I can perhaps better and more fully describe my reluctance to offer or assign specific essay questions now that we have read Nietzsche, who offers a useful set of concepts and ideas in this regard. The problem is this: When I assign particular questions, I find that what I have in mind with a particular question often differs greatly from what you have in mind when you read the question. Thus, you head off in a direction that ends up not being fruitful, because you in essence answer a different question (one not designed to draw the best out of you). The reason that this turns out bad is that you’re answering my question, not your own (or rather, because we can understand the same question differently, you answer what you think I was asking, which turns out to be different from what I was asking).
Things go much better when you ask and answer your own questions. In Nietzsche’s terms, things work best when you put before you all that had attracted your interest; something can attract your interest because you understood it and it fits with your thinking, or because you understood it and it speaks to something nascent within you that you’d like to explore, or because it confuses you and yet you want to understand it (likely because it speaks to something buried within you). You want your topics and questions to arise from this process; you should end up with more than one question. You then have to exercise various capacities in determining which question you will actually address: you must think through things, you must reflect upon yourself, and, in the end, you must make a choice. If you let the choice be made for you, the chances are that it will not go well. But if you do manage to make it yourself, then you will find yourself revealing and even engaging “the real raw material of your being.”
But there is of course more that can be said. First, I recommend that you reread the advice I gave you the first time regarding the temptations you should avoid and the strategies you should engage. Remember: you want to engage your ‘true educators’ first and foremost. You want to ask tough critical questions of them. And you may want to test their thoughts using one of the movies or perhaps even an issue from contemporary life (although the issue itself should take up little space – the emphasis should be on testing the educator’s thoughts; that is how you learn about yourself).
One of the key strategies is to think about what’s going on in the course at this point. Recall how we started. We looked at the beginning of moral life as Plato presents it: we are in a state of ignorance because of how we have been shaped by society. We do not even know that there is much that we don’t know. This is not a morally good or happy state. We then looked at how society shapes our moral being and we did this in large part by looking at a crucial moral act: entering a society. We of course did not enter a society from some outside position – we are already in one. But one of the fundamental moral acts of our lives is how we relate to the strangers around us, and for much of us these relations are directed by the principles on which our society is founded. We agree that we ought to grant each other liberty, but as Mill and Rawls and Beauvoir show, one can do that and remain indifferent to others (Rawls), push them to conform (Mill), or in practice deny some people the liberty that they are granted in theory (Beauvoir). And as Beauvoir, Locke, and Mill claim, we are often reluctant to change our society or ourselves (especially if we’re a sovereign Subject and not an oppressed Other).
So we are at this point aware that we – and our society – are not all that we can be. But we are still in chains – or at the overwhelmed with unpleasant sensations, such as the too-bright light that blinds us and the aches in our legs, which we haven’t ever used, and the scrapes from the rocks on which we stumble and the yanking of our arms by that wild man or woman who claims to have the truth … And so how do we change? How do we get out of the Cave? What frees us from our chains (our ignorance and preconceptions and unjustified sense of the good and poorly chosen ends) and turns us to the true and the good and the beautiful and then guides us and sustains us on our haphazard journey toward it – a journey subject to chance and crisis? In other words, now that we’ve become awakened to the possibility of the moral life (of both a better life and the possibility of a better self and even a better society), how do we make our way toward that life? How do we do something about the opportunity opened up to us in this moment of crisis in which all our certainties are thrown into doubt?
The point of the readings since the first essay is to get us thinking about that. Thus, we need to know how we might change and why we might change. It seems that the answer involves the notion of the will and the end (the telos or highest good at which all our actions aim, the reaching of which is perfection, however temporary, such to ‘to perfect’ (or ‘to fully make’ or telein) ourselves is what guides and pushes us). What enables me to become dissatisfied with the world around me and the ends it has given me? What enables me to turn from it? How do I find or build a new end? Does a new end grab ahold of me or do I freely chose one? Do I think it or will it or desire it – or all of the above? And what’s at stake in saying that my will is free or not free? What, further, is at stake in saying that it’s naturally free (in Hume’s sense) or radically free (in Augustine’s sense)?
The key to all this can perhaps be found in the opening section of the first reading of this portion of the class: Hobbes says, “Read thyself.” It’s a variation of “Know thyself.” But think of this analogy: before I can know a novel, I must first read it (or with music: before I can know a piece, I must first play it). And once I’ve read it (or played it), there will be a lot that escapes me. So, before I can talk of knowing myself, I must first read myself, i.e., reflect on myself and test myself with new questions and experiences and thoughts and perspectives. (And I should probably get others to read the ‘text of me’ too.) And, indeed, each thinker thinks that we’ll find something slightly different inside of us.
In some cases, we are thought to have an ‘essence’ – some nature (as in a natural principle or trajectory or set of inclinations) that we share with all other humans. According to essence-based thinking, my existence (each of my actions, day in and day out) is determined in advance by my essence. Aquinas and Hobbes are, in their ways, both essence-based thinkers: essence precedes existence, and so someone like Aquinas or Hobbes believes that they can sit down and think through what I should do even though they’ve never met me. On the other side of the spectrum are thinkers like Beauvoir and Nietzsche, for whom existence precedes essence: there is nothing that I am or must be simply because I am human; rather, who and what I am is revealed through the choices I make as I move through life. In the case of Nietzsche, my creation of myself is guided by the higher self that lies buried within me; for Beauvoir, I am creating (making it up) as I go. Hume lies somewhere in between these two spectrums.
In any case, you might try to distinguish each thinker in terms of whether or not s/he believes we have something inside us that is the source and measure of what we do, and you might further wonder if that something is essential, meaning that it’s something that each human has by nature and that somehow determines what will make him/her happy in advance of his/her existence. Take the following pictures of the human (the human find (a) a natural law, (b) a true self, (c) appetites and aversions, or (d) nothing), and ask yourself, “Which thinker posits which picture?” Then, ask yourself, “What difference does it make which picture is true – or which one I accept?” You might find something useful. (For instance, even if we can be sure that we are free, the idea of freedom – of liberty – is an incredibly useful one when determining the rules that should guide our relationships with each other. To pick an example that one student is using, think of the current situation in Iran.)
As for some topics, issues, and questions to get you going, you might think through the following:
1. Start with a compare/contrast approach: take two-to-four thinkers and see how they agree and differ on some crucial issues, and then investigate the consequences those differences have for the way of the life – the moral life – that those thinkers would have us lead. You might focus on the different conceptions of liberty, will, the final end, first principles (those ultimate maxims that, like the final end, are intended a measures of possible actions), or human nature.
2. You might take, as your primary aim, the task of understanding fully the thinker who most spoke to you – you can compare/contrast to other thinkers as needed. But be sure to explain why this thinker warrants more attention.
3. Think about the different ways that each thinker believes that we go about ‘reading ourselves’ so as to determine that law and/or end that should guide us.
4. Think about the reasons I have for entering into relationships with others – whether a society or a friendship. What is the story each thinker gives about why I am reluctant to change when these relationships aren’t working and about what justifies me in changing them when they aren’t working and about how I make that change?
5. In a similar vein, you might wonder at this: Most of these thinkers look around their contemporary society and find it wanting; they even seem to suggest (or claim outright) that others have molded us poorly and constrained us often or always, so that developing my true self – a better self; a moral self – involves turning away to some extent from society. At the same time, all of them believe that this turning cannot happen alone. So, what role do ‘friends’ and ‘true educators’ and ‘artist-writers’ and other creators play in the moral awakening and development of others (and Others)?
6. You might further address any of the previous five suggestions by looking at either Thirteen or Boiler Room. How do our thinkers help explain the various experiences of Tracy and/or Seth? How does this application help us to critically question those thinkers?
Last but not least, I would offer this bit of advice: my fullest sense of you a developing thinkers comes from your sense of taste, as revealed by the quotations you choose. That says a lot about you. The ability to select good, worthy, intriguing quotes – and to then explain and extend and apply them – is the real source of your philosophical action and being. Both Hume and Nieztsche believed that moral (and aesthetic) life is dominated and determined by the faculty of taste. So: What’s tasty?
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