Blog on the Paper Process

Between BIC and Philosophy, I've written a substantial number of papers in my undergraduate career here at Baylor, and I can say quite confidently that the process we've used in this class has been by far the most beneficial.

In most classes, when you write a paper, you are given a prompt,you produce a paper, you turn it in, and then you recieve your grade and some feedback. In some cases, an outline or a draft is due prior to the paper's due date, but this is usually only in lower level classes. In these cases, a student is provided with some level of feedback to incorporate into their final draft, but usually this is done only to improve the quality of the grade that the student hopes to recieve on his final draft.

However, in this mode of doing the paper, the entire process was different. We were not given a prompt, but rather were able to research a topic that heavily interested us, with the minor stipulation that it relate to a Classical Philosopher in some manner or another. Before we produced a paper, we produced an abstract and got peer feedback on it. This enabled us to alter our trajectory for the paper before committing to one that didn't say what we were getting at fully enough. After the abstract, a rough draft was due. It didn't have to be as long as the final draft, which enabled us to actually use it as a rough draft (in contrast to those classes who say "turn in a rough draft, but it should closely resemble your final copy"). This allowed us to more fully develop our ideas and commit to them but still be open to critique and improvement which we got from 3 different sources: our peer editors, Dr. Schultz's edits, and our presentation. The presentation enabled us to explain our argument in different media. Through preparing for my presentation, I actually gained a better grasp on my argument myself, which enabled me to be more clear as I tweaked my paper for the final copy. Finally, the review that we wrote compelled us to look back at the process, and reinforce in our minds that it was more about the process thant the grade.

Overall, the seminar style of writing the paper was a definite success, and I can tell this by the fact that I've been thinking, not about tallyng up the scores on all my rubrics to see if I'm going to actually make an A on it, but about what I've gleaned fromt he process as a whole.

Knowing the Good = Doing the Good?

No matter how many times I read and reread this article by Robert Coles, it never ceases to strike me in an odd way each time. I can't help but think that these are some of the most true words in existence. Despite Socrates' claim that "to know the good is to do the good," it seems that many times in 'real' life we are left with people who seem to know the good and yet refrain from doing it. There are only two logical causes for this effect: either they do not really know the good (that is, that knowing the good is something other than intellectual knowledge of the good), or that knowing the good isn't sufficient for doing the good. I am more inclined to pick the first of the two.

I was actually having a conversation with my friend earlier today; we were discussing bad eating/exercise habits. He said "I know eating this way is really bad for me, and I am fully aware of the consequences, but I just don't really care that much." I mean, the kid practically lives on a diet of pasta, butter, cheese, and all things deep-fried. His first statement is true. Eating that way is bad for him. His last statement is probably true as well. It's the middle statement that is questionable: "I am fully aware of the consequences..." I argued against him, saying that if he was really truly aware of the consequences, he would care more. I mean, we all wonder at the logical sanity of the person who carries around an oxygen tank yet still smokes a pack a day, but how is that different from our daily claims that we should eat less and exercise more? In each case, we claim we know what we are doing is bad, but we don't care enough to change it. I think we don't honestly believe in the bad-ness of what we are doing. If we did, we would change. Hindsight is 20/20 - and that's because once we are suffering the consequences of our actions, we truly KNOW that the action was actually bad for us. Prior to that, we didn't believe it enough to change it.

I think Christianity speaks prominently on this issue. For years, until I made a decisively immoral decision, I struggled with feeling like I needed God. I mean, those promiscuous drug-addicts and alcoholics, they needed God; but me? I was 14 and couldn't even squish a bug without feeling horrendous guilt. For all intents and purposes, I was a pretty morally-upright kid. I struggled with feeling like I needed God, because I didn't KNOW I needed him. I didn't KNOW that I was sinful. I didn't KNOW that I couldn't be good enough to please Him on my own. Once I made that decisively immoral decision, I KNEW that I was deeply, inherently sinful, and that I needed God - and I mean, I knew it in the deepest fibers of my being. And once I KNEW that I needed God, repentance was almost immediate. I finally knew the good, and so I acted upon it.

The Coles article resonates deeply within me, because I've also had that same struggle that the girl Coles talks about had. When I was in the 10th grade, living overseas, I went to a missionary boarding school. Instead of dorms, we lived in group-home style houses called 'hostels.' Every hostel had a girls' hall and a boys' hall, and a living area in the middle. We lived together like a big family, and even affectionately termed each other "hostel siblings". One of my best friends lived in my hostel with me, and he was the most obviously Christian guy I knew. All of the adults in the community respected him, he led worship, and went to Bible Study every day. One night, he tried to rape me. It took me years to get over that, and now I can talk about it, but it's made this topic of prime interest to me. How could this "upstanding, Christian" guy do something so HORRIBLE? The only logical answer is that he didn't actually KNOW the good. He had all the outward appearances of knowing the good, but inside of his soul, if he had known the deep badness of the action he attempted, he could not possibly have done it. He could only know the deep badness of the action he attempted if he knew the good; otherwise, there's nothing to contrast it with. He didn't know the good and so he didn't know the bad. So, it makes doing the bad a whole lot easier. If he had known the good, he would have known the badness of his behavior.

Likewise, the boy in question in Coles article didn't know the good. He had outward behaviors of knowing the good (good test scores, good grades, etc.) but he didn't know it in his soul. He didn't KNOW it in the deepest part of him. It didn't resonate with him. So, he knew it in his head, but he didn't know it in his soul. I think those two things are profoundly different. I can learn about what it's like to be homeless, but until I've been homeless I can't know it in my soul. By learning intellectually about homelessness, sympathy can be sparked within me, and I think that's like a shadow of actually knowing what homelessness is like, but it isn't the real thing. When we learn intellectually about the good, that knowledge can yield a sort of 'sympathy', if you will, and can give us a shadow of the good, but we can't truly KNOW the good through intellectual knowledge alone. It has to be something more?

So, how do we know the good? As a Christian, I believe that God reveals the good to me. If God is the good for which I am striving, then my relationship with Him is all about knowing Him, and consequently is about knowing the good. The more I know God, the more I will act according to His will, and the more I will act in a way that is pleasing to Him.

How do we know the good apart from God? I would answer that apart from God, there is no such thing.

Pleasure vs. Happiness

In Book 10 of Nichomachean Ethics, Eudoxus posits that pleasure could potentially be the supreme good because we often pursue things for pleasure's sake, and it also makes other things more desirable.

Aristotle makes the case that there are many things we value that are not necessarily pleasant. For example, exercising may be good for me, but running definitely does not bring me pleasure.

He also says that pleasure cannot be a process because it does not start out incomplete and then become complete, and it does not take place over time. Thus, it can never fit in with virtue, because he has already established that virtue is a consistent habit.

Because pleasure cannot be the chief end, Aristotle says that happiness is the chief end with contemplation being its highest and most complete form. Today, most people associate pleasure with happiness, and think that they always come as a package deal. However, Aristotle would say that there is a measure of habituation that comes with happiness. Furthermore, most do not see contemplation as a thing that brings pleasure, but Aristotle says that to contemplate like the gods do is to be happy.

Happiness, then, is a step above moral virtue, which Aristotle has spent the previous parts of the book explicating. The key difference between happiness and virtue is that happiness entails the intellect, or rational contemplation. Additionally, the moral virtues are all done for the sake of happiness. Aristotle's definition of happiness is most like philosophical contemplation.

So here I am in the library on a Friday night, working on my research paper, doing a lot of philosophical contemplation, and being "happy," per Aristotle, though not necessarily filled with pleasure :P

Aristotle, Friendship, and the Lover-Beloved Relationship

Aristotle describes three different types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue, with the latter being the most Good. Aristotle argues that friendship is complete virtue, and so it should be placed above all other virtues, including honor and justice.

First, Aristotle describes friendships of utility. He says that elderly people, because they are more experienced and efficient in life, are prone to these sorts of friendships because they are looking to find what is advantageous for them. This comes from a self-love of utility, which is ultimately selfish.

Second, Aristotle describes friendships of pleasure, saying that the young are more likely to make these sorts of friendships because they are passion-filled and seeking pleasure. They flit around from one friendship to another, because they are filled with self-love of pleasure. This also is ultimately selfish.

Third, Aristotle describes friendships of virtue which are the most esteemed. In this friendship between two people of equally virtuous status, each person wills only the good for his friend, disregarding self-love of pleasure and of utility. Only good people - or people pursuing the Good - can handle these sorts of friendships, because there is nothing to gain since both friends are equal to each other, and united in their pursuance of virtue.

Aristotle believes that true love is the product of a virtuous friendship.

In Book 8, Chapter 7, Line 11, Aristotle starts talking about friendships that are based on superiority, such as that which would arise between a younger man and an older man. He argues that "in all friendships based on a superiority, the feelings of friendly affection too ought to be proportional" according to the ranks of superiority. For example, if a person that is more esteemed or older becomes friends with one who is less esteemed or younger, it is proper that the lesser individual should love the greater more than the greater loves the lesser.  In doing this, the hierarchy sort of levels out, and they can have that virtuous sort of friendship that is the best kind. This appears to me to be analogous to the lover-beloved relationship discussed in the Symposium. In Chapter 8, Aristotle goes on to say "But the many seem, on account of their love of honor, to wish to be loved more than to love." This also seems to be the problem in the Symposium with all the tension and drama that occurs, especially with Alcibaides (however you spell his name). He is jealous for the honor one gets from being the beloved of Socrates, and thus wants to be loved more than he wants to truly love Socrates. This is why their relationship seems strained, and perhaps if Alcibaides was more focused on loving than on being loved, then their relationship would be Good and they could pursue virtue together. This holds true for many relationships today as well. (Yay Aristotle with that good ol' marriage advice!)

Alcibiades: An Ancient Greek Soap Opera.

The 5 most important things that Diotima tried to teach Socrates about love were that:

1. Socrates was wrong in saying that if Love desired x, Love must not have x. For example, if Love desires beauty, Love cannot be beautiful. Rather, Diotima says that desire of something does not necessarily mean complete lack of that thing. She posits that Love is the mean between 2 extremes, such as the mean between wisdom and ignorance, and explains this through the story of its birth. In this way, Love can both be beautiful and yet desire beauty.
2. Love means wanting to possess the good forever, and that is why we pursue Love with such eagerness and zeal.
3. The true kind of Love is achieved through pursuing the good, but there is a slight perversion of Love that occurs when people pursue happiness through indirect means, such as money or fame.
4. Love gives birth to beauty. In a way, reproduction leads to immortality, and in the act of reproduction/pregnancy, the parents become more joyful and more beautiful - more good. So, reproduction is the act that allows Love to possess the good forever.
5. Love must desire immortality.

Throughout his speech about Socrates, Alcibiades mentions many things about their relationship that are characteristic of the way Love has been described throughout the evening. For example, Alcibiades talks about how Socrates is so beautiful and wonderful that it makes him feel shame, which is one of the characteristics of love that Phaedrus mentioned. He also mentioned that Socrates tends to Love beautiful boys, which shows that Love is the pursuit of beauty, as Diotima said. Most importantly, he talks about how willing he was to surrender all he was to Socrates so that Socrates might make him good. This means that he recognizes, at least in some small way, that Love is pursuance of the good, and would make him more beautiful and more wise. I think this is why he wishes to consummate the relationship with Socrates, perhaps because he understands that the act of consummation is the act that would allow their Love to become cemented in the pursuit of the good forever.

I think that Alcibiades is only pretending to be drunk, because it seems to be his primary goal to get Socrates drunk. I don't really know what their relationship is at this point, but perhaps he thinks if Socrates is drunk, he will be more loose with Alcibiades, though he mentions bitterly that no matter how much he drinks, Socrates will not become drunk. I've never been drunk before, so I can't say for sure, but it seems to me that he is wayyyyyy too articulate to be drunk as well. That factor aside, I think other things point to his sobriety as well - perhaps he is only pretending to be drunk so that they will let him into the party in an attempt to calm him down. He seems to be angry about Socrates sitting next to Agathon, so it seems possible that he came to break up the Love party and make sure that Socrates was being faithful to him, and just used the guise of being drunk to be allowed in.

The 5 different definitions of love in Plato's Symposium

Phaedrus (Young) - 178a-180b

• Love is the oldest of all the gods, and thus confers the most benefits.
• Love teaches us shame in acting disgracefully and pride in acting well (we feel more ashamed to be caught doing something disgraceful when we are caught by a loved one).
• Love, then, leads to bravery, courage, and honor because if there were an army of lovers and beloveds, they would rather die than display cowardice in front of their partners.
• The gods value love as a guide to action, because they allow people who loved greatly to return from the underworld.
• Speaks in the context of male-male love (as most of the others do as well)

Pausanias (Agathon's life-partner) -180c-185c

• There are two kinds of love: heavenly and common (see blog post below)
• Love in itself is neither commendable nor detestable; rather, if it is done properly, it is esteemed and if it is not, then it has no merit.
• The main purpose of love is to produce virtue, which is why male-male relationships between the wise lover and the younger beloved are so esteemed (His praises of the longevity of relationships make sense given his relationship with Agathon.)
• Pausanias agrees with Phaedrus that love is good, but makes an improvement by adding the distinction between heavenly love and common love, and adding the qualifier that love is good only if it is the former.

Eryximachus (Doctor) 185c-189b

• Commends Pausanias's distinction between the two types of love and agrees with him therein.
• Agrees that it is good to gratify good people, and bad to gratify bad people.
• Expands upon Pausanias's explanation of love by saying that love is not purely emotional, as Pausanias has suggested, but rather that it is bodily as well (which makes sense, given that he's a doctor).
• He completes an analogy by saying that it is appropriate to gratify the healthy parts of the body, and bad to gratify the diseased parts of the body.
• Eryximachus then expands this idea of love to show that love has its place in music, agriculture, medicine, etc. It is the doctor's role to implant the good kind of love in the body and flush out the bad, restoring the body to a homeostasis of harmony. Likewise, love is manifested in unity and harmony in other subjects as well.
• Love is ever-present, all-powerful, and primarily concerned with unity

Aristophanes (Great comic playwright) 189c-193e

• There used to be 3 genders: male, female, and androgynous. The gods sliced them in half because they were getting too powerful, and love is the reunion of the two halves of a person.
• Androgynous individuals are heterosexual, with the other two genders being homosexual (I use the word "homosexual" loosely, since some would protest to the lover/beloved relationship being stigmatized this way).
• Aristophanes praises the male-male relationship for the same reasons that Pausanias does.
• "Love" is our desire for wholeness, and restores us to our formerly whole selves (This gets at what Eryximachus is getting at too).

Diotima

• Socrates shows that love is desirous of something which it does not have, meaning that if what the previous orators have said is true, then love can be neither beautiful nor good since it desires what is both beautiful and good.
• BUT, love does not have to be ugly and bad, since Diotima says that things don't have to be one thing or their opposite, but can fall somewhere in the middle. For example, love is not mortal or immortal but is a sort of spirit.
• gods use spirits to communicate with humans, so love is like a message to the humans from the gods.
• Love is the child of Poverty and Resource, and is like both of them, but somewhere in between. For example, love is always poor but very tough; somewhere in between ignorance and wisdom; always in need but can scheme to get what he wants; is neither immortal or mortal so it can result in forever friendship or a temporary relationship (in contrast to what Pausanias says).
• Diotima dismisses what Aristophanes says about lovers looking for their other half, and instead posits that love searches for what is good. In the same manner of Eryximachus, she says that we want to amputate diseased limbs meaning we only want to be attached to what is good.
• Love is the desire to have the good forever, and the closest we can get to this is through birth and reproduction because that's what gets us closest to immortality.
• She, like the others, advocates the male-male relationship by saying that men can be pregnant in both body and mind. They can be pregnant in body and seek to reproduce with a female, or they can be pregnant in mind and seek to reproduce wisdom and virtue in the mind of a younger beloved.
• As far as the whole "loving the bodies is bad but loving the minds is good" thing that Pausanias gets at, Diotima says that boys begin to love a beautiful body until they realize that there are lots of beautiful bodies, so they move onto the mind. Then, the love of the mind becomes more important and the love of the body falls away. Then, he just loves beauty in general rather than beautiful bodies or things.
• Then, he grows to love knowledge, which ultimately leads to love, which is the knowledge of beauty, which is eternal.

Love

The two main types of love discussed in Plato's Symposium are popular love and heavenly love.

Popular love is described as being sort of haphazard and driven by the fleeting passions. It is directed either towards a woman or towards a man, and is driven by a lust for the body rather than a desire for the soul's wisdom. It admires accomplishments in the beloved, but takes no notice of the manner in which they were required. It is characterized by a lack of harmony between the two individuals, and is considered wicked or base.

In contrast, heavenly love is considered noble, and is only directed towards a male, from a male. It is not a passion for boys, but rather is a love of wisdom and goodness. Thus, this love is captivated by the beauty of the mind or of the soul, and because it seeks wisdom and goodness, it makes both individuals wise and good. Essentially, the elder of the two is the pursuer, and he teaches wisdom and knowledge to the younger, who in turn gratifies the elder because it is considered right to gratify good men. This creates a sort of harmony between the two, and results in a forever friendship, even when the lover/beloved relationship dissipates.

Thus, love is the pursuit of wisdom that results in unity between a lover and a beloved.