8 June 2024
PART II: Process
Why Processes? (Continued)
In the paragraph above, we have just tackled health, wealth, and friendship. What is the likelihood of someone who has learned those habits suffering from runaway anxiety or an unloving family? No question, the risk is still there based on individual personalities, sudden reversals, deaths of loved ones, wars, famine…but, in stable countries with relatively stable economies, good work, friendships, and health are probably not a bad trio with which to begin.
As above, my sense is that the percentage of families inculcating such values in Canada has decreased since my own youth. Having grown up in a prosperous WASPish community, our family was in the minority, in our neighbourhood, for not being churchgoers. We were also one of the more socially maladroit families, by my own estimation. I don’t think this a coincidence. While previous discussion of wokeism alluded to my lack of enthusiasm for dogma, it is not the Bible that I hold responsible for some of the social virtues in churchgoers, it is the discipline and practice of washing, dressing, attending, and getting along with others that fosters these virtues. It is the sense of community, connection, and belonging and the knowledge gained, about what other families are dealing with, that begins to increase our sense of the scope of issues afloat in the world at any one time. Simultaneously, that connection to community roots us.
Hall (2018) emphasized some critical Aristotelian values that ought be part of this discussion of ranked values. In terms of the 1970s communal sense of church, above, this flows organically from Aristotle’s proclamation that humans are by nature social animals, indeed had we not been, it is far less likely we would have survived. That speculation aside, Aristotle also emphasized the constant need of independent thought. That thought, which Hall (2018, p. 31) describes as ethical particularism, is of enormous importance.
The reason for this importance is the phenomenological* link between principle and empirical science. Aristotle was, after all, the first to identify logic, without which empirical science is not possible. But, his life as a biologist, as one deeply and texturally concerned with the context-specific factors in ethical judgment, means he was also a phenomenologist, if not in word, in method, style, and intent.
That intent was to see and understand the truth in all of its subtle and particular complexity. “Aristotle thought that general principles are important, but without taking into account the specific circumstances, general principles can be misleading. This is why some Aristotelians call themselves moral particularists. Each situation and dilemma requires detailed engagement with its nitty-gritty particulars” (Hall, 2018, p. 31). The requirement for detailed engagement with nitty-gritty particulars reminds me, vividly, of my professor of qualitative methods who hounded us into knowing our data intimately. He would emphasize his desire to see coffee stains, random notes, paper tears etc. in the data as proof of our intimate engagement with that data.
I hope some of you might see what’s going on here. While we began this section (PART II: Process) with the need for ranked values, we quickly gravitated toward an epistemological foundation. By that, I mean that before you spend time on achievable values, you will want to know how you think and what you consider to be valid tests of truth. I am a realist who lives by Aristotle’s dictum that A = A but with the understanding that there’s usually a helluvalot more to A than immediately meets the eye. What Hall (2018) opened up to me was her sense that Aristotle shared that granular and interpretive way of seeing. That is also consistent with our Heraclitian premise that life is flux. While essential identities don’t change, their particularities are in constant motion.
This may be most easily understood by looking at the life of any human being. Take a trans woman, for example. Her essence, her soul, i.e., her integrated mind and body, may undergo voluntary changes to bring her into stronger physical alignment with her gender identity, but her essential person remains the same. Her parents, her genetic code, her siblings, and her hometown don’t change. As human beings go, trans people probably experience more flux than most, but they are still the same essential souls. And it is for these reasons that we need to know how we know and what we know, which is the heart of epistemology.
In terms of the intent of this book, epistemological confidence is the essence of process. Without that confidence, the contrary cultural winds now blowing across the West will leave you doubting yourself and life on Earth to such an extent that you will be a panic attack in constant readiness. Do what you have to do, but get your epistemic roots grounded in a place you can understand and defend. And while I know this is a big ask, I also know it is not for all people.
Anecdotally, i.e., only in my experience, most people are not philosophers by nature. But, if you’ve read this far, you probably are a philosopher by nature. Coming from a man who recognized Aristotle sometime around age 20, we can return to that stellar source who also acknowledged that well-being is down to your own conduct: the better your actions, the more likely you are to flourish. Living a good life is to do good things well. By my lights, none of those actions is as fundamental as knowing the fundaments.
To be continued next week.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the bcc’d emailing list.
Phenomenology, “n. 1. The study of all possible appearances in human experience, during which considerations of objective reality and of purely subjective responses are temporarily left out of the account” (Morris, 1975, p. 919). This is a devil of a concept to nail down, but, as usual, my last resort, Morris, came through. There is brilliance in that definition with a few key terms: temporarily being the most important. I cannot speak for other proponents of existential phenomenological research (EPR), but, for me, the steadfast reliance on the Aristotelian A=A is key. In plainer English, reality is hypothetically suspended in favour of broader, narrower, more granular, or even more macroscopic perspectives on the phenomena under observation. A good street translation of A=A is what you see is what you get. While the identity of existents (the essence of realist metaphysics) is not questioned, the fullness or range of meanings, details, and implications of that existent remain open per phenomenological study. EPR focuses on the psychology of human experience as conveyed and viewed through phenomenological eyes. But, the other factor that aligns this work with 20th-century physics, is temporality, or time. To bring this all back to our main text, how can we buy into Heraclitus’ premise that life is flux and not account for the untameably individual slivers of oh so precious time each is awarded between dust and dust?
References
Hall, E. (2018). Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life, Penguin Press.
Comments