The Fragility of Goodness by Martha Nussbaum.
The question that the Greeks grappled with in the 5th Century BC has not left us:
What aspects of life do we control and how do we deal with what we cannot control?
Nussbaum argues that way the Ancient Greeks dealt with uncertainty can be examined through Attic tragedy as well as through philosophical development.
The book deals with tragedy as well as Platonic and Peripatetic philosophy. Naturally, the work is much more complicated than what I will be able to lay out here, and I hope I can do it justice. Here, I will highlight the ideas that I took away from it.
Tragic heroes undergo painful events beyond their control and despite of their virtue. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus kills his father. He did mean to kill the man on the road, so he was in control of the murder. However, since he did not know the man was Laius, his biological father, he was not in control of the action of killing his father. As a result, he fulfills the horrendous prophecy he was trying to avoid all along: that he would kill his father and marry his mother.
The fulfillment of the prophecy was beyond his control: he could not have acted otherwise with the information he had. Although he is clearly a murderer in either instance, Oedipus would otherwise be considered heroic in a Greek context. He saved the city from the Sphinx and becomes the king of Thebes. Due to these accomplishments, he is a man with virtue. When he finds out that he has committed patricide, he loses his virtuous status. The question at stake is whether one can be happy internally despite external circumstances given that they possess a virtuous character or whether external circumstances affect one’s overall happiness. For Oedipus, both his internal and external states change as a result of the actions he committed in ignorance. He loses his state of happiness because he is no longer virtuous even if his fall was outside his control. He also loses his external position as king of Thebes and in the sequel play (Oedipus at Colonus) he has run away to Athens as a blind old man.
Plato deals with the issue of vulnerability with a certain detachment from the world of the senses. Instead, he finds value in the beauty of the Forms or virtues. For Plato, happiness is independent of external circumstances, and one can only be happy if they maintain a virtuous soul.
Aristotle, however, cannot detach himself from the senses the same way and believes that there are certain attachments that humans naturally have because things are special in their particulars.
I don’t choose a friend because they are a human and “friendly” in the way that Plato might suggest. For Aristotle, these are universal qualities of a friend. I choose a friend because of the qualities that make them special, but the particularity of my friendship and its uniqueness make it irreplaceable and thus more vulnerable to loss. Someone may possess eudaimonia (“happiness”)because of virtue, but they can leave the state of eudaimonia if they suffer an extreme amount of loss.
For Aristotle, as well as Nussbaum, vulnerability is part of what makes us human—it should not be avoided or dismissed. It would be odd for someone to not grieve if a friend died, and Aristotle might suggest that they would not be a full human.
Nussbaum includes the following quote by Aristotle, which resonated with my in a disturbing way:
Because they have lived many years and have been deceived many times and made many mistakes, and because their experience is that most things go badly, they do not insist upon anything with confidence, but always less forcefully than is appropriate. They think, but never know; they have views on both sides of a question and are always adding in ‘perhaps’ and ‘probably’; they say everything this way, and nothing unequivocally. And they are malignant (kakoētheis): for it is malignant to interpret everything in the worst light. Furthermore, they are excessively suspicious because of their lack of trust (apistia), and lacking in trust because of their experience. And they neither love nor hate intensely for these reasons, but, as in the saying of Bias, they love as if they were going to hate tomorrow, and hate as if they were going to love tomorrow. And they are small of soul (mikropsuchoi) because they have been humbled by life: for they desire nothing great or excellent, but only what is commensurate with life. And they are ungenerous. For property is one of the necessary things; and in, and through, their experience they know how hard it is to get it and how easy to lose it. And they are cowardly and fear everything beforehand- for they have, in this respect, the opposite character from the young. For they are chilly, and the young are warm; so old age prepares the way for cowardice, since fear, too, is a kind of chilling…And they are self-loving more than is appropriate; for this, too, is a kind of smallness of soul. And they live for advantage and not for the noble, more than is appropriate, because they are self-loving. For the advantageous is good for oneself; the noble is good simpliciter…And the elderly, too, feel pity, but not for the same reason as the young: for the young feel it through love of humanity, the old through weakness—for they think every suffering is waiting for them, and this inspires pity. For this reason they are given to grieving, and are neither charming nor fond of laughter (1389b13-1390a24; Tr. by Nussbaum 338).
I am 28 and I discovered my first gray hair growing out of MY HEAD this month. As I wrote in my previous post, I am struggling with the twists of fortune and the fear that follows bouts of bad luck. I have been living on my own for a long time, and there is always some kind of catastrophe that makes me feel as if something will always go wrong. Such circumstances have made me grouchier (although probably moving to Massachusetts is part of this) and more cautious. I have become more anxious over the years. I am becoming one of Aristotle’s old grumpy men and I fear that my soul is smaller.
Who wants to end up this way? I didn’t! I am glad that I am more assertive, but I would like to assertive with kindness. I want to keep my youthful “love of humanity” and maintain my compassion. This was a large reason that I started this blog. I wanted to share some joy and express joy amid the unrelenting chaos of adulthood.
According to Aristotle, the way to combat such a weakening of the soul is through activity. While I continue with my Ph.D. journey, I also aim to cultivate joy for its own sake and hopefully help others find moments of joy and peace as they begin to navigate the world on their own.
Although the book is dense and philosophical and aimed at an academic audience, I found that it resonated with me and I read it at the exact right moment in my life. I know that other people my age are dealing with similar struggles. Rising rent prices and the cost of living in this century has fostered a sense of financial insecurity, exhaustion and anxiety for young people. I am trying to accept that there are things that I cannot control and that to be vulnerable to loss is to be human and part of what makes life beautiful.
Vita Vinum Libri 