over there know a thing or two about parental emotions.

Lost in Translation?

Now this is fun. Here's the cover of my book,The Weight of Things: Philosophy and the Good Life, translated into Korean, and with a new English title: Think of Life on a Philosophic Bench. Hmm! Interesting how the author has no role in this. They could have called my book Life Sucks, and I couldn't have complained.

The cover looks really nice, but would it be inappropriate to point out a difference from the Blackwell cover, to the right? That cover features a painting by the artist Caroline Jennings--to wit, a colorful panorama of life. Indeed, the book is full of colorful people, and contains only a smidgen of lonely-bench style existential angst.

Something does seem to have been lost in translation on a Korean book website. First you've got the book being translated from English to Korean. Then the Korean on the website is translated, courtesy of Google, back into English. Here's the resulting author description:

Kajejeu drink (Jean Kazez) - Arizona State University and obtained a doctorate in the philosophy of the Amnesty International Organization (emneseuti International) in the human rights movement pyeolchimyeo had a deep interest in the world of philosophical values. Philosophy at the University of Southern destroyer in the U.S. mail, and active teaching and writing and speech.

I don't mean to be picky, but...University of Southern destroyer in the U. S. mail? As for the rest...well, it really would be picky to say I went to University of Arizona, and did not study the philosophy of Amnesty International.

Truth is, I feel honored, and I appreciate the work of the book translator.

Happiness Science

Over the last year or two I’ve read several books in the field of positive psychology (for example, Seligman, Gilbert, Csikszentmihalyi, and best of all Haidt). It seemed like I should, considering the connection between the happiness literature and my own book about the good life (shameless plug). So now I’m in a much better position to engineer a happier me. Or am I? And do I really want to?

I have mixed feelings about the genre, enjoying it and getting some benefit from it while feeling bemused. There are a lot of problems with self-help through happiness science. There’s the classic paradox of hedonism, that happiness eludes us when we pursue it too fiercely. Then there’s the worry that there’s something narcissistic about too assiduously pursuing a happier you. And the even greater worry that the person who is highly happiness-focused might wind up stepping on people or neglecting the world’s more serious problems along the way.

The book Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert, makes aiming for greater happiness seem especially problematic, since people are surprisingly bad at predicting what will make them happy; and they have a fairly consistent “set point” to begin with, so their machinations are likely to make little difference. (More here.)

So–there are lots of reasons not to take the happiness quest too seriously. But I think the main reason why I’m not quite on board with this stuff is that getting happier just isn’t that often my goal. And that isn’t because I’m sublimely happy. Most of the time, I’m just “happy enough”. When people suffer depression, anxiety, and the like, they’re highly motivated to bring that to an end. We want to move out of the negative numbers into the positive. But if your overall mood is reasonably happy–you’d give yourself maybe a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, does that seem like something you have to bring to an end? Do you really need to stop being level 5 happy and move up to 6?

One of the great things about not being unhappy is being released from the focus on yourself. When you’re at level 5, it’s a relief: now you can focus on music, or learning about ants, or helping your kids with their homework, or responding to the world’s serious problems. The last thing I’m going to do, at level 5, is pick up a volume of positive psychology and try to ratchet myself up to a 6 or a 7. If I find myself at 7 or 8, I’m not going to start pining for 9 or 10!

Happier and happier, without end, just doesn’t strike me as life as we know it. I’m curious whether other people see their own greater happiness as an ever present goal.

This post is also at Talking Philosophy, and open for comments there.

What Becomes a Monday Most?

Answer: A nice book review in the Waikato Times (New Zealand)--

Deep thinking, yet not too weighty

The Weight Of Things: Philosophy and the Good Life, by Jean Kazez (Blackwell Publishing $32.99). Reviewed by Peter Dornauf.

From Aristotle's plea for rational moderation to Tolstoy seeking solace in religion and Nietzsche's scorn of the same, Jean Kazez (a PhD in philosophy) tracks an erudite pathway through and around the question of what it means to live the good life.

The Weight of Things is no flabby self-help manual with pat paperback answers, but nor is it an impenetrable, high-minded, dry philosophical discourse. Here's a book that confronts the perennial questions in an engaging manner that does not disrespect our intelligence.

Kazez manages, with apposite anecdotes and critical analysis, to speak to the general reading public without pomposity, yet several steps above those "how to" and "inspirational" reads.

She can, for example, sum up a philosophical position in a few apt words.

What, for instance, was the essential contribution of 20th-century existentialism in addressing the question of how to live? Kazez' astute reply is helping us to get by with a more honest acceptance of the human condition.

The human condition gives us the problem of mortality, and Kazez then examines the quandary of transience via Tolstoy and Plato. The latter, she points out, would have made a lousy grief counsellor (his theories were too abstract) while Tolstoy, for her part, put too great a store on transcendence in providing meaning and comfort. She would prefer the deluxe model of the world, but knows that it's plain, yet "plainly marvellous".

Her brief for the good life covers various qualities like happiness, autonomy, self expression and morality, but she's quick to point out the complexities associated with these elements. Ethics itself can be a tricky business. The Bible, for one, says nothing against slavery. Stoical detachment can be useful, but can only take us so far. Hedonism goes head to head with Epicureanism, but suffering can also be a valuable ingredient.

This is readable philosophy and an intelligent book that provides a wealth of insight without avoiding the conundrums and ambiguities associated with the questions it raises.

Peter Dornauf is a Hamilton artist, writer and teacher.

My only question is, when can I go...to the area where the paper is published? This is what a website says about it:

The Waikato region, located on the western side of New Zealand’s North Island, is one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist destinations, with its unspoilt beaches, lush forests, hot springs and ancient underground glow-worm caves providing a unique and beautiful adventure experience.

I read about those glow-worm caves in a wonderful discussion of the meaning of life by Richard Taylor. I thought it was a completely obscure reference. Shows what I know. How are we like the glow worms? You'll have to read Taylor if you want to find out (the essay is in the excellent anthology The Meaning of Life, edited by Klemke and Cahn).

The picture at the top of this post. Glow worms on the walls of Waitomo Cave.

Just plain fun

My book explores all sorts of dimensions of the "well lived life" but I wonder from time to time whether I overplayed or underplayed some dimension. "What about fun?" I sometimes wonder. I explore mortality at great length, the importance of caring about the world beyond ourselves, and other "heavy" issues. But I admit there are very few lines about finger-painting, decorating cookies, jumping into piles of leaves, and the like.

Somebody might think I'm fun-challenged, but it's not true. Just yesterday, I actually had some fun! I was with my two kids at my daughter's violin lesson and her teacher, a very accomplished violinist, was playing a gorgeous piece for us. It happens her family has a pet bird and a tiny dog. Now, I don't mean some exotic bird like the one in my new header. I mean a little brown bird like you might see sitting on a branch outside your window. As she played, the little yapping dog chased the bird around the room. He flew every which way and finally took refuge on my head. It was fun, not to mention funny.

Do we have to have fun? Could a life be entirely good if it included lots of happiness, but no fun? Uh oh...maybe I really am fun-challenged, because now I've turned a moment of just plain fun into a serious question.

* * *

Speaking of fun, Mark Vernon wrote a nice review of my book in Church Times. He calls it "warm and lucidly written." I'm starting to think that quite possibly the book actually is lucid and warm, because Stephen Poole used the same adjectives in The Guardian. Now if someone would just say--"this book is really fun."

What's your story?

At Talking Philosophy today--

I loved a feature that was in the 2^nd quarter issue [of The Philosopher's Magazine]—a group of autobiographical essays called “Becoming a Philosopher”. I often wonder how people wind up where they do. And not just philosophers, of course. Somebody starts a business selling washing machine parts. Why?

I loved the series because philosophers so often pretend to be disembodied souls just peering into the universe. Telling your story is definitely forbidden in the highest reaches of the ivory tower—like the most prestigious philosophy journals.

But it’s not unheard of. I’m reading the book Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and Secular Life, edited by Louise Antony, and it’s full of life stories. Louise (I know her from way back…) asked authors to talk about not just their non-belief, but how it grew within their lives and what role it plays.

more here

The Meaning of Life

Anthony Kronman writes in the Boston Globe (9/16), hand-wringingly:

In the past few weeks, tens of thousands of young men and women have begun their college careers. They have worked hard to get there. A letter of admission to one of the country's selective colleges or universities has become the most sought-after prize in America.

The students who have won this prize are about to enter an academic environment richer than any they have known. They will find courses devoted to every question under the sun. But there is one question for which most of them will search their catalogs in vain: The question of the meaning of life, of what one should care about and why, of what living is for.

In a shift of historic importance, America's colleges and universities have largely abandoned the idea that life's most important question is an appropriate subject for the classroom. In doing so, they have betrayed their students by depriving them of the chance to explore it in an organized way, before they are caught up in their careers and preoccupied with the urgent business of living itself. This abandonment has also helped create a society in which deeper questions of values are left in the hands of those motivated by religious conviction - a disturbing and dangerous development.

Over the past century and a half, our top universities have embraced a research-driven ideal that has squeezed the question of life's meaning from the college curriculum, limiting the range of questions teachers feel they have the right and authority to teach. And in the process it has badly weakened the humanities, the disciplines with the oldest and deepest connection to this question, leaving them directionless and vulnerable to being hijacked for political ends.

It's a shame Mr. Kronman didn't do a google search on college courses about the meaning of life. If he had, he would have discovered mine, aptly named "The Meaning of Life". It is precisely about "what we should care about and why."

I suspect this article may have been written a priori. As in--aren't we a crass and consumerist society? And don't all these kids go to school and learn nothing deep? And mustn't it be true that nobody's teaching anything profound any more?

It sounds right but I think it isn't true. There are philosophy departments everywhere, and lots of courses on ethics, and even courses on the good life, or the meaning of life, or ultimate values. Google "the meaning of life" and "syllabus" and you'll find plenty of "meaning of life" classes, including mine. Sheesh!

Thanks to enigman for the reference.

Existential Heaviness?

I'm still at the point where it thrills me to think that people actually walk into bookstores and buy my new book, people who are not actually close relatives of mine, such as my mother. And to think these people actually take it home and read it! How extremely nice of them. But if somebody buys it, and reads it, and then reviews it positively....That's a huge treat.

I got a happy-making e-mail from William Irwin last night saying he'd posted a review on his myspace blog. In fact, he's not actually a relative of mine, but the editor of Blackwell's Philosophy and PopCulture Series. His newest book is Metallica and Philosophy. I love the subtitle--"A Crash Course in Brain Surgery."Being metallica-challenged, I haven't read it, but I do have The Simpsons and Philosophy, which Irwin edited when he was affiliated with Open Court. The book's got a great article called "Thus Spake Bart: On Nietzsche and the Virtues of Being Bad"(by Mark Conrad), from which I learned a significant amount of what I know about Nietzsche. A friend of mine uses the book as the basis for a philosophy course.

Irwin calls my book "a wonderfully accessible work of philosophy." No, really, he's not related. He makes an observation about the title that amused me. He says it suggests "existential heaviness," when in fact it "indicates the balancing that needs to be done." Exactly. When I chose the title, I was thinking about the way we attach different weights to different things. But I'm beginning to think it really does convey (to some people) something like "the unbearable heaviness of being."

A google search of "the weight of things" turns up an amazing number of entries involving the gnashing of teeth and spilling of tears. For example, from a song by Maroon5:

The weight of things that remain unspoken.
Built up so much it crushed us everyday....
Every night you cry yourself to sleep
Thinking "Why does this happen to me?
Why does every moment have to be so hard?

Thinking up the title of my book was the only painful part of writing it. It started off with a very peppy title: "Heading for the Good Life: A Route through Philosophy." After a while it started seeming absurd to hint that I actually possess the route to the good life, so I changed it to "Necessary Aims: The Puzzle of the Good Life." The good people at Blackwell thought this was not good in roughly 15 different ways. Approximately 1001 titles later, we arrived at the current title.

Oh well...enough of that. I really appreciate the review.

10 Secrets of a Better Life

I have a guilty pleasure to confess. OK, it’s not that embarrassing. It’s just that I like to read self-help books. It’s exciting (and funny, and unbelievable) when an author thinks he has the keys to greater happiness, or weight loss, or getting rich.

At various points in history, it’s been the job of philosophers to write such things. See ancient philosophy especially, and read the handbook of the stoic philosopher Epictetus, if you haven’t already. It’s a list of tips for good living—53 in all. It could have been called 53 Secrets of a Better Life, if only Epictetus had had a good editor.

My new book The Weight of Things is about what it is to live a good life. I look at this as a philosophical question, exploring all sorts of possible answers. There’s no advice in the book. But when you think about it, if you say a good life is X, that can be translated into advice. If a good life is X, then there are things you should and shouldn’t do. If Epictetus could offer 53 bits of advice, couldn’t I have come up with 10…and called my book 10 Secrets of a Better Life? And made lots and lots of money?

The primary secret in Epictetus is that we tend to obsess about outer things, when it's really inner things--virtue, in a word--that both matters and can be controlled. Most of the other 52 tips proceed from that starting point. It's no wonder Epictetus is still read today. This is a comforting idea. If you buy it, you'll get an increased sense of being able to control your own destiny.

Is there a comforting central idea in my book? If there is, it's the idea that there are many necessities, things we must aim for to live good lives. Gee, that sounds bewildering, not comforting. The comfort in it (if there is any) is that if you find yourself unwilling to put all your eggs in one basket, that's as it should be. Whatever one thing you are focussed on, there really are other things worthy of your attention and effort.

The charm of Epictetus is that he uses philosophical ideas to help people with everyday problems--how should you react if your slave spills the precious oil, or breaks your favorite pot? To achieve the same effect, I'd have to help people with today's aggravations. What should you do if your husband spends too much time online? Should you miss an important work meeting to go to your child's soccer game?

The problem with coming up with 10 secrets or 53 secrets is that I think the pleasure of philosophy is that it lives in a space of uncertainty, where considerations point in this direction, but on further reflection, they point in that direction. A list of secrets is missing the electricity of argument and counterargument. For all that self-help books are fun and Epictetus is charming, I can't follow their lead.

So much for 10 Secrets of a Better Life.