advertising slogan/book blurb: You can be happy if you try.
Philosophically modulated version: You can be virtuous if you try.
On days when we go to the doctor, for some reason I never get enough
sleep, and the day is guaranteed to be unpleasant and unproductive.
We waited more than two hours in the doctor's office--not unusual.
The only good thing is that we were not tortured by a television--the technology of large screens and flat surfaces means nothing to me.
I found myself contributing at Leiter Reports and being misunderstood, having my views
somewhat parodied by one student. Leiter himself very wisely did not publish my response to a student's parody of what I'd said.
However, after reading the words of the student I have come to some conclusions.
The occupation in the USA of 'ethics professor" or specialist in Ethics does have many
unwanted side-effects, among them reinforcement of certain ruling ideologies.
Consider the proposition: you can be virtuous no matter what job you have.
(The student did not exactly say that, but it will do as something that is broadly attractive, and in the spirit of things I've heard/read.)
Myself, I don't believe that proposition. Last night I saw the classic Russian film "Burnt by the Sun". In it a younger man who works for the "political police" arranges for the disappearance (murder) of a famous war hero. We learn enough of the younger man's history to understand that the political regime had treated him roughly, had disrupted a life which had previously been happy, and that the older man played a part in it. We also know that he would have preferred not to be part of the older man's murder.
However, he did arrange for the murder of the older man. And, afterwards, he committed suicide himself.
From where I sit life in the United States has much in common with life in the Soviet Union during Stalin's days. Our choices are very limited--or should I say that my choices and the choices of those around me are very limited? And, for that reason, high-minded language at the Leiter Reports (.e.g. There are worse things to lose than a tenure track job.) seems to me to be wholly hollow and empty.
Indeed, might one not mention the many innocents who today have been tortured, not to mention killed, for the sake of politics, as well as the willingness to use torture to obtain confessions? All parallels I did not originally have in mind, which serve to convince me that my claim is not mere hyperbole.....Historically minded individuals will deny any such comparisons, but the issue is: what's nearer the truth--my comparison-- or the high-spirited assertion that anyone can be virtuous if s/he tries?
Note: Wikipedia entry for "Burnt by the Sun":
after-thought
Indeed, my capacity for empathy/sympathy and my imaginative powers are severely limited.....faced with the daily exertions of emptying urine bottles (six or eight or ten or more times a day), assisting my father when he needs to stand, and various and sundry other odd jobs from cooking to cleaning to shopping, with barely ten or twenty minutes free from interruption, (Please see note below.) and then the cruel irony of friends suggesting that I write in my free time....and, at the same time, unemployed (though I work in the home), without a place of my own, and without health insurance, and with most of my friends an ocean away....Yes, faced with all that, I've not much sympathy or understanding left for the difficulties of philosophy professionals...
Note:
Oh, no, please don't misunderstand me: I don't work non-stop. But interruptions are common, and unpredictable and they prevent the flow needed to do any serious writing, reading, or thinking. I'll bet Jane Austen didn't have an eighty-six year old father in her care, a father whose sheer size and physical strength combined with a lack of motor control even now allow him to give someone a good punch without meaning too....Hence, the friendly advice that I should write is simply painful to hear.
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