Abstract
In this paper, I present a sample spiritual exercise—a contemporary form of the written practice that ancient philosophers used to shape their characters. The exercise, which develops the ancient practice of the examination of conscience, is on the sixth mass extinction and seeks to understand why the extinction appears as a moral wrong. It concludes by finding a vice in the moral character of the author and the author’s society. From a methodological standpoint, the purpose of spiritual exercises is to create a habit of thoughtfulness in the writer, and by way of teaching, to suggest one to the reader. Such a habit is important, at least, because virtue is a habit. In other words, there can be no learning of virtue itself without habituation into it. Accordingly, I frame the sample spiritual exercise with a deliberately controversial objection to contemporary academic virtue ethics and with a justification for why the spiritual exercise is important for taking virtue ethically. And I end the paper with some further remarks explaining the form of the exercise and its relevance to doing philosophy. In this way, the paper makes and illustrates a methodological point about virtue ethics based on a meta-ethical assumption about virtue as a habit, and it does this by focusing on a pressing environmental problem in the twenty-first century.
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Notes
Mainstream, academic virtue ethicists, and those interested in the point of mainstream, academic virtue ethics. I believe the mainstream approach to virtue ethics could be related to one reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, although its causes might be more contemporary in the dynamics of university research, intellectual status, and markets. That reading of Aristotle pictures him as the first major virtue theorist. But that reading of Aristotle is mistaken. In what follows, I will rely on an alternative reading of Aristotle, according to which his reflections are not divorced from habituation, but part of a citizenry’s attempt to come to grips with virtue. The goal on this alternative reading, as Aristotle himself said, is to become virtuous, not simply to know virtue. See Aristotle (1999), pp. 1103b28–1103b29. See also the powerful passage at 1105b14–1105b19.
It is the first problem, because it displays a grasp of the point of virtue, and so of teaching virtue. Virtue is to be practiced, above all. That is its point. Without aiming to habituate people into virtue, academic virtue ethics is not lined up right from the beginning.
I came to my approach through reading Pierre Hadot (2002) and my example of a spiritual exercise is particularly indebted to the ancient idea of the examination of conscience which Hadot discusses (pp. 198–202).
I thank Chin-Tai Kim and Colin McLarty for discussion leading to conclusions of this paragraph.
Again, see Aristotle (1999), pp. 1103b28–1103b29: “The purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good.” Being good, for Aristotle, is being virtuous, as his function argument from book 1 of the Ethics makes clear, cf., 1098a17.
They might be more important if, as Aristotle sometimes suggests, we cannot think straight without virtuous habits. The point is not that hard to imagine: an intemperate person will not think straight around bodily pleasures. See Aristotle (1999), pp. 1144a29–1144b1 and pp. 144b31–144b32.
See my review of Hadot’s What Is Ancient Philosophy? (Bendik-Keymer 2008). Although I do not have the space to go into the argument here, I would like to say that philosophers—not just those interested in virtue—should check to see that their styles are appropriately practical, for at least a good part of philosophy’s object is a wise life, just as virtue’s object is a life lived well. That is, practical reason appears to be central to philosophy, even though we may associate philosophy with theory. Currently, I am exploring this idea in other work through philosophy’s relation to what I call the “grammar of being.” The grammar of our being shows us that theoretical, practical and what I call “relational” reason are co-primary. Being is meaningless without the logic of any one of these kinds of reason, and philosophy is pointless then, too, since I conceive of philosophy as pursuing our full being.
To see why the matter is difficult, think about how it could be wise to not take virtue ethically. Suppose, for instance, one’s system of virtues were predicated off of an unjust ethical system. Then it would be wise to refuse to take virtue ethically. It would be wise to stand back and to look at virtue theoretically and to refrain from practicing it until one has extirpated the injustice from one’s system of values. That being said, it seems unlikely to me that we could approach virtue philosophically without trying to learn virtue itself. At the very least, this is because not much of life is exceptional in the sense just discussed. Most life demands what we take to be virtue unproblematically. Moreover, in the previous example of an unjust ethical system, being truly just seems to be necessary for adequately criticizing that system. In other words, the theoretical suspension of virtue itself depends on virtue itself.
See Hadot (2002), pp. 220–231 and pp. 42–50, where, for Socrates, wisdom appears is an unattainable regulative ideal driving on onward (the Kantian language is my own).
My main reason for criticizing the ancient conception of the point of philosophy is that I think it privileges practical reason. As I alluded to briefly before, I think theoretical, practical, and relational reason are co-primary in the grammar of our being, and it does not make sense to me that the pursuit of wisdom would distort the grammar of our being. But if it won’t, then the goal of philosophy should not be primarily practical. Rather, it should be pluralistic with respect to kinds of reason. In other words, the goals (plural) of philosophy should be implicit in wisdom (singular), the many in that one, and these goals should reflect the grammar of being—a wise life (the practical reason of philosophy), truth (the theoretical reason of philosophy), and harmonious connection with others (the relational reason of philosophy). I hope to explain these points more fully in future work.
The expression “full being” comes from Irad Kimhi.
Although Hadot casts the ancient philosophical goal as primarily practical—i.e., an ethos—he does accept that theory is a part of that practice. See Hadot (2002), p. 175, par. 3. As I said before, I think there are good reasons to reject the primacy of practical reason in philosophy, whether this was the ancient view or not.
But notice how Aristotle himself throws the division between mind and heart into question at 1144a29–1144b1 and 1144b31–1144b32. The virtue of intelligence as well as wise judgment both require habits of the heart.
Consider Dewey (1916, p. 142) on this point, remembering Greek gymnastics: “It may seriously be asserted that a chief cause for the remarkable achievements of Greek education was that it was never misled by false notions into an attempted separation of mind and body.” Here, there is a gymnastic insight that a trained mind is habituated like a trained body. In any event, Aristotle’s distinction between kinds of virtue seems to mirror the distinction between theoretical and practical reason, at least in some way. Currently, I am unclear how, since both kinds of virtues are after the good (that is, inside practical reason). Also, I have the reasons to question the distinction mentioned above.
I learned this expression of Williams in the classes of Candace Vogler at University of Chicago in the 1990s. I am adapting it from a different context, which was originally Williams’s critique of consequentialism.
Paradoxically, one effect of the situationism debate in contemporary, analytic, virtue ethics is to turn attention to habits, because these are what is missing when situations solicit vicious behavior. See K. Anthony Appiah (2008), esp. Chap. 2, and see the index for “situationism”, p. 272. For the most troubling situation to solicit vice I have found, and the turn to heroes as guides to habit, see Susan Neiman (2008, pp. 335ff) which has implications for Abu Ghraib. What is paradoxical about the situationism debate’s effect is that proponents of situationism wish to show how virtue ethics is useless, whereas I believe they have only shown why Aristotle focused on habits and role models (e.g., the man of wise judgment from book VI of the Nicomachean ethics).
Interestingly, some Jesuit schools still have this goal. Is it a coincidence that Ignatius of Loyola (2007) popularized the expression “spiritual exercise” and made spiritual exercises central to Jesuit practice?
For instance, the mainstream, academic interpretation of Ronald Sandler (2007). I believe, though, that one can read Sandler’s book as an ethical practice. After all, Sandler shapes his book so that it creates a fine-tuned response to a specific problem for practical judgment, that of genetically modified crops. The book ends with Sandler’s application of his theory to selecting which GMC’s are worth promoting and which are not. That looks like the search for virtue, not simply the search for knowledge of virtue. The book aims at a practical judgment and enacts it.
Hadot quotes Seneca: “What a good sleep follows the examination of one’s own self! How tranquil, deep, and free it is, when the mind has been praised or warned, and has become the observer and secret judge of its own morals!” (Seneca 1995; in Latin: III, 36, 1–3).
This spiritual exercise begins with an everyday person of sound moral character.
Here, one thought extra is called for. Virtue has broken down, or is inexact.
This attention to something you have to do is typical of a spiritual exercise and is something self-help manuals have over academic theory, at least from the standpoint of learning virtue itself.
An anonymous reviewer for this journal commented on the narrative dimension of this section and referred to the body of literature—e.g., Martha Nussbaum (1992) being the locus classicus—on how narration figures importantly in teaching virtue. But as I will discuss in this paper’s last section, my emphasis here is not on teaching virtue, but on learning it, and the exercise’s point is in the writing, not the reading. In other words, this section does not emphasize narration for the reader so much as action on behalf of the writer.
Honesty is important in a spiritual exercise, even if it betrays ignorance or lack of expertise. This is how most people are, i.e., most of us are not experts in many matters.
Also, attention to the lived reality of everyday life is important to bring to mind, since when we aim to live virtuously, we have to see how our virtue or lack thereof come up in the mundane details of our lives.
The IPCC estimate is for 1.5–2.5°C temperature rise and places species at “increased risk” of extinction. Note that the warming rate per decade for the last 50 years is 0.13°C, and that the projected range for warming is 1.5–4°C, higher on the upper end than the IPCC’s range. See the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (2008) National Climactic Data Center, questions 3 and 7. Since writing this spiritual exercise, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (the IUCN) has verified that the 2002 UN report on mammal loss has been correct in its predictions so far and that as of 2008, 33% of the world’s amphibians are extinct or at risk of extinction. See James Kanter (2008).
Of course, species extinction will not work as the author depicts it. Central New York may not be affected much at all, whereas biodiversity hotspots in jungles or around coral reefs will be decimated. The author’s thought experiment is heuristic: to try to picture the loss of life in a way he can understand. We should remember, too, that species exist interdependently in their eco-systems. At a certain point, depleting species can simply cause an eco-system to crash. To put the idea in oversimplified, everyday terms: in ecology, everything is all bound up with everything else.
Note, however, that hatching patterns must be studied with respect to each species and its prey. The results are not always bad for the predator.
This inchoate rush of anxiety that rides quickly over theoretical distinctions is typical of how human psychology works. One can’t work on it without acknowledging it first. The spiritual exercise will try to make some headway on it.
As in the case of turning off one’s cell phone and taking time out, talking with others and going to find out about the cause of one’s concern is part of the habit of virtue. So the mention of it signals the reader to virtue’s form of life, not simply its theory. It’s important: this kind of signal to the reader that she’s not simply reading a text but thinking about how to actually live.
The big cause, however, is global warming. On this cause, see the sources cited in footnote 29 and the paragraphs preceding it.
Thanks to Dan Meior for helping point out the correct population estimate.
That is, where is the habit?
It would be easy to state the contradiction simply as a proposition. But getting ourselves to find and acknowledge uncomfortable contradictions is crucial to virtue itself. It takes time, as Socrates—and by extension Plato—saw in his numerous confrontations with human resistance to uncomfortable contradiction.
An important theme among the ancients, especially Seneca (1995).
One way my spiritual exercise departs from some ancient spiritual exercises is in the role that theoretical confusion plays in it. I do not assume that our best understanding is clear on the matter of the sixth mass extinction but that only our psychology and our virtue wavers. Rather, I think that our best understanding is unclear, a matter reflected in our psychology and virtue as well. This fact complicates the charge that I am advocating merely better application of theory in virtue ethics. I think theory has an important place in virtue itself, provided it is taken ethically, which the present style attempts to illustrate.
Michael Thompson (2006) calls this a distinction between bipolar and monadic norms, that is, norms involving two agents (relations of right) and norms involving only one agent and objects that matter (practices protecting the good).
Here, you can see that the emphasis is on learning a process—the examination of conscience. In effect, what we are learning is a kind of know-how, i.e., practical knowledge, the knowledge of how to examine our consciences.
David Keymer helped me formulate the last sentence of this paragraph.
Joshua Graae helped me underline the point.
The locus classicus for these points about morality and taste is Immanuel Kant (2007) “The Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment,” originally published in 1790.
The appeal to the decent person is a classic move of virtue ethics, at least its Aristotelian form. It is not question-begging if we realize that practical wisdom is primarily know-how (and also what I call knowing others—the form of knowing in relational reason which is key to the social dimension of ethics). When we ask for theoretical clarity, as the questioner is doing here, we might learn by explicating the know-how of someone who just strikes us as virtuous. Interestingly, there is a space of learning that can arise where propositional knowledge (knowledge that, the form of theoretical knowledge) has not caught up with know how (the form of practical knowledge), and this is what I believe appeal to the decent person tries to keep in view. Obviously, a full defense of this kind of move would take a paper on its own.
Here, theory is taken ethically. Being such, it is no longer pointless regarding virtue itself. A spiritual exercise should show people how to take theory ethically.
See also Rolston III (1985, p. 722): “It is not form (species) as mere morphology, but the formative (speciating) process that humans ought to preserve.” See, finally, Wilson’s (1999) opening section. He emphasizes the destruction of life as we know it, whereas Rolston III emphasizes the destruction of life’s history.
The use of strong metaphors is typical to spiritual exercises among the ancients, because of the way intense images can capture and train the will. One ancient master of this technique was Plutarch (1992). See, for instance, his essay on euthymia—“contentment.”
Stephen J. Gould (1996, pp. 4 and 18) speaks of “the unpredictability and contingency of any particular event in evolution and emphasizes that the origin of Homo sapiens must be viewed as, an unrepeatable particular… .” He claims our life is “in union with other creatures as one contingent element of a much larger history,” and that “we are, whatever our glories and accomplishments, a momentary cosmic accident that would never arise again” even if we repeated the conditions that gave rise to us.
Note again the emphasis on a technique of visualization, on something we do.
Example, Einstürzende Neubauten’s (1981) music from the 1980s.
Some will argue that increased anthropogenic species extinction rates can be traced back thousands of years to the technological conditions that allowed our population to increase, our land use to magnify, and our hunting and fishing to become more efficient. I concede this point, but still note that the scale and rate of species loss jumped massively in the twentieth century as our population exploded and does so currently in the face of climate change.
Focus on our manner of action is a mark of virtue ethics.
Here, what—if anything—is novel about my form of spiritual exercise opens up. Classic spiritual exercises come to philosophical closure at their end—or at least purport to (think of Descartes (1996) as the voice in early modernity for the Senecan tradition). However, my spiritual exercise ends in an aporia, a deliberately discomforting gap that should take a reflective person outward to different kinds of considerations than the moral ones addressed here. This discomfort is important for virtue itself, because much in our lives cannot be encapsulated solely by the moral. We need to bring in the political, the economic, etc.
This point in the examination of conscience should make readers begin to wonder if there are extra-moral reasons for our irresponsibility, and this has been the case in the two audiences to whom this exercise has so far been read. Perhaps our social structure—combining political and economic institutions and the way they shape us—has a lot to do with why we are in no position to be responsible. The intent of this exercise is precisely to take the reader to this aporia, thereby to motivate a further spiritual exercise examining social structure—away from the personal, to the institutional. As I’ve said, in this respect, the examination of conscience modeled here is somewhat novel for its tradition. Traditionally, the examination of conscience comes back to the self, closing up the problem within it. But this examination of conscience, while it attempts to focus the self, opens up beyond it in the suggestion that there is more than the self to fault in the failure of responsibility. The exercise does not remain closed, but is incomplete. Compare, by contrast, Descartes (1996), which, once locating the problem of falsity in the will, closes up the uncertainty of life in the self’s newfound responsibility to judge with only clear and distinct ideas.
Though unintended mass species extinction is not comparable to genocide (which is intentional), and so should not be compared to ecocide (which is likewise intentional), the dullness with which we respond to the rumors of it in the media bears comparison to the kind of human inertia and weakness of will that has plagued reports of genocide. I guess we can say: If people won’t respond to genocide, why think they would respond to unintended mass species extinction? On the suggestion that we are committing ecocide, see Roger Gottlieb (2003), and on the claim that we are, see Frederick L. Bender (2003).
The thoughtlessness I have acknowledged is thus much simpler than the kind Martin Heidegger discusses in his many writings (cf. Heidegger 1982). Rather, the inspiration for this essay began by thinking about what Hanna Arendt (1994) meant by “thoughtlessness.” I sometimes think that our thoughtlessness is a form of evil’s banality, although I am unsure.
In Ronald Sandler’s (2007) terms, I realize that I lack the dispositions of a virtuous agent, in particular, an agent who expresses the virtue of reverence for life. Rather, my dispositions are vicious—a lack of reverence for life in practice.
One might object that a neurotic theoretician can feel heartfelt disquiet at a purely intellectual problem with no clear relation to wisdom. True, but I would say she is approaching the problem philosophically, although making a mistake. The heart is the seat of the emotion love, and love’s object is a good. To have heartfelt disquiet driving one’s questioning is therefore to question while engaged in a search for something that relates to the good. This is the province of seeking wisdom, however, inchoately.
An existence that seeks some view of the good. See Aristotle (1999, pp. 1095b15–1095b17).
This is a point Kierkegaard understood well (Kierkegaard 1988, 1983), making his writing far more fitting for virtue ethics than most virtue theory. He called his style “upbuilding.” See especially Either/or (1843), vol. 2, “A final ultimatum,” where the style was first attempted. Also, note especially his invocation of the heart’s disquiet in his most mature and elegant work, esp. The Sickness unto Death (1848), preface. Kierkegaard learned to write either from disquiet or from love. In either case, he wrote from conscience. Whatever the merits of his theology, his understanding of the point of virtue ethics, like Nietzsche’s, is unparalleled today.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to many people who helped with this paper, but in particular, to Ken Baynes, Ben Bradley, Tom Brockelman, Phil Cafaro, Amber Carpenter, Aaron Conte, Eva Fernandes, Tabor Fisher, Joshua Graae, Kevin Hayes, David Keymer, Mari-Ann Kucharek, Irene Liu, Dan Meior, Sherine M. Najjar, Ron Sandler, Lauren Tillinghast; participants at the conference Human Flourishing & Restoration in the Age of Global Warming, Clemson University, September 5th, 2008; colleagues at the Le Moyne faculty symposium; three anonymous reviewers for this journal who did their job well; the Department of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University; Irad Kimhi; and Elaine Wolf Steinberg, who surprised me at the end of the writing process. The long example of a spiritual exercise in this essay is the first of approximately six spiritual exercises comprising a short book-in-progress, The Sixth Mass Extinction: Spiritual Exercises for the Sake of Life. Each exercise takes the reader through a different dimension of the ethical, political, and economic problems involved in the sixth mass extinction. The link between each is an aporia ending a particular exercise and leading one to take up the next.
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Bendik-Keymer, J. Species Extinction and the Vice of Thoughtlessness: The Importance of Spiritual Exercises for Learning Virtue. J Agric Environ Ethics 23, 61–83 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9190-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9190-5