tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206628602024-03-14T14:27:30.075-04:00Problems of LifeReflections on ethics & philosophical miscellaneaMatthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.comBlogger349125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-1949978015722337942021-10-19T16:28:00.000-04:002021-10-19T16:28:12.890-04:00Modeling Meaninglessness<p>Here's a paper I'll be presenting in November: <a href="https://www.academia.edu/59061602/Modeling_Meaninglessness_The_Uses_and_Abuses_of_Sisyphus" target="_blank">Modeling Meaninglessness: The Uses and Abuses of Sisyphus</a></p><p>Abstract: Sisyphus’s futile stone-rolling is often presented as a paradigm of meaningless activity. Recent philosophers often suggest variations on the Sisyphus example as a way of identifying what changes would make his activity meaningful. However, imagining Sisyphus’s activity without reference to its mythical context or to the complexities of Sisyphus’s psychology (beyond his first order desires) renders his situation practically incoherent and inhuman. If we are seeking an account of meaning in human life through reflection on Sisyphus, then we need to imagine him—and other such exemplars of meaning and meaninglessness—in greater detail.</p>Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-21467233095498485792020-07-25T17:12:00.000-04:002020-07-25T17:12:54.417-04:00"What's the Point?"Here's a short essay I wrote awhile back, when I was first starting to think again about Camus and meaning in life. I have been keeping a notebook since my daughter made the comment below to me, and this was an attempt to sum up one of the main lines of thought in it.<br />
<br />
<b>“What’s the Point?”</b> (revised 7/25/20)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either.” – Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd”</blockquote>
One evening my daughter blurted out, “What’s the point of doing anything if we’re all going to die and everyone we know is going to die?” She was twelve years old. We were all sitting around the living room after dinner, not doing much of anything. My wife and I sat on our brown sofa, and my son, four years younger than my daughter, was sitting across from us on a matching loveseat. My daughter had been sprawled in an armchair that marks the rough boundary between the living room and the dining area, and her question—or perhaps her declaration—came without any prompting or preface. I wondered to myself what middle school crisis might be behind her question, but as a philosopher, I was also prepared to treat this as a serious question about the value and meaning of life.
<br />
<br />
I remember at the time suggesting to my daughter that asking about THE point might be a mistake. Why assume that there is—or that there needs to be—some single, underlying answer that gives life and all the varied activities of our lives a meaning big enough to counteract the prospect of death? There are many different things we do that all have various points—some big and some little. No one asks what the point is of taking aspirin since we’re all going to die eventually. The point is to relieve the pain we feel right now. Similarly, we do all sorts of things because they are fun, engaging, challenging, inspiring, decent, kind, and so forth. The point of much of what we do is to be found in the doing of it, not in some future gain that unfortunately gets cancelled out by death.
<br />
<br />
Some would say that the prospect of death intensifies our reasons to do certain things now, while we can. Certainly, we each have limited time, of which we become increasingly aware as we get older. Hence the idea that we should cherish our loved ones today because we never know when the end will come to them or us.
<br />
<br />
But—my skeptical daughter might retort—what’s the point of cherishing all of these people and experiences if it’s all going to be wiped out?! There’s not much one can say in response except, “Because these people and experiences matter to me <i>now</i>.” As long as we’re not doing anything seriously objectionable, that seems like a good enough answer. The point is in the experience, the connection. The shared moments of love and joy that we create together don’t seem to need any larger justification. The point is inside the relationship.
<br />
<br />
For some of us there are moments—of fatigue or depression or anxiety or skepticism—when we take a reflective step back from our ordinary routines and commitments and it all seems to come to nothing. Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel both describe this as the feeling of the absurd. My daughter’s question reflects it. What do our hopes and dreams, our accomplishments and failures, our joys and our sufferings all amount to in the end? We’re all going to die. It’s all going to vanish. Our awareness of it will vanish. All that we have been will disappear into the void.
<br />
<br />
Camus wondered (in <i>The Myth of Sisyphus</i>) why we shouldn’t kill ourselves if the world we live in is so pointless. If we are trapped in a job or a relationship that is boring, brutal, or unfulfilling—and if the whole world is ultimately like that—then life hardly seems to be worth the trouble. However, Camus argues that the absurd is not some feature of the world but of our own attitude toward the world—what is absurd is believing that the universe is indifferent to our hopes and dreams and yet still being upset that that the universe doesn’t care!
<br />
<br />
Camus urges us to revolt against the feeling of the absurd—not to be taken in by the wild and inconsistent ideas it inspires: “If nothing matters, then I may as well blow everything up!” This kind of destructive nihilism simply does not follow from the supposition that nothing matters. If nothing matters, then nothing matters, and nothing can change that. There is nothing to be changed. Nothing follows from nothing. That is Thomas Nagel’s point, too: the thought that life is absurd leads nowhere. It is a dead end.
<br />
<br />
So then what?
<br />
<br />
For Camus, the answer to questions like my daughter’s is ultimately to stop theorizing and to get out into the world and to interact with other people and places and things. To seize upon moments of joy, beauty, delight, and solidarity with other people. To push back against those who would make our lives, our jobs, our institutions feel pointless and absurd. This forces us out of the realm of abstraction and back into the everyday world, where our talk of things mattering or not mattering is framed by specific projects, goals, responsibilities, and relationships.
<br />
<br />
If we happen not to believe in the existence of some ultimate, cosmic justification or purpose for our lives, then there is no point in bemoaning its absence. We have to learn, as Camus puts it in his later book <i>The Rebel</i>, some moderation. Instead of asking, “what is the point of doing anything?” we should ask what is the point of doing this or that particular thing, in the context of our actual life and circumstances. When we contextualize the question, it may help us to evaluate how we spend our time and and motivate us to search for ways to make life—for ourselves and others—more joyful, beautiful, and just.
Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-34178223473721225742020-07-18T15:51:00.001-04:002020-07-18T16:32:31.656-04:00Overcoming Our Adolescent Furies: Camus, Plague, and Meaning in LifeAlbert Camus is hot right now--in the midst of our own pandemic, many people are reading or re-reading <i>The Plague</i>. This is good, because I think that Rieux, the doctor in and (spoiler alert!) narrator of this book, can teach us something about how to live during the uncertainty and other difficulties of the coronavirus pandemic.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nEILnBjN4zFDPZFly82VwkbRqrlXfETasKq_ouJu6_Jw41nepIwjDeeSbxoAE5DFtnbLAEFJD7L5XjGj-Ub9cMu48O3yZYauSyDS20qPB8mvx4az1ff6yEiDXV2ZA5VhnEoh/s1600/31297443-0F06-46EB-AD2C-A67F501972BA.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1031" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nEILnBjN4zFDPZFly82VwkbRqrlXfETasKq_ouJu6_Jw41nepIwjDeeSbxoAE5DFtnbLAEFJD7L5XjGj-Ub9cMu48O3yZYauSyDS20qPB8mvx4az1ff6yEiDXV2ZA5VhnEoh/s320/31297443-0F06-46EB-AD2C-A67F501972BA.png" width="206" /></a></div>
<br />
What we see embodied in Rieux's brave and open-eyed commitment to treating his fellow citizens in Oran, in his doing "what had to be done" without any illusions (about the graveness of the situation) or delusions of grandeur (he does not see himself as a hero), is a fuller manifestation of living a meaningful life in a "meaningless" and absurd world than Camus offers in his earlier works.<br />
<br />
In Camus' absurd trilogy of <i>The Myth of Sisyphus </i>(essay), <i>The Stranger </i>(novel), and <i>Caligula </i>(play), we are confronted with the hopeless feeling that life is absurd, and the temptation to think that if there is no God or purpose, it simply doesn't matter what we do. In <i>The Stranger</i>, Meursalt fails to mourn for his mother's death, murders a nameless Arab, and shows other signs of total indifference to the world and the people around him. None of it matters. None of it makes any difference. In <i>Caligula</i>, the eponymous anti-hero, tormented by the grief of his sister's death, embraces his "absurd freedom" by becoming a brutal and murderous tyrant. Even as conspirators seize him (presumably to kill him) in the final scene, he screams out that he is "still alive!" As if that proves anything if life is as meaningless as he believes it to be.<br />
<br />
Meursault and Caligula both embody <i>the problem: </i>what can or should we do if we are suddenly struck by the feeling that life is absurd? In <i>The Myth of Sisyphus</i>, Camus points out that this problem can beset us in various ways: perhaps a confrontation with death fills us with a feeling of dread and the worry that all will be lost when we die. Perhaps we step back from certain tiresome and repetitive patterns in our lives and we wonder, with a certain dizziness, what the point of it all is. Or perhaps we become a detached observer of life and watch other people move through their busy days; suddenly, all of this human activity seems to have as little consequence as the scuttling of ants in an anthill. Such moments can drive us to despair, and to a kind of "fuck it" attitude toward life. Meursault and Caligula--in their nihilistic apathy and terrorism--represent what Camus would later describe as "adolescent" ways of responding to the feeling of absurdity in his book <i>The Rebel</i>.<br />
<br />
Rieux has absurd problems, too. The outbreak of bubonic plague in Oran has separated him from his wife, who had traveled abroad prior to the quarantine and total lockdown of the city. Officials at first are resistant to believe the data--that the plague is real. A local priest gives horrifying sermons characterizing the plague as a divine punishment. None of this helps fight the plague. But Rieux persists. He does what he can to get the officials to take the plague seriously, he risks his own health to treat patients who are likely to die nonetheless. He remains committed to his work of healing, and he does this, in large part, by keeping focused on the concrete problems at hand and on what he can control, and by refusing to think of the plague or the people in Oran in merely abstract and statistical terms. (Statistics are important in assessing the severity and eventual decline of plague, but people are not statistics.) He refuses to think of himself as a hero for the risks he takes; he is simply doing what had to be done, given his medical training and the situation at hand.<br />
<br />
Even when the plague has subsided, Rieux knows that there will be other plagues and problems. There is no final victory over disease, death, or injustice. In this way, Rieux understands life in the Sisyphean terms Camus describes at in the final pages of <i>The Myth of Sisyphus</i>: there will always be another boulder to roll, another sickness, another challenge to the lives we have set up for ourselves.<br />
<br />
But unlike Meursault, Rieux does not throw up his hands in the face of the repetitions of life and declare that nothing at all matters. Unlike Caligula, he does not use the absurdity of the world to try to justify becoming a monster. The absurdity of the world doesn't justify <i>anything</i>. So, yes, that means we are free to follow our passions as we please. We can, within the limits of nature, do whatever we want. But we have no "right" to any of this. An absurd world doesn't care, for example, about the freedom that some anti-maskers are claiming for themselves in the current coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus is completely indifferent to the rebellion of youth who throw "corona parties." Of course, the people who adopt these attitudes and actions perhaps think that in an absurd world, their freedom means that the whole game of being able to justify one's actions is over, futile. So, fuck it, let's have a corona party and get it all over with.<br />
<br />
This kind of abstract free-for-all nihilism--this version of "absurd freedom"--was never the end game for Camus. These rebellious responses to the absurdity of life--or of lockdown, etc.--are only a first step, even a phase to be overcome. For Camus, what is absolutely necessary is to <i>stop thinking about the meaning of life in abstract metaphysical terms</i>. To "revolt" against the absurd, as he counsels us, is to revolt against prizing abstract thought over concrete realities. If you want to find things that are meaningful in life, you have to pay attention to specific things, specific people, and specific opportunities that exist in your very concrete and immediate world. If you are convinced (or afraid) that life is objectively meaningless (because there's no God, or because God doesn't really care, etc.), then you have to recognize that the objective meaningless of life also <i>doesn't matter</i>. As Thomas Nagel once put it, if life doesn't matter, then that fact doesn't matter either.<br />
<br />
What <i>does </i>matter then? This is the very question which, in an absurd world, has no predetermined answer. Instead, you have to look and see. You have to consider the everyday effects of your actions on others. You have to consider what opportunities the world affords you that stir your own interests and passions, and which you can undertake with both joy and honesty. Honesty--because in an absurd world, you don't get to make any excuses. You don't get to claim any grand justification for what you do. You have to be able to live with others, or accept the price of being a jerk without whining about your "rights" or whatever. Sure, you're free to live like a Caligula or a Meursault, but if you do, then you should expect life to go about as well for you as it did for them.<br />
<br />
Rieux shows us, in a much more realistic way than Sisyphus rolling his boulders in the underworld, what it can mean to live with courage, integrity, and compassion, even in an absurd and highly uncertain situation. His words and actions do make a difference. A few patients recover. A journalist named Raymond Rambert, who spends half of the novel attempting to escape Oran to return to his girlfriend, gives up his escape attempts when he learns--what Rieux has long hidden from him--that Rieux is separated from his own wife and so perhaps suffering in much the same way as he is. It is one of the most touching moments in the whole book because it shows what solidarity in spite of suffering looks like in the flesh. Friendship, love, and care for others do not require a cosmic justification. They just require us to look down from the heavens and into each other's eyes.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-35113192655417472862020-07-18T14:05:00.001-04:002020-07-18T14:05:19.152-04:00Thinking About a RestartI've started a new book this summer about the myth of Sisyphus and the search for meaning. I've also been thinking a lot about how some of my reading and writing relates to this current mess of a pandemic we're in. Etc. So, I'm thinking about a re-start of the blog as a place to gather and work out some ideas that are in between the more academic project and my more casual and short posts on Facebook...stay tuned.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-53328303261004828602018-07-02T12:21:00.001-04:002018-07-02T12:21:10.338-04:00I Still Do Philosophy Sometimes, Too!Yeah, I've been <a href="https://mattpianaltobanjo.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">busy playing music</a>.<br />
<br />
But I've also been spending some time this summer editing and expanding a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36408558/A_Daoist_Critique_of_Socrates" target="_blank">paper on Socrates and Daoism</a>. Look for an updated version soon.<br />
<br />
Once I finish that, I'll do something more with this <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36838173/The_Consolations_of_Instrumental_Music" target="_blank">paper on the musical consolation</a> that I presented last November at the American Society for Aesthetics annual meeting.<br />
<br />
I just finished reading this wonderful book by Hans Georg-Moeller entitled <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Moral_Fool.html?id=4p5k1rJdVmYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">The Moral Fool</a></i>, which I came across while doing some research on Daoism. He argues, starting from some Daoist ideas, that we need <i>less </i>morality. (Really, less self-righteousness and the use of morality as a weapon.) It's quite provocative, at least if you've ever been tempted by moralism. I think that one could probably argue that his position still invokes moral ideas (or assumptions)--a rose by any other name, etc.--and I'm still pondering the way he attempts simply to absorb that point without allowing that it counts against his main claims. I certainly have found Daoism quite attractive as of late; it seems like a helpful antidote to excessive moralizing (in philosophy, social media, etc.), and probably is personally appealing to me for similar reasons as I am drawn to Stoicism.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-30543630180046312732017-11-02T15:44:00.001-04:002017-11-02T16:55:00.759-04:00New Banjo Album I recorded an album called <i>Down Creek. </i>Solo banjo, mostly instrumental, on two different banjos, with a version of "Wayfaring Stranger" at the end. You can listen and/or order a copy here: <a href="https://matthewpianalto.bandcamp.com/album/down-creek">https://matthewpianalto.bandcamp.com/album/down-creek</a><br />
<br />
Enjoy!<br />
<br />
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=738741384/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://matthewpianalto.bandcamp.com/album/down-creek">Down Creek by Matthew Pianalto</a></iframe>
Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-3837876998579352692017-08-22T11:42:00.000-04:002017-08-22T11:42:02.256-04:00Updates and More to Come1. The paperback edition of <i>On Patience </i>is now shipping out. <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498528207/On-Patience-Reclaiming-a-Foundational-Virtue" target="_blank">Order from the publisher</a> and use the code LEX30AUTH17 to get a discount on any edition.<br />
<br />
2. Over the summer, my university-hosted webpage was deleted because the whole system was taken down. This means that there will be several broken links on old posts, and I don't anticipate trying to update all of them. However, I do plan to chip away at moving several of the papers I had up on that website to <a href="https://eku.academia.edu/MatthewPianalto" target="_blank">my Academia.edu page</a>, as well as to "self-archive" some of the published versions that are now more than a year old.<br />
<br />
3. My days of actively blogging and keeping up with blogs has passed. I never adapted well to the death of the Google Reader. I don't so much miss the academic <strike>gossip</strike> news blogs, but I do miss being in closer touch with a few others. But there's only so much time in the day, and when I'm not teaching, reading, or writing, I've usually got a banjo on my knee. If you're interested in that side of me, you can try looking me up on Facebook. Now that school is back in session, I'll be trying to get back to work on some philosophy of music writing. I'll have to decide what to do with this space.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-81425880023009120372017-06-27T17:31:00.000-04:002017-06-27T17:31:20.994-04:00On Patience Paperback Edition Pre-order and Discount The paperback edition of On Patience is available for pre-order (to ship some time in July)! Use the code LEX30AUTH17 to get 30% off. <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498528207/On-Patience-Reclaiming-a-Foundational-Virtue">https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498528207/On-Patience-Reclaiming-a-Foundational-Virtue</a>Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-56147208793816765572017-01-11T13:38:00.001-05:002017-01-11T13:38:27.749-05:00Ethics Beyond Sentience<a href="http://encompass.eku.edu/tcj/vol1/iss1/6/" target="_blank">This paper</a> has been forthcoming for the three or four years, but here it is in its final version, in the first issue of the <i>Chautauqua Journal</i>. In it, I probe whether moral consideration should end where sentience ends. I suggest not. Corpses and mountains, among other things, are discussed.<br />
<br />
Thanks to Minh Nguyen for inviting me to write something, and to Erik Liddell (who has taken over the lecture series and journal project) for getting this out.<br />
<br />
<br />Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-86717364167578042342016-07-12T21:55:00.001-04:002016-07-12T21:55:37.539-04:00On Patience: Discounts come to those who wait<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8bLRQi_6Wx-SHlMQldtMlNxWVE/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">30% off U.S. orders.</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8bLRQi_6Wx-RHBYTGlZaC1hWUk/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">30% off U.K. and International orders.</a><br />
<br />
Please share!<br />
<br />
Here are the Google Books preview pages:<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="500" scrolling="no" src="https://books.google.com/books?id=z4UpDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1&output=embed" style="border: 0px;" width="500"></iframe>Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-48191267053699223932016-06-21T13:05:00.001-04:002016-06-21T13:05:42.977-04:00It's Out: On Patience: Reclaiming a Foundational VirtueAvailable in hardback and ebook via <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498528207/On-Patience-Reclaiming-a-Foundational-Virtue" target="_blank">the Rowman & Littlefield website</a>, Amazon, and other online sellers. A paperback edition will be released at a later date.<br /><br />
<br /><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=eudaimonia-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=1498528201&asins=1498528201&linkId=cb66eb044f891b9450e9d7fe38a1960d&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-39487328001284668922016-02-02T11:26:00.002-05:002016-02-02T11:26:41.075-05:00On Patience Blog/SiteI've sent the final manuscript off to my editor, and so now another round of (hopefully patient) waiting begins as the book finds its way into the typesetting phase. I've put together a blog/site for the book: <a href="http://onpatience.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">On Patience: Reclaiming a Foundational Virtue</a> (also the book title). I'll post updates there and in various other places, as they become available. There are links to a few other things to read on that page, too, while you wait for my book!Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-34252151836603066292016-01-08T12:53:00.000-05:002016-01-08T12:53:51.128-05:00Happiness, Patience, & BanjosHere's wishing all a (late) Happy New Year.<br />
<br />
I'm currently wrapping up a multi-book review of some recent introductory books to ideas about happiness and the good life for <i>Teaching Philosophy</i>. I have joked that, paradoxically, this project has not been conducive to my own happiness. (But perhaps it's made my life better?)<br />
<br />
Just as the fall semester was ending, I received a very positive report on my manuscript <i>On Patience</i> from the publisher's anonymous reader. I will be making a few changes, and if all goes well, the book may be published later this year! Stay tuned.<br />
<br />
January 3 was my second banjo anniversary. I made a video of the tune "Last Chance" to commemorate the occasion and to document my progress, posted below. The general consensus is that I'm making good progress.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QR5ipyUg65g" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
It's been an interesting, if obsessive, journey. (I spend a good amount of time practicing. But that's the only way to learn and improve.) I've learned a lot
about the history of old-time and Appalachian music, all of which was
pretty much new to me when I started learning to play. However, there's
something about all of it that speaks to me--among other things, the DIY
spirit of the music and the diversity of banjo styles (if all you know
is Dueling Banjos, then you're missing out on the expressive range and
stylistic possibilities in this peculiar drum-on-a-stick). The are also
several things about folk traditions in general that contrast quite
interestingly, from a philosophical point of view, with "high art" music
such as the classical tradition. So it's been interesting to read my
musical learning onto the reading I've been doing in the philosophy of
music (where some but not all authors seem to forget about, or dismiss,
folk music). Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-70182678357953780762015-10-25T19:22:00.003-04:002015-10-25T19:22:43.588-04:00Art & Banjo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I've mostly been a mole in the ground lately. Lots of reading about philosophy of music and art in general. A little writing on music and value (responding to some puzzling yet repeated claims by Alan Goldman). I'm going to try teaching philosophy of art in the spring. If you have any favorite books or articles or other tips, send them my way. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
And I've been up to quite a bit more of this, which is partly why I've gotten interested of late in arts and aesthetics issues:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6sgNQ38tDcU/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6sgNQ38tDcU?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<br />Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-17187121414022391312015-07-17T12:37:00.000-04:002015-07-17T12:37:02.784-04:00The Kreutzer SonataVladamir Jankélévitch refers to Tolstoy's <i>The Kreutzer Sonata</i> when discussing Tolstoy's negative views on music (in his <i>Music and the Ineffable</i>). I was intrigued so I found a copy. Doris Lessing is surely right in describing it as a compelling read (in her introduction to the edition I got). But in light of Tolstoy's <i>aims</i> in writing the book, it is truly bizarre. (A real counter-point to my big summer read last year, <i>Anna Karenina</i>.)<br />
<br />
What we get is a story of sexual desire, jealousy, and self-hatred, told by a man who murders his wife on the basis of some truly paranoid suspicions that she cheating on him. In the "Sequel" to the book, Tolstoy reiterates his conservative arguments on sexual morality and marriage. But it is truly perplexing to think that he could have seen this book as a good argument for his positions (not only because many of his own ideas are put into the mouth of a murderer). For all the while, as I read the narrator's bitter views on sex and marriage, I find myself thinking that for all the bluster, this guy is just unhappy and doesn't know how to deal moderately with his own sexuality.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, as Lessing discusses, there is the problem of not really giving any even-handed consideration to the female (heterosexual) perspective. Lessing does a nice job of trying to help us imagine sexual life in the 19th century (no birth control), and Tolstoy's (and his wife's) life in particular (she makes a lot, quite to the point, about the number of children they had). But she also rightly, I think, sums up the "philosophical" aims of the work as those of a "fanatic," locked tightly into an ideological perspective that is not only unrealistic (Tolstoy responds to that charge in the Sequel) but also paradoxically oblivious to the complexity and varieties of sexual intimacy. (Lessing speculates that perhaps Tolstoy wasn't good in bed, which would explain the frustration surrounding some of the discussions of sex.) Tolstoy's dualism--sex is "animal," "man" should transcend "animal nature"--forces sex to remain "dirty" and something to be avoided. But there's a false dichotomy here, if you think we can accept our "animal nature" and yet remain "human," where acceptance means something other than trying to get as far away from the animal as possible. As Lessing points out, Tolstoy "went at it" into his seventies, and so maybe part of the problem (as with his narrator) is that he happened to have a rather strong sexual appetites. But this is the sort of thing I despise: projecting your own personal struggles onto humanity as a whole, such that we are all assumed to have the same problem, and then giving your personal plan or cure as the norm for all.<br />
<br />
Read as a story about sexual frustration, jealousy, and madness, it's a real page-turner. But I'm not sure I would go to Tolstoy for relationship advice.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-414593327689794282015-07-14T15:17:00.000-04:002015-07-14T15:18:01.375-04:00Online First: Nietzschean PatienceForgot to mention this with my other big announcement: my article <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10790-015-9503-z" target="_blank">"Nietzschean Patience"</a> is now available Online First in <i>The Journal of Value Inquiry</i>. There are also several other papers there on Nietzsche and virtue. (These are to be published as a special issue; my article just happened to get accepted around the same time. A nice coincidence!) Enjoy.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-71977737033451177652015-07-13T01:04:00.001-04:002015-07-13T01:04:14.048-04:00Coming Soon: On PatienceI am pleased to announce that my book <i>On Patience </i>is now under contract with Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)!<br />
<br />
I will turn the manuscript by early next month, and there will be a peer review process, presumably with some improvements to be made. (So my post title should perhaps be "Coming Sooner or Later, But It Is Coming...")<br />
<br />
When I'm not working on that, I'm about ready to start sketching out some more reactions to the reading I've been doing on the philosophy of music. Stay tuned for that and for updates about the book!Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-8478467532620312242015-06-04T11:53:00.000-04:002015-06-04T11:53:03.384-04:00Music and SilenceI mentioned Jankélévitch's <i>Music and the Ineffable </i>in my last post, and I want to thank Jay Langguth, a philosopher at Thomas More College, for bringing the book to my attention. If I understood the book correctly, Jankélévitch adopts the view that music does not "express" emotions or ideas (in any sense of "express" that is linguistic, so to speak) but rather imitates the rhythms and "atmospheres" of "life, freedom, [and] love." He's talking about instrumental music ("pure music" in the terminology of philosophers of music). I'm not sure I agree, but it's an interesting view to consider, especially when thinking about music without words/lyrics. I would accept that some music takes that form, or is fruitfully understood in this way. <br />
<br />
Any way, here's a nugget to ponder from the last chapter (on music and silence): "Music is a sort of silence, and one needs silence in order to hear music; the one silence is necessary to hear the other, melodious silence. As melodious, measured noise, enchanted noise, music needs to be surrounded by silence. Music imposes silence upon words and their soft purring, that is, upon the most facile and voluble noise of all, the noise of idle chatter." -- Vladamir Jankélévitch, <i>Music and the Ineffable</i> (139-140)<br />
<br />
And a video of a slow, quiet tune I worked up the other day on the fretless banjo, "based on a true story" (see title). A lot of banjo playing is fast, but I also find myself interested in tunes that work at a slower tempo (and not just because I have a slow and clumsy left hand).<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qwVhgZg3fQA" width="420"></iframe>Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-28016312694076523352015-05-21T12:53:00.000-04:002015-05-21T12:55:57.718-04:00Update: Tenure, Patience, & Banjos (Among Other Things)It goes without saying that I've gotten away from the blog and from keeping up with other blogs. (I do miss the discussions I had with some folks on our blogs). You'll see what happened to "blog time" below. Here's a sort of year-in-review, since it's been almost a year since I last posted.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO2-4kmii2Q7AnS_nE6B64kXjbqs_0sGpQeXQp-pz1JQ4p8jUn7o4BMNzrUz_v5UI0UlUrFBUQ6BJ_XX3mfw54oZZJdwWR6oC3YJ6UXmGdBJ7AlHDFUYHLBPFWPPH3r9mrXM3W/s1600/tenure+application.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO2-4kmii2Q7AnS_nE6B64kXjbqs_0sGpQeXQp-pz1JQ4p8jUn7o4BMNzrUz_v5UI0UlUrFBUQ6BJ_XX3mfw54oZZJdwWR6oC3YJ6UXmGdBJ7AlHDFUYHLBPFWPPH3r9mrXM3W/s200/tenure+application.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
I received tenure this spring, starting in the fall. (That's a pic of the application.)<br />
<br />
I continue to work on getting my patience manuscript placed with a publisher and will spend some time this summer doing some tweaking. Also, look for an article by me on "Nietzschean Patience" in <i>The Journal of Value Inquiry</i> some time soon. (It's in press as of now.)<br />
<br />
For a year, I'll be the President of the <a href="http://kentuckyphilosophy.blogspot.com/">Kentucky Philosophical Association</a>. The annual meeting will be at Bellarmine University some time in late March or early April. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPI26ykDuI3snqzb6-9mqUDDmcA0-AUUq_zPb0zBSbjZGF6LDm9vMbMTBS_xe7MmcZijufbKgqUZkD0qmZ68-QduJE2iRFPEWcZNnUExi-6aBhpD6qeNjlDJrBnA13_LbljuXu/s1600/militant+agnostic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPI26ykDuI3snqzb6-9mqUDDmcA0-AUUq_zPb0zBSbjZGF6LDm9vMbMTBS_xe7MmcZijufbKgqUZkD0qmZ68-QduJE2iRFPEWcZNnUExi-6aBhpD6qeNjlDJrBnA13_LbljuXu/s200/militant+agnostic.jpg" width="200" /></a>I'm also coordinating the summer programming at the local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. The community minister recently gave me a bumper sticker that she said reminded her of me. (Thanks, I think!)<br />
<br />
I taught a very interesting honors course with Christopher Jackson of EKU's Department of Art & Design called "Arguing with Images." We examined the idea of "visual arguments" and spent time looking at philosophical and visual arguments on issues like abortion, animal ethics, and in politics. The students created their own visual arguments at the end of the semester and some of them were quite impressive. This class has also continued to steer me, along with a recent thesis I mentored and a paper I commented on recently, into that other realm of "value theory" that is aesthetics.<br />
<br />
Right now I'm reading Vladamir Jankelevitch's <i>Music and the Ineffable</i>, and have also been reading stuff on, roughly, "the limits of language." My position right now is still that there aren't the kinds of limits to language that the early Wittgenstein insisted; I think that those who claim that there are things <i>within</i> our cognitive and experiential grasp that "words can't express" forget about the power of figurative and poetic language and that those uses are part of language, too. I've been trying to write on this a bit, but it's all mostly taking the form of notes right now. I need to read more.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXmiW0nnvjNOE8wHpWZk_PFfezAokuVcU_doBUrq5M2dnIp0xjwsLGLTLLiOLzccd0Lvj71YcAagOk9VGWl-kl9YbJCff2hnvCJ6tvNL0JHMOZKi1OeM1cE43YvfSWZC_hpT1v/s1600/me_shaved.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXmiW0nnvjNOE8wHpWZk_PFfezAokuVcU_doBUrq5M2dnIp0xjwsLGLTLLiOLzccd0Lvj71YcAagOk9VGWl-kl9YbJCff2hnvCJ6tvNL0JHMOZKi1OeM1cE43YvfSWZC_hpT1v/s200/me_shaved.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXqGyBXEqBkqlHPnMshmwoqby15HJXEcboT6kC6OquXggIbFW_6dPWpKL5AumcJGFWDToTu7k8IbyhCbhyphenhyphenSi4uyNyc0KLanr3tpwvFxQH5HJEpPnutLVG8E8xGkV8Ufxl1Yzc5/s1600/Craig_12.1.13_Profile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXqGyBXEqBkqlHPnMshmwoqby15HJXEcboT6kC6OquXggIbFW_6dPWpKL5AumcJGFWDToTu7k8IbyhCbhyphenhyphenSi4uyNyc0KLanr3tpwvFxQH5HJEpPnutLVG8E8xGkV8Ufxl1Yzc5/s200/Craig_12.1.13_Profile.jpg" width="200" /></a>I shaved (left), which was a real shock to my children. (I also have a new scar on my forehead from taking an elbow to the head while playing basketball. It was a bloody mess, literally. I did make the shot, though.) I guess I'll have to finally retire the profile pic I use in various places, which was a picture taken by my friend Craig Earl Nelson (right), who passed away at the end of 2013.<br />
<br />
Last, but hardly least, I started learning to play the 5-string banjo in January 2014. That's primarily where "blog time" went. And family life is keeping me busy, too.<br />
<br />
Here's something I made up a few days ago that I'm pretty happy with, although the recording and the playing are rough:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NFvX9q2XnmI/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NFvX9q2XnmI?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
And here's another song that's fun recorded a few months ago (although it turns out that I switched up some things from the version I'd been listening to. One nice thing about the Old Time scene is that variations on themes rather than lock-step imitation seems to be part of the tradition; I've heard over a dozen versions of Cumberland Gap and each one is a little different). "Ramblin' Hobo":<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tGGeAmeiTcc/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tGGeAmeiTcc?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
You can see the top of my other, <a href="http://www.chloesgarden.com/Banjos%20on%20Web/Banjos.htm">fretless banjo</a> in the background of this video. Maybe I'll post something on that soon. I'm working on something on it that's sort of a musical dialogue.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-44975859582268958132014-06-17T11:31:00.000-04:002014-06-17T11:33:46.173-04:00Patience for ParentsI got asked to talk at the local UU on Father's Day. I'd originally hoped to offer some "narrative non-fiction" about being a dad, but ran into a bit of a wall. So, I went back to what I "know" (in theory if not practice), and attempted to say something about the place of patience in the life of the parent, and my sense of the need to connect my own theory and practice: <a href="http://people.eku.edu/pianaltom/Patience_for_Parents.pdf">"We Are Not There Yet: Patience for Parents."</a><br />
<br />
I joked that perhaps one way in which my work on patience intersects with my life as a parent is when I am yelling at my children to be quiet so that I can work on my book about patience...<br />
<br />
P.S. The Jack I refer to at the end is Jack McDowell, a UU member who practices Zen meditation (and often goes to retreats at a Zen center called Furnace Mountain in Eastern Kentucky), who did a talk and guided meditation on mindfulness the week prior to my talk.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-54893078236421608092014-05-23T02:39:00.001-04:002014-05-23T02:39:16.570-04:00Two Senses of Patience in the Greek of the New TestamentUp to know, I'd been working with the assumption that the term <i>patience</i> had roots that come later than the ancient Greek thinkers (which is in some sense right), in part because although Aristotle, for example, discusses virtues related to patience, like <i>mildness</i>, there is no obvious term in his ethic that captures quite what patience came to mean in Christian thought or in its (watered down) modern sense of calm waiting. <a href="http://spectrummagazine.org/article/sabbath-school/2010/01/24/meaning-patience">This article</a> points out that there are two Greek terms (not commonly used by the ancients) that occur in the New Testament, both of which have been translated as <i>patience</i>, although their meanings differ slightly.<br />
<br />
I found a copy of Barclay's <i>New Testament Words</i> (one of the sources for the article above) at Berea College Library today (just down the road), and it's an interesting little book. Barclay calls <i>hupomonē </i>"The Manly Virtue" and a kind of "masculine constancy," which suggests that it's a form of patience that Aristotle would have regarded as a virtue (given it's meaning of endurance and perseverance, and so its connection with courage), even as <i>makrothumia</i> (the patience of tolerance and forbearance, that connects with the Christian virtue of meekness) appears ultimately at odds with his conception of mildness (which allows for some justified anger and payback, even as one is slow to anger) and magnanimity (<i>megalopsuchia</i>). [I keep thinking about those odd commercials for the low-calorie soda Dr. Pepper 10 that exclaim, "It's not for women!" and how to turn that into a joke about <i>hupomonē</i>, given Barclay's gloss.]<br />
<br />
I haven't done as much principled and chronological mapping of these various terms as I might have, and I find myself now wondering how we got from <i>hupomonē</i> (and to some extent, <i>makrothumia</i>, too)--which is close enough to courage that Aquinas classifies patience as he understood it as a form of fortitude--to patience as calm waiting. My main hunch is simply that endurance, perseverance, and tolerance/forbearance all involve, in part, waiting (for the pain to end, for the goal to be achieved, for anger and the thirst for revenge to pass, so that one can act justly and wisely). (A quick survey of the French terms <i>patience</i> and <i>l'attente</i> suggests the same thing in French, just for another point of comparison in a contemporary Western language.)Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-29864826719251200412014-05-23T01:57:00.002-04:002014-05-23T01:57:32.536-04:00Animal Ethics (Interview/Article, Part II)<a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/matthew-pianalto-ph-d-discusses-the-spectrum-of-animal-ethics-theories">Here.</a><br />
<br />
Thanks again to <a href="http://www.examiner.com/animal-advocacy-3-in-arlington/jeannette-smith">Jeannette Smith</a> for inviting me to do the interview that resulted in this article and <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/matthew-pianalto-ph-d-inspires-ethical-action-at-eastern-kentucky-university">the previous one</a>. <span id="goog_37102882"></span><span id="goog_37102883"></span>Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-33558129023830394412014-05-06T15:07:00.000-04:002014-05-06T15:07:11.369-04:00Horn, Tooting<a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/matthew-pianalto-ph-d-inspires-ethical-action-at-eastern-kentucky-university" target="_blank">I'm in the news</a>, sort of, and there may be a second part that gets more into theory. (Answering by email the interview questions that produced this article was <i>hard</i>--harder than it may appear in the article. At least, it took some time. I'm not a quick thinker.)<br />
<br />
Also, <a href="http://ritpress.rit.edu/publications/books/epictetus-his-continuing-influence-and-contemporary-relevance.html" target="_blank"><i>Epictetus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance</i></a> is now out (and has one of my papers on patience in it). <br />
<br />
Good luck to all as the semester winds down. I'll do something other than toot my horn soon.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-3462835598327086862014-04-15T12:31:00.001-04:002014-04-15T12:31:29.489-04:00Eating Meat and Eating People<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=61r4Q97khxcC&lpg=PA77&ots=bE6v4WECiJ&dq=%22are%20eating%20the%20flesh%20of%20these%20children%22&pg=PA77#v=onepage&q=%22are%20eating%20the%20flesh%20of%20these%20children%22&f=false" target="_blank">"Every day 40,000 children die in the world for lack of food. We who overeat in the West, who are feeding grains to animals to make meat, are eating the flesh of these children."</a> - Thich Nhat Hanh<br />
<br />
(Found this on the <a href="http://www.animalliberationfront.com/" target="_blank">ALF</a> website while doing some research for class.)Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-11467221558512564362014-03-30T23:53:00.002-04:002014-03-30T23:53:32.652-04:00Why Patience is Always a VirtueI'll be <a href="http://people.eku.edu/pianaltom/Why_Patience_Is_Always_A_Virtue.pdf">presenting a paper</a> thus titled this coming weekend in Bowling Green Kentucky at the <a href="http://kentuckyphilosophy.blogspot.com" target="blank">KPA</a>. These ideas will be familiar to regular visitors here. Here's the abstract:
<blockquote>ABSTRACT: It is sometimes suggested that traits commonly regarded as virtues are not in every instance virtuous. On such views, these traits are not univocally good: one might possess too much courage or too much patience. Such talk has a natural feel — “be patient, but not <i>too </i>patient!” — but it conflicts with traditional ways of thinking about the virtues. In this paper, focusing on the case of patience, I illustrate a way of resolving this conflict that accords with the spirit of the traditional approach — in particular with the thought that the virtuous traits are themselves always good. That means, for example, that patience is always a virtue, and that one cannot be “too patient,” even though those claims seem to conflict with other rather ordinary ways of thinking and talking about patience. The approach illustrated herein can also be applied to similar conflicts and disputes about other virtues.</blockquote>Comments welcome. I'm hard at revisions and re-writing of the book manuscript, which is a challenge in part because I'm generally trying not to copy and paste from these various papers and presentations, in an attempt to write in a way that is as non-technical as possible (for me and my aims, at least). I hope, however, to merge key ideas in many of these shorter papers into some kind of a journal article (or two) that will hopefully complement the book, and build on some forthcoming book chapters that are also about patience.Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com9