A brief remark as I hang out with my newly home-birthed son. (The goods of home birth definitely transcend all isms.) A recent portion of our pomocon/FPR critical saga has involved a fascinating exchange of allegations of stoicism and praise for certain kinds of stoicism. And it is true that pomocons and FPRicans both wisely let the insane world be insane and be the world — to an extent. Our wranglings over what extent’s best are worthwhile; but I’m sure we’ve all noticed that in this conversation the what is inseparable from the how. And when it comes to the how, there’s a smaller, denser how?-question nestled within the answer of ‘stoically’. Which stoicism — that of individuals, or that of communities? That of independent emotional humans, or dependent rational animals? (Or perhaps codependent rationalizing mechanical animals?) We have a veritable supermall food court of stoicisms from which to choose. The mere-lifestyles problem — surmountable as I’m sure it is, and on our own terms, too — extends to stoicisms.
Robert E. Lee, Martha Nussbaum, Alasdair MacIntyre, and the Wandering Pomocon each advance or inspire a different sort of stoicism. Of the many ways to compare and contrast, the one I want to poke at is along the spectrum of solitude and solidarity, with an eye especially toward two questions: distance from whom, and closeness to whom? Because when I really think about the stakes involved in our ongoing pomocon/FPRican discussion, they seem to boil down to the question of which people you have an obligation to put up with in life, and why. On the one hand, this suggests that there’s a big mushy or mongrel middle zone in which pomocon-like persons may rely on and enjoy FPR-like elements of life, and vice versa. But on the other, that question of who you have to put up with really is a personal one.
I mean personal as in “the stakes are high because they bear right down on YOU,” but today, therapeutically, we often mean personal as in “it’s MY decision; you wouldn’t understand, it’s a ME thing.” I think we can prevent my meaning from inevitably degenerating into the therapeutic or narcissistic meaning. No time this minute to wrap up these thoughts with a bow, but let’s think: how stoic? How social a stoicism? And which kind of social?
July 5th, 2009 | 10:20 am
Congratulations on becoming a father. Now you have to root your family in a place. The best of the American Stoics today is Tom Wolfe, who’s indebted to that noble follower of Epictetus Admiral Stockdale. That MacIntyre dolphin book ain’t Stoic, in my view. And don’t get me started on Nussbaum… But overall a good post.
July 5th, 2009 | 2:25 pm
Congratulations, I assume mother and son are all well. Is this a FPR birth?
Seems you’ve married a woman with determination, chuptzah, stamina, and will power…congrats on that as well.
July 5th, 2009 | 5:45 pm
James, mazel tov.
July 5th, 2009 | 8:45 pm
James, congratulations! It’s wonderful news that you and your wife are new parents.
July 6th, 2009 | 9:24 am
Congratulations to the whole family — especially to the baby, for developing sufficient pre-natal intelligence to pick good parents. Does this make him a post-post-modern conservative?
July 6th, 2009 | 3:32 pm
Congratulations, indeed, to your whole clan!
July 6th, 2009 | 3:36 pm
[...] PoMoCon extraordinaire James Poulos and his wife Courtney on the birth of their first son, Nikos James, on [...]
July 7th, 2009 | 11:05 am
Thanks all for the congratulations. So far, so good… and a home birth, too, I might add.
As for the Dolphin Book, yes, I was being a bit rhetorical in invoking ‘communal stoicism’, so to speak. But MacIntyre really does tell us we’re stuck with suffering, even in the face of our best species efforts to care for one another. Rather than pity being a sort of virtue that hearkens us toward a vision of human perfection, it looks like a duty that reminds us of our inescapable imperfection. I find MacIntyre in the Dolphin Book to imply pretty heavily that pity is a natural law even for those who don’t (yet) see it as a divine virtue. I think this would be at odds with a guy like Calvin for whom love of Man can only open to us by way of the love of God.
As for Martha Nussbaum, few stoicisms are more pitiable than one meant to give cold comfort to the aging recent divorcee. “People just move on” and all that. Awful.
July 9th, 2009 | 3:54 pm
Belated congrats!
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