Category Archives: philosophy

Le Vase blue, Paul Cezanne

happiness, for skeptics

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Perhaps human beings are designed for a purpose or end, the pursuit of which brings us happiness. Aristotle is a major proponent of this view (“teleology”), and his theory has influenced each of the Abrahamic faiths.

But what if one is skeptical that we have any end, or that pursuing any “telos” promises a good life for us?

One school was already skeptical more than two thousand years ago. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism (the ubiquity of suffering) is incompatible with teleology, and the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Origination says that things arise just because previous things happened–not for any end.

The Third Noble Truth implies that we can escape permanently and completely from pointless suffering by understanding and transcending our will, thus entering the state variously understood under the word “Nirvana.”

What if one is skeptical of Nirvana as well as teleology? What if one doubts either an end or an exit? Is there anything to gain from the Aristotelian-Abrahamic tradition or from Buddhism?

I think there is much to be learned. I would offer these six points.

1) It is not peace but the turn toward peace that yields our happiness

In “The Poems of our Climate,” Wallace Stevens imagines a pure image that could come from East Asian or European modernist art: “Clear water in a brilliant bowl / Pink and white carnations.” He posits that this image could represent “complete simplicity / Stripped … of all one’s torments.” For a suggestive illustration, consider a “Blue Vase” by Paul Cézanne from 1890 (above), to which I will return later.

Such an image, Stevens says, cannot represent peace or happiness for creatures such as us. It cannot satisfy anyone who has a “never-resting mind.” Since “the imperfect is so hot in us,” our “delight” lies not in pure and permanent simplicity but in those moments of relief that art or nature can offer. In other words, we can never be the brilliant bowl and cut flowers, but we can relish objects that are purer than ourselves.

I paid homage to Stevens’ poem with one of my own that relates my relief at hearing a Bach oboe concerto in my earphones during a flight on a hectic day. “That turn, / For us—with our minds so noisy— / Our delight lies only there.”

This principle has a limitation. Like Stevens’ poetry, it is all about the individual who experiences things. What about all the other sentient creatures who also suffer? We should care about each as much as we care about ourselves. “Without exception, no sufferings belong to anyone. They must be warded off simply because they are suffering” (Šantideva, 8.102-3).

2. Compassion combats suffering

It’s a very small step from understanding the truth of other creatures’ suffering to feeling compassion for those who suffer. The disposition of compassion is grounded in a clear view of reality. That is one argument in its favor.

Another argument is that compassion is what people (and some animals) need from us. Sometimes, they need us to fix their problems, and compassion may necessitate action. But we cannot make others happy or liberate them from suffering, and therefore action rarely suffices. Nor do creatures need pity or that mirroring of emotions that I would call “sympathy.” If you are sad, you don’t want me to be sad sympathetically. You want me to will your relief.

After the Buddha has defeated an elitist student, Ambattha, in a debate, Ambattha’s teacher calls this student a “fool” and says, “Please forgive him.” The Buddha replies, “May the student be happy”: sukhi hotu, a Pali phrase that now serves as a greeting. We want people to extend this wish to us–and to mean it (Long Discourses, Sujato trans. DN3).

A third argument is that compassion can fill one’s mind, replacing the kind of self-oriented will that is (per the Second Noble Truth) the source of suffering. In my skeptical view, compassion can only ever take up some space, leaving room for willfulness and pain to persist, but it is worth expanding.

Universal, undifferentiated compassion is a virtue–perhaps most appropriately a monastic one, because a monk renounces individual attachments. For those of us who deeply prize specific relationships, compassion is not the sole positive emotion that should fill our thoughts. There is also love, which borders compassion but differs by being focused and by needing to be reciprocated.

3. Each mind is a ripple in the river of history

Looking at pink and white carnations, or hearing one’s own breath, or observing someone in pain, we naturally presume that the self is directly experiencing the object. Not so. Our minds are deeply structured by language, judgments, memories, and other cultural inheritances that arose before us and will continue after.

For instance, we enjoy flowers because our predecessors have named, raised, bred, sold, collected, drawn and painted, and praised these particular plants.

At the time of each day that we call sunset, the big ball of rock on which we live is turning so that we can no longer see a huge and remote ball of fire. Yet we experience the sun as moving across our sky toward its “setting,” and we think about closure, sleep, or even death and rebirth. We must think about these things (at least occasionally) at twilight because they are inherent in our languages and stories. Science describes the solar system, but not our experience of it, which has a human past.

It follows that we are never alone. Others speak through us. The stream of thoughts that constitutes a self began before and continues after a person.

There is no reason to presume that the whole stream flows toward happiness or justice. But we do know that the species can accomplish more than any person could in the space of one life. To me, this realization makes some sense of the doctrine that achieving enlightenment requires many lives. And it makes me less attached to my own life and less interested in being original, authentic, or influential. The 13-century Zen teacher Dogen writes:

It is an unshakable teaching in the Buddha’s discourse that death does not turn into birth. … Although there is birth and death in each moment of this life of birth and death, the body after the final body is never known. Even though you do not know it, if you arouse the aspiration for enlightenment, you will move forward on the way of enlightenment. The moment is already here (pp. 116-117).

4. We can do things that have outcomes for their own sake

This is an Aristotelian argument that I owe to Kieran Setiya (2017):

Many of our actions have concrete and immediate goals. We work to make money; we wash the dishes so that they are clean. When we behave this way, it is difficult to escape from suffering because the mind is set on the future, and there is always more to do.

We also do some things for their own sake, like listening to music or watching carnations or paintings of them. But we cannot depend on intrinsically valuable activities to obtain happiness. They are rare for most of us, and if they come to occupy all our time, how can we be compassionate? Only the idle rich can spend their whole lives on intrinsically enjoyable experiences.

The solution is to perform tasks that have objectives as if they were ends in themselves. I can grade papers not to complete the task but to be an educator. This is not always easy, and such an attitude would be harder if I cleaned toilets or processed chickens instead of teaching college students. But it is something to strive for in our own lives and to make more attainable for others.

5. Reality rewards a close and open-minded inquiry

We evolved to have brains that can do many things, but we do not know what we cannot fathom, just as my dog has no idea that he is unaware of politics, cosmology, or Shakespeare. In an entirely abstract way, we know that our reality of suffering, delight, and finitude is not the only reality.

Specifically, we evolved with brains that are not very well designed for understanding consciousness itself. Our minds prove evasive to our minds. Neverthless, highly disciplined and strenuous efforts to describe consciousness yield glimmers that expand our consciousness and bring–if we use them right–some happiness.

Merleau-Ponty begins his essay “Cézanne’s Doubt” this way:

He needed one hundred working sessions for a still life, one hundred and fifty sittings for a portrait. What we call his work was, for him, only an essay, an approach to painting. In September, I906, at the age of 67–one month before his death–he wrote: ‘I was in such a state of mental agitation, in such great confusion that for a time I feared my weak reason would not survive. . . . Now it seems I am better and that I see more clearly the direction my studies are taking. Will I ever arrive at the goal, so intensely sought and so long pursued? I am still learning from nature, and it seems to me I am making slow progress.’

What was Cézanne working so hard to accomplish? According to Merleau-Ponty, he strove to present the experience of nature without the tools that people had created for that task, such as “outline, composition, and distribution of light” and linear perspective. “He was pursuing reality without giving up the sensuous surface, with no other guide than the immediate impression of nature.” For him, “reality” meant neither the object in itself nor the subjective appearance of it, but the way they unite in our experience.

The “Blue Vase” shown above is harmonious and calm, yet close inspection reveals choices that a classically trained painter would avoid. For instance, the base of the vase is perpendicular to the plane of the painting, whereas the table on which it stands tilts down. And the color of the flowers seem to have influenced the shadows, making them bluish.

Similarly, in Stevens’ poem, the color of the bowl infuses the space around it: “The light / In the room more like a snowy air, /
Reflecting snow.”

Such choices are more obvious in an 1880 painting that Cézanne left unfinished (right). Here the vase clearly stands separate from the table, with entirely different vanishing points.

Our experience does not encompass the whole world at once, lining everything up together. We focus on objects that have names and significance for us, then move to other ones. The color of one object depends on its relationship to others. We do not perceive a world made of borders filled with color, but something much more complex and dynamic.

Although the following paragraph from Merleau-Ponty’s essay is not about any particular painting, it could describe Cézanne’s 1880 vase:

Similarly, it is Cézanne’s genius that when the over-all composition of the picture is seen globally, perspectival distortions are no longer visible in their own right but rather contribute, as they do in natural vision, to the impression of an emerging order, of an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes. In the same way, the contour of an object conceived as a line encircling the object belongs not to the visible world but to geometry. …. To trace just a single outline sacrifices depth-that is, the dimension in which the thing is presented not as spread out before us but as an inexhaustible reality ful of reserves. That is why Cézanne follows the swelling of the object in modulated colors and indicates several outlines in blue. [Compare the outlines of the flowers above.]

We can attend closely to positive experiences, such as the sight of flowers. We can try to analyze suffering, although that requires impressive equanimity. I am especially interested in the close investigation of states that I find mildly problematic, such as my own regretful and appreciative awareness that a current pleasure is transient. This is roughly the same as mono no aware in Japanese aesthetics, or, as I have named it, “nostalgia for now.” It affords insight into time, just as the phenomenology of other states reveals other truths. And one can focus on other people’s experience or on relational states, including love.

Cézanne’s explorations brought him no happiness, Merleau-Ponty describes the artist’s “fits of temper and depression.” In short, Cézanne was obsessed. Wallace Stevens also devoted his career to a constant exploration of consciousness, and he seems to have been far from happy.

These people failed to balance their expeditions into their own consciousness with concern for other people. Merleau-Ponty says of Cézanne, “His extremely close attention to nature and to color, the inhuman character of his paintings (he said that a face should be painted as an object), his devotion to the visible world: all of these would then only represent a flight from the human world, the alienation of his humanity.” Stevens has a similar tendency and writes, “It is the human that is the alien.” Wisdom requires a combination of intense inner inquiry with care for others.

Exploring consciousness can enhance compassion rather than distract from it, since we can learn to feel the depths of others’ experience. Glimpsing hidden worlds can shake our attachment to our everyday circumstances. And the curiosity that motivates our expeditions into the inner life can supplant anxiety and discontent. But it is more likely that we will obtain happiness by looking at a painting by Cézanne or by reading a poem by Stevens than by trying to be either person. They are not models but they left us gifts, as have many others.

6. We must embody truths, not merely acknowledge them

Important thinkers have provided arguments and reasons for each of the preceding five principles. Although these conclusions cannot be proven from axioms, they can be defended.

However, assenting to a principle of this type or acknowledging the arguments in its favor accomplishes little. One must consistently feel the truth of the idea. That requires practice, ritual, meditation, and other cultivated habits.

To return again to Cézanne’s flowers: it will do no good to glance at them or to read a learned article that explains them. One must take the time to see the object itself, must “come back / To what had been so long composed” in order to realize that “the imperfect is our paradise.”

Sources: Shantideva, The Bodhiicaryacatara, trans. by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton (Oxford University Press, 1995); Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt, The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master (Shambala); The Long Discourses translated by Bhikkhu Sujato on Suttacentral (2018); Kieran Setiya Midlife (Princeton, 2017); and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1946), in Sense and Non-sense, translated by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Northwestern University Press 1964). The paintings are Le Vase bleu (1889-90) in the Musée d’Orsay and Flowers in a Blue Vase (1880) in the Orangerie. I quote the Stevens Poems “The Poems of Our Climate” from Parts of A World and “Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit” from Transport to Summer.

See also: many previous posts, which I have collected and organized as Cuttings: A Book About Happiness.

explaining a past election versus deciding what to do next

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The Internet is saturated with explanations of the 2024 election. Some of these “quick takes” are dispassionate, while others take the form: If only Harris had done what I know is right, she would have won.

The challenge is epistemic: it’s virtually impossible to explain a single past event that involves many decision-makers (in this case, about 150 million of them).

Explaining the decisions of a few powerful people is hard enough, but at least then we can use evidence about their individual values, goals, and personalities. For instance, we can investigate why Napoleon ordered the main assault at the Battle of Borodino in 1812. However, says Tolstoy,

It was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what was going on before him. So the way in which these people killed one another was not decided by Napoleon’s will but occurred independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took place by his will (War and Peace, 10:28)

It’s easier to explain the pattern displayed in a large set of cases (inductive reasoning). John Burn-Murdoch observes that every incumbent government in the world that has faced an election in 2024 has suffered major setbacks. John Sides argues that inflation lowered Biden’s approval rating, and the incumbent’s approval predicts reelection.

But these generalizations cannot explain the single event of the 2024 US presidential election. Generalizations inevitably involve variance, and 2024 is obviously anomalous. Should we even categorize Harris as the incumbent, when she was a vice president stepping in for a president and running against the previous president?

We can also look at patterns within the population to try to explain why individuals voted. For instance, Michael Tesler assembles evidence that few American women vote from gender solidarity and race consistently trumps gender as an explanation of voting.

This is a valid approach that will yield more precise insights once we have voter files and better survey analysis for 2024. But this method also has limitations for the purpose of explanation. As the (true) cliché reminds us, correlation is not causation. Besides, individuals vary in ways that are not captured in generic surveys. And we must distinguish carefully between two tasks: explaining why large numbers of people voted for each candidate, versus explaining the marginal change since 2020. Big blocs of the electorate vote predictably, yet much of the conversation is about changes at the margin. Our whole discussion would be different if Harris had won by 4 points instead of losing by less than one point, but either way, most people would have voted the same.

To emphasize the last point: I strongly suspect that a male Democrat would have fared no better than Kamala Harris, or even possibly worse. One of many pieces of supportive evidence is the fact that people whose survey answers indicated sexism already tended strongly to oppose Joe Biden in 2020 (Spencer 2021). I doubt that sexism explains the marginal change between 2020 and 2024, yet that hardly makes sexism irrelevant, since it helps to explain the 2020 baseline. Whether you feel that sexism is at stake may reasonably reflect your own depth of concern about misogyny in our society; this is not simply a statistical question. Put another way, whether you explain the result in terms of sexism depends on whether you are trying to a) combat misogyny or b) win an election. The explanation is relative to its purpose.

We might conclude that it is fruitless to make a model to explain any particular case. But that is exactly what we must do before we act. Even if there is no way to know now what would have happened had Harris acted differently, Harris and her team had to do something. In September, they needed a prospective model of the single case that confronted them: the election.

In 1903, Charles Sanders Peirce coined the term “abduction” (or “abductive judgment”) for the logic that explains a single case. Abduction is a pragmatic necessity because we always act in specific circumstances. In my view, valid abduction never depends on a single claim. There is no way to test whether one premise caused a given outcome in a given case. Rather, a good abduction consists of many linked components: a whole model. And it is appropriate for the model to contain facts, values, and strategies.

Thus, if you were Kamala Harris in September, you needed a coherent account of the current US electorate (facts), what you sought to achieve as a president (values), and how various messages and methods would affect the outcome (strategy). You had to guard against biases (believing facts because they confirmed your values), but you were entitled to bring your self into the analysis. For one thing, this was a model for how you should act, so it had to motivate you and your team and sound authentic coming from you.

We cannot tell which parts of Harris’ implicit model were right or wrong–and it remains possible that her model was as good as it could have been. But what we need now is a model to guide our own next steps.

Since I am not running for president, my model should not be designed for that purpose–although I might start armchair strategizing in 2026 or so. For now, I need a model that guides my actions as a concerned citizen during the Trump Administration. To a limited extent, my model might be guided by my retrospective assessment of the 2024 presidential campaign–but not by much. The main question, as always, is what should we do?

Sources: Spencer, Bettina. “Impact of racism and sexism in the 2008–2020 US presidential elections.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 21.1 (2021): 175-188; Peirce, C.S. 1903. Lectures on Pragmatism, Lecture 1: Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences. See also: using a model to explain a single case; overestimating the impact of leaders; What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life

three takes on the good life: Aristotle, Buddha, Montaigne

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I am attracted to two views that have been enormously influential for thousands of years.

The first view began with Aristotle and has influenced billions of people by being incorporated (with variations) into all three Abrahamic faiths. 

According to this theory, humans can be happy in the same way that we might describe a lush and towering tree as happy–or a fox that is busy hunting rabbits. It’s not about these organisms’ sensations of pleasure or pain, but whether they are doing what they are designed to do. “Flourishing” may be a better translation than “happy” for Aristotle’s Greek term, eudaimonia.

How do human beings flourish? Aristotle says it is by thinking, since that is our distinctive characteristic and evidently the advanced task for which we are optimized. But we think many things, including ugly thoughts and idle ones that fail to motivate our actions. We know the difference between good and bad thinking because we are taught to recognize virtues. 

Unfortunately, it is not always evident what a given virtue means, or even whether something called a virtue deserves the title; and the various virtues can conflict. We need a master virtue that is about deciding which virtues to deploy in each situation; call that “practical reason.” 

At least some people may also flourish by exercising a purer kind of reasoning that does not motivate action; for Aristotle, the very best way to spend one’s time is by contemplating the divine. 

To sum up, a happy human life is one guided by practical reason, perhaps with a dose of contemplative reasoning (also known as worship). A person of virtue is fortunate and happy in the same way that a fox flourishes if it can hunt rabbits all day. They live their best lives.

A very different view is also influential, because it is the root of Buddhism, which has about half a billion adherents today. In contrast to Aristotle, Buddha taught that we are not designed for any particular end. Like everything else in the universe, we exist because previous things just happened before. Since we have turned out to be sensitive creatures, we are bound to suffer; suffering is intrinsic (the First Noble Truth). It arises wherever there is a will, because desire is inevitably frustrated (the Second Noble Truth). 

However, we can introspect and discover that the self that we have valued so highly and that seems to intend and to want so many elusive things does not really exist. Specific phenomena just happen one after another, resulting from previous phenomena. This realization allows us to stop attaching our will to things. Instead of feeling wilful and frustrated, we can allow our minds to fill with compassion for ourselves and for everyone else, understanding everyone as determined by events beyond their control. 

This escape can be complete and final, so that we no longer suffer (the Third Noble Truth). No supernatural force is required for escape; it is just a matter of realizing how things really work. Once that happens, we can live a life of active compassion toward others (the Fourth Noble Truth). The conclusion is rather like Aristotle’s vision of a virtuous life, but with a different underpinning and a more dramatic moral.

I am no means against either view, both of which instruct and inspire. But I am skeptical that we are designed or optimized for anything. We emerged as a result of impersonal forces, especially biological evolution. Insofar as we have intrinsic purposes, I doubt that they are all about reasoning, since we have bodies as well as brains, and our brains are embodied. In essence, for me, the First Noble Truth trumps Aristotle’s idea that any natural species has a special natural purpose or end. 

Aristotle defines a virtuous life as happy or eudaimonic. He draws this link because he sees human beings as naturally designed for virtue. If we doubt this premise, then there is no reason to hope that virtue will bring happiness. On the contrary, virtue can easily enhance suffering in the form of guilt, disappointment, and frustration. We should strive to live virtuously for the good of others but not expect it to make us happy.

At the same time, I am also skeptical about the Third Noble Truth, the idea that a complete escape is possible if one fully embraces the truth that there is no self or any intrinsic purposes in nature. 

I just used the word “skeptical” in relation to both Aristotle and Buddhism. Skepticism was one of the ancient Greeks’ philosophical schools, a rival to Aristotle’s tradition. In 16th-century France, Michel de Montaigne read and developed the Skeptics’ ideas, and his work has influenced–or at least found echoes–in many subsequent authors, European and otherwise. 

Montaigne’s skepticism does not rest on a theory of the natural best life for human beings, nor on the idea that human selves are illusory and can be transcended. Montaigne views each human being, including himself, as something imperfect, a bit miscellaneous, without clear boundaries, and largely opaque–yet complex, distinctive, fragile, and precious. “For sure, man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and wavering subject. It’s a queasy business to try to base any constant and uniform judgment about him” (Montaigne 1580, 1:9).

For creatures like this, there is no natural best way to live, nor any escape from suffering. But there is much to be appreciated–even relished–if one attentively studies any particular person. Close, appreciative listening brings moments of compassion and consolation.

Montaigne wrote mostly about himself. “I wish to be seen in a simple, natural, and ordinary manner, without striving [he changed the word to “study” in the 1592 text] or artifice, for it is me that I paint” (Montaigne, 1580, “To the Reader”). This was his revolutionary contribution. Before him, authors in the European languages had never made subjects of themselves in a similar way. St. Augustine had written a great autobiography, but he had seen his life as an illustration of a universal story: the sinner finds God and is saved. Montaigne, in contrast, saw himself as himself. Inventing the very word “essay,” he inaugurated practices of self-description that have become ubiquitous. And he made the search for himself interesting by demonstrating how elusive we are to ourselves.

Today, we probably suffer from a bit too much self-exploration and self-description. The Romantic movement and some of its successors have encouraged writers and other artists to focus on themselves to a far greater extent than Montaigne could have imagined. In a secular and individualistic market-economy, self-presentation literally sells. Some memoirs and confessions are valuable, particularly when the authors have compelling stories. But people like me–we whose lives are quite unremarkable– should pause before we assume that anyone else needs to hear about us.

That brings me to the other side of Montaigne’s essays. He says that his subject is himself, but what does he do with his life? He spends it in his library. The self that he presents in his Essays is a devoted reader, that is, a compassionate observer of many other people, both authors and subjects, living and dead. 

I’ve posted a book-in-progress on this blog entitled Cuttings. My main purpose there is not to understand texts or to explain them to anyone, but rather to experiment with compassionate attention as a modest form of consolation. This is not an original ideal. I take it from Montaigne and many others. In the book (¶20-21), I even criticize originality as another Romantic ideal that has been overemphasized. Generalizations about important matters that are right and good are also likely to be clichés, because why would any of us suddenly discover truths that had been hidden before? Still, the book is full of concrete observations rather than generalizations. It is, in fact, a collection of “cuttings.”

...
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

    -- Theodore Roethke, "Cuttings (later)," 1948

Source: Montaigne, Michel Eyquem (1580), Les Essais. See also: some basics; Montaigne and Buddhism; varieties of skepticism, etc.

we treat facts and values alike when we reason

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Years ago,  Justin McBrayer found this sign hanging in his son’s second-grade classroom:

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

This distinction is embedded in significant aspects of our culture and society. For example, science aspires to be about facts, not opinions. And values are often assigned to the category of opinions. But this distinction doesn’t describe the way people actually reason.

After you utter any standard sentence, another person can ask two questions: “Why did you say that?” And, “What does it imply?” Any standard sentence has premises that entail it and consequences that it, in turn, implies. Any sentence is in the middle of a network of related thoughts, and you can be asked to make those relationships explicit (Brandom 2000).

Imagine a rooster who wakes you up by crowing at a dawn, and a parent who wakes her child in time for school. Both have brains, perceptions, and desires. But only the parent shares a language with another party. As a result, the child can ask, “Why are we waking up now?” or “What do I have to do next?” These are upstream and downstream implications of the sentence: “Wake up!”

Upon receiving an answer, the child can ask further questions. “Why do I have to go to school?” “Why is learning good?” The parent’s patience for this kind of discussion is bound to be finite, but the very structure of language implies that it could go on virtually forever.

The same process works for sentences that are about facts and for those that are more about values. A child asks, “Why do I have to go to school?” The answer, “Because it is 8 am,” is factual. The answer, “Because it’s important to learn” involves values. Either response can, in turn, prompt further “why” questions that can be answered.

The positivist assumption that values are opinions rather than facts suggests that values are conversationally inert, connected to the speaker but not to any other sentences. When you say that you value something, a positivist understands this as a fact about yourself, not as a claim that you could justify. However, we do justify value-claims. We state additional sentences about what implies our values or what our values imply.

In real life, people sooner or later choose to halt the exchange of reasons. “Why do you think that?” “I saw it with my own eyes.” “Why do you believe your eyes?” At this point, most people will opt out of the conversation, nor do I blame them.

Note, however, that the respondent probably could give reasons other than “I saw it with my eyes.” Statements typically have multiple premises, not just one. Further, a person could explain why we typically believe what we see. There is much to be said about eyes, mental processes connected to vision, and so on. I realize that discussing such matters is for specialists, and most people should not bother going into them. But the point is that the network of reasons could almost always be extended further, if one chose.

And the same is true for value-claims. “Why do you support that?” “Because it’s fair.” “What makes it fair?” “It treats everyone equally.” “Why do you favor equality?” At this point, many people may say, “I just do,” which is rather like saying, “I saw it with my own eyes.” But again, the conversation could continue. There is a great deal to be said about premises that imply the value of equality and consequences that equality entails if it’s defined in various specific ways. By spelling out more of this network, we make ourselves accountable for our positions.

Driving a distinction between opinions/values and facts would artificially prevent us from connecting our value-laden claims to other sentences, which we naturally–and rightly–do.

Source: Robert R. Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. (Harvard 2000). See also: listeners, not speakers, are the main reasoners; how intuitions relate to reasons: a social approach; we are for social justice, but what is it?; making our models explicit; introducing Habermas; and “Just teach the facts.

[Additional note, Oct 18: David Hume originated the fact-value distinction. For him, reasoning was essentially about perceiving things. The mind formed representations, especially visualizations. As Hilary Putnam writes (p. 15), Hume had a “pictorial semantics.” But you can’t see values. Nor can you see the self or causation. If we use visual metaphors–lenses, paintings, or images–for the mind, then it can’t seem to reason about values.

Nowadays, we think of reasoning mainly in terms of symbols that are combined and manipulated. The reigning metaphor is not a lens but a computer. We absolutely can compute sentences that include values. It’s true that a mind that manipulates and combines symbols must ultimately touch the world beyond itself, and there remains a role for sensation. Computers have input devices. But the connection between a mind and the world cannot be a matter of separate and distinct representations, since many things that we reason about–not only values, but also neutrinos, diseases, and economies–do not appear to our eyes. Source: Hilary Putnam (2002) The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays. Harvard.]

generosity as a virtue

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Summary: I will argue here that generosity is a virtue when it is involves respectful care for an individual. Therefore, paradigm cases of generosity involve acts of personal attention and two-way communication, such as carefully selecting an appropriate gift or making a kind remark. To assess a transfer of money, it is better to ask whether it manifests justice, not generosity. Aristotle launched this whole discussion by drawing a useful distinction between generosity and justice. However, because his ideas of justice were constrained, and because he analyzed generosity strictly in terms of money, he left the impression that generosity was not a very appealing virtue. We can do better by focusing on acts conducted in the context of mutually respectful relationships.

To begin: virtues are traits or dispositions that we should want to cultivate in ourselves and in others to improve these individuals’ characters, to raise the odds that they will benefit their communities, or both.

Generosity is found on famous lists of virtues, such as Aristotle’s twelve (or so) and the Buddha’s six paramitas. However, generosity receives much less attention than most other virtues in contemporary English-language philosophy. Miller (2018) finds only three “mainstream philosophy” articles about generosity prior to his own. Ward (2011) finds little discussion of generosity in scholarship on Aristotle, notwithstanding that a whole section of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is focused on it.

I would propose this explanation. Aristotle continues to provide the most influential framework for theories of virtues in the academic world, partly because he is often insightful, and also because he shaped ethics in the three Abrahamic religions. However, his account of generosity (eleutheriotes–more literally translated as “liberality”) makes it a problematic trait. And that is why the virtue does not receive much attention in Anglophone and European academic philosophy.

Aristotle introduces his discussion of generosity with an explicit mention of money:

Let us speak then of freeness-in-giving [eleutheristes, generally translated as generosity or liberality]. It seems to be a mean in respect to needs/goods/property [chremata], for a man is not praised as generous in war, nor in matters that involve temperance, nor in court decisions, but in the giving or taking of goods, and especially in giving them–“goods” meaning all those things whose worth is measured with coins (NE 1119b–my translations).

For Aristotle, generosity does not mean transferring money to people who have a right to it, because that is the separate virtue of justice. Rather, generosity means donating material things voluntarily because one is not overly enamored of them, and doing so in an excellent way.

Things that are done in virtue are noble and are done for their nobility. The generous man therefore will certainly give for the nobility of it. And he will do it rightly, for he will give to the right people, in the right amount, at the right time, and whatever else counts as right giving; and he will give with pleasure or at least painlessly, for whatever is done virtuously is pleasant and painless, or at least not distressing (NE 1120a).

The appropriate recipient is not one who deserves the money (again, that would be an act of justice), but rather someone whom a person of generous spirit would desire to help. I imagine a land-owner being generous to his tenant or to a retainer of long standing.

Aristotle acknowledges that a person with less money can be as generous as a rich man, since the appropriate measure is the proportion of one’s wealth that one donates. Nevertheless, his paradigm of a generous person is a man of inherited wealth who is liberated enough from the base appeal of material things that he voluntarily gives some money away in a gentlemanly fashion (NE 1120b).

I will not claim that the ideal of generosity in the Buddhist canon is the same as in Aristotle, but the early Buddhist texts also appreciate people who give things away because they are free from a desire for goods:

Furthermore, a noble disciple recollects their own generosity: “I’m so fortunate, so very fortunate! Among people full of the stain of stinginess I live at home rid of stinginess, freely generous, open-handed, loving to let go, committed to charity, loving to give and to share.” Then a noble disciple recollects their own generosity, their mind is not full of greed, hate, and delusion. This is called a noble disciple who lives in balance among people who are unbalanced, and lives untroubled among people who are troubled. They’ve entered the stream of the teaching and develop the recollection of generosity (Numbered Discourses 6.10.1, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato).

One difference is that Aristotle mainly thinks about generosity to people who are poor against their will, whereas the paradigm of generosity in early Buddhism is a wealthy layperson’s donation to monks, who have voluntarily renounced worldly goods. In fact, I am not sure that monks can be generous in the Pali Canon, because their role is to receive alms. Another difference—typical when comparing Aristotle to classical Buddhism–is that the Buddhist path leads toward complete liberation, whereas Aristotle expects us to navigate happiness and suffering until death.

In any case, for Aristotle, generosity is relational (one person is generous to another), and it usually accompanies an unequal relationship. As Ward writes, it “abstracts” from justice. When we are being generous, in Aristotle’s sense, we do not have justice on our minds, although we might also act justly.

If one accepts inequality and suffering as natural, then justice is simply a matter of paying one’s debts, honoring contracts, and otherwise following the current rules; and generosity easily accompanies justice. A true aristocrat exhibits justice by paying his bills and taxes. He may also make generous gifts, although never giving so much as to threaten his social standing. (Aristotle defines prodigality as giving so much as to ruin one’s own resources: NE 1119b–1120a.)

However, if we decide that the current distribution of rights and goods is unjust and should be changed, then we will not be impressed by a person who is generous yet not just. More than that, we may feel that justice is the only standard, and generosity is virtuous just to the degree that it approximates justice. Then a gentleman’s holiday gifts are virtuous insofar as they diminish an unjustifiable disparity between the lord and his tenants. The effect is probably quite small. It would be better if the gentleman were prodigal or if his lands were reallocated. Meanwhile, if he takes satisfaction in his own gift-making–as evidence that he is free from base material desires–then he looks worse, not better. If he makes gifts, he should demonstrate respect for the recipients by making the payments seem obligatory and insufficient.

By alluding to land reform, I am suggesting that a social system should be egalitarian, and some powerful force, such as a modern government, should make it so. This is not necessarily correct. Adam Smith makes a different argument for generosity. In his view, a market economy is best for everyone because it continuously increases prosperity. But rich people should be generous, not only for the sake of those with less but also because a reasonable person will not be overly attached to his own wealth and will know when he has more than enough.

When “a man of fortune spends his revenue chiefly in hospitality” (benefitting friends), he demonstrates a “liberal or generous spirit” and also puts his wealth into circulation, thus contributing to the “increase of the public capital.” On the other hand, by hoarding his money for himself, a person would manifest “a base and selfish disposition” (Wealth of Nations, ii:3). It is less clear whether Smith recommends generosity toward poor people who are not one’s friends (discussed in Birch 1998). But in general, virtues are good for the individual and contribute to a civil society. Generosity is just one example; “humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem” are others (Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV).

Whether you endorse or reject Smith’s view of markets, at least his theory of generosity is connected to his theory of social justice. Ward argues that Aristotle also considers generosity in the context of his view of a good community. She discusses the sections in the Politics where Aristotle says that the best regime empowers the middle classes. They are neither arrogant, like the rich, nor craven, like the poor (Pol. 1295b5).

A democracy dominated by the middle classes enables deliberation among peers. Equal citizens can look one another in the eye, say what they think, and cast equal votes to set policy. To the extent that Aristotle appreciates this kind of political system, then his discussions of generosity (giving moderate amounts of money to individuals) and munificence (giving lots of money to the city) begin to seem ironic. These are virtues of oligarchy, and Aristotle prefers democracy (albeit with qualifications).

I appreciate Ward’s argument, but I suspect that for Aristotle, equal standing or eisonomia can only work for an elite (even if it extends to the middling sort), and they should be generous to those who are naturally inferior. Members of the Assembly should treat the large majority of humans who are non-citizens generously, while treating one another with equal respect. However, once we embrace universal human rights, then everyone should be a citizen–somewhere–and the Aristotelian versions of generosity and munificence begin to look problematic.

As long as we are thinking primarily about the transfer of money or goods that money can buy, then I think that justice is the relevant virtue, and generosity is a poor substitute. This point does not depend on a radically egalitarian theory of social justice, because a libertarian should also put justice first and generosity well behind.

However, we naturally use the word “generous” for things other than money. For instance, “generous reading” is a common phrase for interpretive methods that seek to reconstruct persuasive positions from texts. Ann Ward reads Aristotle generously by combining his discussion of generosity in the Nicomachean Ethics with his analysis of democracy in the Politics.

Likewise, we can make “generous remarks” at a colleague’s retirement party, and our words will offer real insights about the colleague’s contributions. We can also give things or people our “generous attention.”

Our partner the Vuslat Foundation defines generous listening as “active, empathetic engagement with another person’s thoughts and feelings. At its core, generous listening is about creating a space for authentic dialogue.”

Think of a colleague who skillfully chooses holiday gifts, wrapping them nicely, and adding thoughtful notes. The objects may have limited monetary value yet reflect generous attitudes toward their recipients because they match each person’s desires and needs. Finding the gifts required time, and during that time, the donor focused on the recipient. We would not object if the skillful donor takes pleasure and pride, just as we generally appreciate cases when people derive happiness from their own virtue.

Whereas money is fungible, the generosity in these examples is specific to the individuals involved. Aristotle (like the Buddhist sutra I quoted earlier) is most interested in generosity as a display of freedom on the part of the giver, but in the cases I am sketching, the donors focus on the recipients. And these forms of generosity are relatively independent of the social system. I presume that generous speeches at retirement parties are appreciated alike in state socialism, corporate capitalism, and the nonprofit sector.

We might, then, agree with Smith in the Theory of Moral Sentiments that generosity is one of the virtues that “appear in every respect agreeable to us.” Generosity is agreeable regardless of the social or economic system, and apart from justice. But it is a virtue that requires benevolent respect for the recipient, listening and speaking as well as giving. Contrary to Aristotle, it is least relevant to monetary transfers and does not reflect a gentlemanly insouciance about private wealth. Rather, it is best manifested in reciprocal relationships, when the parties devote time and attention to one another.

Sources: Christian B. Miller, “Generosity,: in Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, eds., Connecting Virtues: Advances in Ethics, Epistemology, and Political Philosophy (Wiley, 2018): 23-50; Ann Ward, “Generosity and inequality in Aristotle’s ethics.” Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 28.2 (2011): 267-278; Thomas D. Birch, “An analysis of Adam Smith’s theory of charity and the problems of the poor.” Eastern Economic Journal 24.1 (1998): 25-41.my translations of Aristotle use the text from Project Perseus.