The Virtues of the Duck

Duck fat rivals pork fat.

In the summer of 1997, I first became aware of Emeril Lagasse.  A friend of mine loved strong coffee and loved to cook.  I had never heard of this now famous chef, but my friend was already a fan.  And perhaps rightly so.

At a chef's convention, Emeril was quoted as saying, as if it were the slogan for the next season's fashion trend, "Pork fat rules!"

Who could argue with that?  And who would say that is a fleeting trend?  Those are words to live by.

Shortly after reading this quote in the local paper, my friend and I purchased a truck-load of cinder blocks, a long and hefty piece of rebar, some steel wire, and lots of charcoal.  Oh, and a decent-sized hog from a local farmer.

Hank Williams, Jr., used to sing about how country boys can survive, and how his rowdy friends came over to roast a pig in the ground.  We couldn't dig a pit, so we made one above ground.  The landlord was not too pleased with the remains of our pig roast.  Then again, he didn't taste that pig.

Tonight for Christmas dinner I made my first duck.  It was not my first time to enjoy duck, but it was my first time to prepare it myself.  A recipe from Julia Childs, appropriately embellished with butter inside the duck and out, contributed to a medium-rare, delectable success.  In closing out this wonderful day, I would like to affirm, for the record, a simple truth:  duck fat abides.

The Economics of Empathy (and Thanksgiving)

In the United States, the Thanksgiving holiday is two weeks away.  For those who have experienced it, Thanksgiving can be a wonderful holiday.  Everyone across ethnic, political, and religious lines can equally participate.  Indeed, that was the purpose in President Lincoln's proclaiming it a national holiday in 1863, when the country was torn apart by Civil War.

In more recent times, Thanksgiving seems to be part of a double holiday, or at least a double tradition. Thanksgiving Thursday is followed by Black Friday, so named because it is the day when, traditionally, retail sales increase to the point that merchants begin to turn a profit for the year. That is, their books move into the black. The observance of Thanksgiving is completed by consumption. Let us not forget that the purpose is to pause and render gratitude for the blessings of one's life. From the outside, however, it could seem as though Americans are most thankful that they can hit stores at ridiculously early hours on Friday morning to spend money on largely frivolous things.

That is a cynical view of Thanksgiving.  It is one to which I am susceptible.  But there are, I believe (or would like to think), more sober observers of this holiday and the use of money.  Some people volunteer at soup kitchens for the homeless or the working poor.  Others donate money to these shelters or similar aid organizations so that they can operate to serve the needy.  Many of these volunteers and donors tear up at the thought of a child's going hungry on any day, but especially on a festive day that celebrates not just bounty but, most basically, shared life together in community.  These people recognize that although they may be celebrating life, others are fighting for it.

These benefactors, just ordinary people, are thinking not primarily of their own happiness:  watching football, enjoying tasty food, relaxing from daily labors, basking in the company of treasured friends and family.  They are trying to share the simple happiness that comes from food with others who lack it.

In a 10-minute TED talk given two years ago, Harvard professor Michael Norton takes up the question "how to buy happiness."  His research, both in the United States and abroad, confirms, perhaps unsurprisingly but still emphatically, that people report increased happiness when they spend money on others, not on themselves.  The amount of money spent does not matter.  What matters is the target.

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness.html

The short video is worth watching for the creative ways in which Norton and his colleagues test this hypothesis.  Some tests are even humorous.  And the results were not solely about personal happiness but, more generally, about the positive effects that accrue within groups who are charitable, empathetic, or just concerned about others.  There appears to be a multiplier effect that arises from demonstrating empathy:  the reward is greater than the investment when one invests in other people.

My sense is that this will also increase one's general sense of thanksgiving.  Spending money on others will foster an increased feeling of gratitude for one's current lot in life.  A huge part of this is through deepening personal connections.  Sometimes it comes from making the effort to establish them.

I am reminded of the Thanksgiving scene from the movie The Blind Side.  The video below does not adequately depict the scramble that the Tuohy family members have on Thanksgiving for the television where the day's American football games are being shown.  Thanksgiving in their world is about private consumption:  family members eating plates separately, watching multiple screens, and not really communing with one another.  They are alone together.  Their guest is alone by himself.  This is where the clip begins.

http://vimeo.com/67084873

Mrs. Tuohy discerns the difference, and she does something about it.  It was not enough, she realizes, to invite Michael into her home for the holiday because he had nowhere else to go.  She, and the rest of her family members, needed to make him part of their family.  And this meant that Mrs. Tuohy's family needed to act like one itself.  Disconnected viewing of television around a large room needed to give way to the connected holding of hands around the Thanksgiving table.

After all, what would have been the point of reproducing in their home the isolation that Michael already felt without one?

This is the economics of empathy:  greater rewards and personal happiness accrue when we invest in -- that is, spend time or money on -- other people.  First comes empathy, then happiness, because empathy establishes personal connection.  By it we embrace our common humanity.  This is the purpose.  But the effect is that by it also both giver and receiver become truly thankful.

The Ethical Imagination of Art

Why, when we see acts of apparent selflessness, do we often swell with emotion?

Why, to put an even finer point on this, when we observe even fictional gestures of sincere compassion, do we pause, tear up, reach for a tissue or a nearby loved one, and become seized with something that transcends admiration -- something that feels like melting?

Art, in its various forms, uniquely taps into the human imagination, grips our emotions, and, if we listen, instructs.  Take, for example, the following short video clip, which of late, and deservedly, has been making the social media rounds.

(The YouTube link for the video is here.

The brief article about the video from Gawker is here.)

Empathy in Kafka and in Life

Franz Kafka’s fantastic stories of “The Metamorphosis” and “A Country Doctor” present a narrative world that not only assumes the reader’s suspension of disbelief but also requires it.  The stories require it in order to generate in readers appropriate empathy with the characters. These two acts -- (1) the willingness to engage in the narrative world and (2) the resulting emotional engagement with the characters in their relational contexts -- enable literature to foster empathy with others in a way that transcends the constraints imposed by relational life outside of literature. “The Metamorphosis” in particular facilitates in the reader a transformation of understanding by narrating Gregor Samsa’s transformation of being.

"As It Used To Be": Children's Relationships in Vesaas

In Tarjei Vesaas’s The Ice Palace, the narrated interaction between eleven-year-olds Siss and Unn reveals the complex depths of the relationships that adolescents create. Through this innocent complexity, the Norwegian Vesaas illuminates an important dimension of what Arnold Weinstein calls the fiction of relationship.  Vesaas does so, both in his fictional story about the friendship of two young girls and in the relationship that they actively construct.

Most basically, the connection between Siss and Unn reminds readers that children’s relationships are far from simple or rudimentary merely because the participants are not adults.  Children, too, both long for relational intimacy and fashion their individual and social identity through their personal connections. It may be tempting for adults to look condescendingly on these early forays into friendship.  Vesaas challenges us not to do so.

The Fiction of Sexual Violence, pt. 3: Coetzee

In the previous two installments of this series on the fiction of sexual violence, I reflected, first, on the disabling dehumanization that is pictured in Toni Morrison's Beloved.  Next, I traced how sexual aggression creates dysfunctional and disfigured relationships in William Faulkner's Light in August.  In this post, I want to make some initial soundings into one instance of potential sexual assault in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace.

This novel is the most complex of the three in its representations of sexual violence, and this is the reason I say "initial soundings."  I cannot here say everything I would like to say -- and that the novel invites, and deserves, to be said.

And I say "potential sexual assault," because the brilliance of Coetzee's narrative is the way in which he adroitly, and realistically, captures the ambiguities that attend instances of alleged date rape on college campuses.  Of course, David Lurie is Melanie Isaacs' professor, which adds moral entanglements to this coupling.

By focusing on a scene early in the story, I suggest that Coetzee narrates a fiction of sexual violence:  one the one hand, a story about a questionable rape; on the other hand, the alleged assault also creates deathly distance between the characters.  The relationship between Lurie and Melanie is not a given; it is made.  It is, in this sense, a fiction.  Of what the relationship is made is precisely the question that carries through a major strain of the story's conflict.

The Fiction of Sexual Violence, pt. 2: Faulkner

In the first part of this series on the fiction of sexual violence, I briefly explained the twin aspects of "fiction" according to which I will explore this theme.  I began with Toni Morrison's Beloved and a reading of the effects of Ella's experience as a sex slave (quite literally as a slave in the Antebellum South).  And I suggested that we see in her trauma how sexual violence both disables a person's capacity for love (both loving and being loved) and dehumanizes the person in the process.  In Faulkner’s Light in August, the sexual violence between Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden is different.

Revisiting Just War Theory

On August 11, Jean Bethke Elshtain passed away after a remarkable academic career.  I first became familiar with her work some years ago while working on a term paper for an ethics course.  The subject of the paper was whether violence in defense of justice was ever legitimate.  Professor Elshtain wrote with vigor and clarity on just war theory and its application to contemporary geopolitical problems.  Both in honor of her passing and in view of the current debate in the United States about a potential military strike on Syria (President Obama intends to address his nation during prime time tomorrow), I thought it worthwhile to revisit the criteria for determining the legitimate use of violence in defense of justice that she helped to refine.

When antonyms are, literally, synonyms

I normally do not post two entries on one day. Well, for that matter, I normally do not post -- if that means publishing more than 182.62 submissions per year. But today is a Friday, and so I make an exception.

Gene Weingarten has a playful but pointed column in The Washington Post about the, to his sense and mine, dangerous demise of the English language, or the culture in which it is employed: "Weighing in on 'literally,' but figuratively, of course." (And if you want background, try this article last month from the UK's Daily Mail.)

Now Weingarten thinks that it is absurd when words are redefined to mean the same thing as their opposites. I am the one who thinks it dangerous when literal means figurative.

Whether words refer to reality (so Augustine), or whether they have meaning in connection with the real activities, or forms of life, into which they are woven (so Wittgenstein), or whether it is some combination of the two, this much is clear. The plasticity that allows a word meaning X simultaneously to mean not-X reflects something significant -- and troubling -- from an Augustinian or Wittgensteinian perspective. Why? Because it signals how confused and confusing is the reality in which we live (Augustine), or the activities and forms of life that contemporary culture takes (Wittgenstein), or both.

Maybe the closest approximation I can think of to this plasticity is the explanation of "fuhgeddaboudit" in Donnie Brasco. In fact, this scene is not merely amusing but actually illustrates the point. Donnie's world, living simultaneously as a law enforcer and as a mobster, was psychologically confusing and his life confused. Ultimately, Donnie could not handle the tension, his personality was changing, his marriage was dissolving, and he could no longer play the part of both at the same time. This example of semantic confusion (and contradiction) could be broadly instructive -- for words, people, and social institutions.

The Fiction of Sexual Violence, pt. 1: Morrison

This summer I (re)read a number of novels.  And I had some separate conversations about the nature and forms of sexual violence, particularly its less perspicuous manifestations in common settings.  I would like to draft some soundings -- initial probings, investigations, short essays -- on the connections between these two matters. And I hope to do so by drawing upon three novels in particular:  Toni Morrison's Beloved, William Faulkner's Light in August, and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace.

In a series of posts, then, I plan to explore the fiction of sexual violence.  I consciously borrow the phrase from Arnold Weinstein's critical study The Fiction of Relationship.  For him, there are "two fundamental notions" that the wording of his title expresses:  "(1) the narrative literature of relationship, and (2) the view that relationship may be a fiction, something made rather than given, built out of belief, not fact" (Weinstein, 3).  What interests me here is the intersection between stories about relationships, the ways in which those relationships are constructed, and the effects of varieties of unwanted sexual aggression.

Each post may stand on its own, but I anticipate that the each piece will contribute to a larger mosaic that both deepens and broadens our (or at least my) understanding of what is or is perceived as sexual violence, its effect on individuals discretely and collectively, and what all of this suggests about the narratives in which they occur and about the relational fictions of which they are constitutive.  I begin with Morrison's Beloved. 

Moral Ambiguities in Prévost, pt. 2: Autonomy and Empathy

In my previous post on moral ambiguities in Prévost's Manon Lescaut, I observed how, even when characters and stories are explicitly said to be moral examples, the precise nature of the moral instruction may not be clear.  In particular, I asked of the ethical lesson reflected in the Chevalier des Grieux's interactions with others, "Is one to avoid (being duped into) compromising one’s moral judgment because of compassion, or, positively, to pity a libertine and lighten punishment?  Is one to recognize that pity is a virtue but that manipulating it for self-gain and moral license, as Des Grieux does, is a vice?"  In this post, I simply want to mention a couple of ways in which these questions are as alive for us today as they were for Abbé Prévost in the 1700s:  the relationship between autonomy and empathy in moral evaluation.

Moral Ambiguities in Prévost, pt. 1: Examples

When we say that someone is a moral example, what exactly do we mean?  How skilled are we at discerning the supposed moral virtue to be emulated?  These are questions that I was prompted to consider recently while reading some European fiction and that I think are of abiding relevance. 

In the Foreward to his delightful novel Manon Lescaut (rev. 1753; orig. 1731), Abbé Prévost describes “the subject of the picture I will present” as “an ambiguous character, a mixture of virtues and vices, a perpetual contrast between good impulses and bad actions.”  Prévost envisions the narrative “as an aid to moral instruction.” Specifically, one “will see, in Des Grieux’s conduct, a terrible example of the power of passions…” (Manon Lescaut, 3, although Prévost’s sincerity here is questionable given the text’s history of censorship).  What remains narratively ambiguous is the nature, or content, of the moral instruction supposedly intended.  Is it traditional or unusual?  Without resolving that question, it seems to me that in seeking empathy from other characters Des Grieux highlights how feelings influence, and usually soften, moral judgment.

Narcissism on the Rise: Notable and Quotable

From D. G. Myers, Social Psychology (11^th ed.; New York:  McGraw-Hill, 2012), 54.

After tracking self-importance across the past several decades, psychologist Jean Twenge (2006; Twenge and others, 2008) reports that today’s young generation – Generation Me, she calls it -- express more narcissism (by agreeing with statements such as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place” or “I think I am a special person”).  Narcissism scores rose over time on college campuses from Alabama to Maryland to California (Stewart & Bernhardt, 2010; Twenge & Foster, 2008, 2010).  Narcissism correlates with materialism, the desire to be famous, inflated expectations, fewer committed relationships and more “hooking up,” more gambling, and more cheating, all of which have also risen as narcissism has increased.  Narcissism is also linked to a lack of empathy -- the ability to take someone else’s perspective and be concerned about their [sic] problems -- and empathy has dropped precipitously among college students (Konrath & others, 2011).  The researchers speculate that today’s generation may be so wrapped up in online interaction that their in-person interaction skills have atrophied.  Or, they say, empathy might have declined because young people today are “feeling too busy on their paths to success,” single-mindedly concentrating on their own achievement because the world is now so competitive.  Yet, ironically, those high in narcissism and low in empathy are less -- not more – successful in the long run, making lower grades in college and performing poorly at work (Judge & others, 2006; Robins & Beer, 2001).

But what about a different version of that last ironic phenomenon (high narcissists with low empathy who are lower performing academically and professionally but nevertheless are long-term successful)?  That phenomenon which is familiar to many of us in our everyday experience has a technical explanation attached to it:  promote the jerk and make him someone else’s problem.

There actually is a social scientific explanation more nuanced than the (accurate) one that I just gave.  It is that “even if overconfidence produces subpar results, others still perceive it positively.” Therefore, a jerk, sub-par performer is elevated in an attempt to pair appropriately his status with his perceived attitude.  The thought might be something like, “Well, I find him gratingly obnoxious, but he must be the type of person who gets ahead, because he displays similar traits of authority, power, and exceptionality.” 

We may not be able to control the behavior of narcissistic jerks, but we can be more mindful not to perceive them as better than they are.  And we can take more self-conscious care to check our first psychological impression and not put them on a pedestal.

Of course, sometimes narcissists are at the top simply because they own the place.

Affirming What?

What are the philosophical reasons that support the policy of affirmative action?  And what would admissions letters to students look like if they were philosophically consistent with the supporting rationale?

Rorty and Kant on Ethics

The shift from the modern to the postmodern is sometimes described in terms of movement away from foundations, away from an anchor for reality, knowledge, and ethics. Richard Rorty diagnoses a sharp contrast between two constellations of moral views, Kantians and Hegelians. In advancing his theory, Rorty sides with the Hegelians against the Kantians: "If the Hegelians are right, then there are no ahistorical criteria for deciding when it is or is not a responsible act to desert a community, any more than for deciding when to change lovers or professions" ("Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism," in Pragmatism [ed. Menand], 330). Rorty's framework oversimplifies Kant's moral philosophy on the "ahistorical" matter, but as a heuristic it captures well an impulse -- namely, to derive ethical criteria from the human condition -- that runs from the Enlightenment, including Kant, to Rorty and beyond.

Butler and Rousseau on Identity

Discussions, often controversial ones, about same-sex marriage are largely, among other things, about one's gender identity.  And discussions about gender identity can vacillate from the deterministic pole ("I was born this way") to the performative pole ("I construct my own 'gender,' which might differ from my 'sex'").  A recent speech by Lori Watson, Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the University of San Diego, illustrates especially the performative emphasis.  The speech was given in support of the Catholic university's Pride organization student group, which was organizing its 2nd Annual Drag Show.  In thinking about contemporary issues involving gender identity, I returned to the influential theorist Judith Butler.  Her 1990 book Gender Trouble is a seminal study of performativity that is influential in gender/queer circles such as Professor Watson's.

As I began Butler's 2004 book Undoing Gender, in which she clarifies her position on this passive/performative spectrum, I began to wonder about the pedigree of her central theoretical claims.  To what extent does her balancing act now between biological determinism and social construction resemble concerns about identity that also flowered in another era like the Enlightenment?

Although Judith Butler herself would likely not draw connections between her critique of gender and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critique of the Enlightenment, some noteworthy echoes (and perhaps unacknowledged debts) exist. In particular, her insistence in Undoing Gender that gender “is a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint” (p. 1) reflects, despite some important differences, a comparable tension that in his discourses Rousseau argued attended human self-invention in Enlightenment society: enslaving liberation, or alternatively liberated confinement. This similarity between Butler and Rousseau appears in several respects: recognition, the paradox of agency, and (in)authenticity.

Mind the Gap

Important mainstream media outlets have consciously decided not to cover the newsworthy trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist accused of killing babies who survived botched terminations.  I previously posted about this trial earlier this month.  To fill in the media coverage gap, let me point to a few pieces that stand out.

Nietzsche and Foucault on Domination

Michel Foucault is justifiably regarded as a Nietzschean thinker.  In Madness and Civilization, Foucault adapts Friedrich Nietzsche’s genealogical method of inquiry and extends Nietzsche’s idea that “in all events a will to power is operating” (“Second Essay:  ‘Guilt,’ ‘Bad Conscience,’ and the Like,” in Genealogy of Morals, 514). Influenced by Nietzsche, Foucault interprets the history of madness in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries as attempts to control or dominate others, especially when society’s morals are perceived to be violated or threatened. 

Emerson and Kant on Enlightenment

Ralph Waldo Emerson's cultivation of self-reliance in his essays both breaks with and continues in some important ways the Enlightenment tradition, particularly that outlined by Immanuel Kant. The breaks are not insignificant, but ultimately Emerson stands more firmly within the basic Enlightenment project than outside of it.

Freud and Woolf on Art

In Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Sigmund Freud argues that “[l]ife as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments, and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures” (CD 23). Art is one such “palliative,” one that features prominently in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). Whereas for Freud art is merely one means of substituting pleasure for the pain of reality by escaping reality, in Woolf’s novel art also has a palliative function, but it intersects with and merges with reality to induce pleasure, satisfaction, and intimacy within it.

Cochrane's Alternative Maximum Tax

Today is the national tax filing deadline, tax day.  And today John H. Cochrane of the University of Chicago wants to start a national conversation about a maximum tax.  I will oblige him to some extent by linking to his blog post, which also appears as an opinion column into today's Wall Street Journal.

An inch of difference?

What difference does an inch make?

That is really the question raised by this USA Today column, "We've Forgotten What Belongs on Page One."

The author writes about the events that form the basis of an ongoing trial in Philadelphia about infanticide performed routinely by a physician. The question surrounds the seemingly artificial, in the author's eyes, distinction between what is moral and what is legal:

...whether [the doctor] was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.

So an inch makes the difference between what is illegal and what is legal, between permissible termination of a life and the impermissible termination of it.

The details that emerged during the trial and that are described in the column are just horrifying.  The trial seems to highlight the real dispute at issue:  not when does life begin but when does life become socially valuable?

Our enlightened society and its legal system have an answer. An inch makes all the difference.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is famous for writing in his essay "Self-Reliance" that "[a] foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers..."  Apparently, little statesmen are also wont to adore foolish inconsistencies.  And it reflects the smallness of their minds.

Talk to Them

I am currently reading a book by two MIT professors, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, about poverty.  The book is Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.  It is a good read, and it seeks to cut through some of the major ideological divides.  The poles are often referred to as those of Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs, who argues that more foreign aid can eliminate poverty traps around the globe, and New York University's William Easterly, who argues that aid hurts more than helps because it prevents necessary self-agency, undermines and corrupts local institutions, and hinders the proper functioning of market forces (see pp. 3-4).  All of these authors, Banerjee and Duflo included, have a different, sometimes competing way of assessing and fighting global poverty.

Enter a different sort of prescription for tackling poverty, which so often disproportionately disadvantages children:  talking.

"The Power of Talking to Your Baby" is the title of a short post entry by Tina Rosenberg in yesterday's New York Times Opinionator section.  The entire post is worth reading.  But I'll reproduce the main points of the research she reports.  In prior posts (here, here, here, and here), I have touched on poverty and economic class differences. The research that Ms. Rosenberg discusses is noteworthy because it, like some of my prior posts, highlights the correlation of aspects of family life to poverty.

All parents gave their children directives like “Put away your toy!” or “Don’t eat that!” But interaction was more likely to stop there for parents on welfare, while as a family’s income and educational levels rose, those interactions were more likely to be just the beginning.

The disparity was staggering. Children whose families were on welfare heard about 600 words per hour. Working-class children heard 1,200 words per hour, and children from professional families heard 2,100 words. By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment than a child from a professional family. And the disparity mattered: the greater the number of words children heard from their parents or caregivers before they were 3, the higher their IQ and the better they did in school. TV talk not only didn’t help, it was detrimental.

Hart and Risley later wrote that children’s level of language development starts to level off when it matches that of their parents — so a language deficit is passed down through generations. They found that parents talk much more to girls than to boys (perhaps because girls are more sociable, or because it is Mom who does most of the care, and parents talk more to children of their gender). This might explain why young, poor boys have particular trouble in school. And they argued that the disparities in word usage correlated so closely with academic success that kids born to families on welfare do worse than professional-class children entirely because their parents talk to them less. In other words, if everyone talked to their young children the same amount, there would be no racial or socioeconomic gap at all. (Some other researchers say that while word count is extremely important, it can’t be the only factor.)

This raises a number of questions, and much could be said even before those questions are answered.  I am suspicious, for instance, that early-age word usage by parents accounts entirely for later academic success disparities among students. I think it may be one reason, and may be an important one.

More generally, the notion that talking to one's children in their earliest years might have long-term effects would seem to be as intuitive and obvious as it is apparently lacking in many homes.  Getting some families to talk more to their children, however, will not be as simple as informing them that it is important to do so.  This is not a quick fix.  Background challenges involving the social structure of these welfare children's home, particularly the single-parent nature of so many of them, will also be necessary.

I have not read the full paper by Professors Hart and Risley, but it would be interesting to know whether they also examine the correlation of decreased word use to children in single-parent homes.  Does word use go up or down depending on the household's marital structure, in other words?  If it goes down in single-parent homes relative to two-parent homes, then this study would be additional evidence that family structure, as well as what takes place within it, has a predictive effect on the presence and prevalence of poverty in the United States.

This study from the 1990s is stimulating, but it is only one window into a complex problem.

Hookup Culture and Same-Sex Marriage

A fascinating book review appears in today's Wall Street Journal.  The review is by Emily Esfahani Smith of a new book by Donna Freitas called The End of Sex:  How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy.

The review includes an interesting suggestion, which I had not seen before but makes perfect sense.  It is that there is a high positive correlation between the increased use of technological devices among youth -- which replaces, removes, or corrupts traditional human interaction (a la Sherry Turkle, Nicholas Carr, and many others) -- and the rise of hookup culture on college campuses. (Previous posts here and here provide a summary of Prof. Turkle's ideas.)

Something else worth pondering is a point that Prof. Freitas makes about the culture of sex on college campuses, here summarized by Ms. Smith:

In other words, many college students, who in philosophy class would surely recognize the ethical imperative not to use other people as means to an end, do so every night in their dorms. This selfishness is why, as Ms. Freitas argues, the hookup culture is intimately related to sexual assault. In both, one person uses another to satisfy a sexual or social desire without any regard for what that other person wants, needs or feels. 

Now, one might counter that the sex is consensual and so there is no assault. But the idea underlying the claim of selfish sexual use that disregards what another person "wants, needs, and feels" goes deeper than this.  It is more holistic.  The assumption seems to be that this sexual activity is done in the absence of thinking about what sex is, what it does relationally, and what it is part of holistically.   And absent these fundamental considerations, hookup sex is personally utilitarian to the extreme and, at bottom, immoral.

Professor Freitas may not go so far as I just put it (i.e., say that hookup sex is immoral), but that is apparently her instinct.  And there is something to that notion.

This discussion of campus sexuality is revealing, it seems to me, for the contours surrounding, and the connections to, the same-sex marriage debate that is now current.  Proponents of same-sex marriage tend to defend it on the basis of a "rights" argument, that it is an individual and civil right to be able to marry whomever one may wish.  But this line of argumentation, while it needs to be considered, may be similar to the hookup sex culture in this way:  it tends to assume something about the fundamental issue of what marriage is, and perhaps like hookup sex culture it misses the point.

Arguing for same-sex marriage may not always include explicitly a definition of what marriage is, but there is certainly an assumed definition, which is really a re-definition.  Redefining marriage from the conjugal view to include same-sex partners turns on the idea that marriage is simply a relationally satisfying forum, one that exists for the pursuit of the happiness, or the fulfillment of desires, of those persons involved.  One full expression of this revisionist view is given by S. Girgis, R. George, and R. Anderson:

Marriage is the union of two people (whether of the same sex or of opposite sexes) who commit to romantically loving and caring for each other and to sharing the burdens and benefits of domestic life. It is essentially a union of hearts and minds, enhanced by whatever forms of sexual intimacy both partners find agreeable. (my emphasis)

What if sexual intimacy according to whatever form that partners find agreeable turns out to be deleterious and misguided, as Prof. Freitas argues about hookup culture?  What if the potential form that sexual intimacy takes in marriage is in fact constitutive of marriage itself properly practiced?

I don't know Prof. Freitas's view of the same-sex marriage question, and I am not suggesting that she would support a conjugal view of it.  Based on the review, I doubt she would.

My main contention is simply that if one is going to discuss the merits or legitimacy of different forms of sexuality -- hookup culture on college campuses and marriage itself (because sexuality has been viewed as intrinsic to marriage) -- one needs to be candid about this:  the fact that the discussion is about, or should really be about, what sex or marriage is most basically.  And everyone in the conversation needs to be willing to engage substantively in that discussion.

The preoccupation with a supposed individual right of same-sex persons to marry obscures the logically prior and necessary question of the basic definition of marriage upon which the exercise of any right depends.  Moreover, if someone is confused about what something is and what it is a part of, as in the case of hookup culture, then the doing of that thing will have deleterious and misguided results.

To adapt the subtitle of Prof. Freitas's book, what if same-sex marriage ends up leaving a generation and its posterity confused about intimacy and what marriage really is?

Darwin and Nietzsche on Genealogy

Taking a genealogical approach to an idea -- what is its lineage, family tree, or antecedent chain of births? -- is not new.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau had arguably taken a similar approach to moral degradation and inauthentic living in his "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality" (1754).  (See, e.g., two prior notes on this, here and here.)  It does seem, however, that genealogy more explicitly comes into its own as a method of inquiry in the nineteenth century.  Sigmund Freud himself later will follow much the same path in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).  When one reads Freud's exploring the genealogical history of human unhappiness with civilization, which he explains by tracing the evolution of guilt in the development of the super-ego, one detects not only the influence of Rousseau's incipient genealogical explorations, but also the more mature and distinct projects of nineteenth-century luminaries Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Rousseau and Flaubert on History

What is the role of historical progress, or its effects, in the thinking of two Frenchmen, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)?  In my last post, I compared Rousseau to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) on the subject of what Enlightenment is and has done.  In this post, I want to build on that by focusing more specifically on the question of history as it marched from the period of Enlightenment further into the period of modernity.  And I want to explore this within the French borders.  Kant and Rousseau were contemporaries but not countrymen.  The opposite is true of Rousseau and Flaubert, and it may be beneficial to glimpse how successive generations of French writers saw things unfolding.  Before turning to that, however, a refresher on the European context may be helpful.

Was Rousseau an Enlightenment Figure?

I have recently been re-reading some key texts of modernity, which partly explains my blog silence for the last few months.  Among these texts are essays on the Enlightenment by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).  Sometimes the best questions for learning are the most basic ones.  Here are two:

1. What was Kant's understanding of the Enlightenment?
2. Was Rousseau an Enlightenment figure according to Kant's definition?