Rickaby, Human Acts (Required Reading For Wednesday)

Here're a few pages (impefectly copied but readable) from Rickaby's *Four-Square*.  It offers a succint explanation of what a *human act* consists in.  This extends my response to Emily's good question on Monday.

Essay Assigment

Find some pop culture item, book, TV episode (or show), movie or song, that explores, or exhibits or somehow importantly involves a deadly sin we have discussed (Pride, Envy, Anger).  Here's the catch:  the item cannot name the sin as such (e.g., recall how Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl" never actually names envy in it.)

In a short essay, 2-4 pp., typed and double-spaced, first discuss the deadly sin as exactly as you can, making clear what it is and how it affects those who are in the grip of it.

Second, explain your pop culture item, assuming that I am not familiar with it.  Explain how the deadly sin is involved.  Explore whether the item shows awareness or links between the sin and others, or causes of the sin, etc.

Third, and finally, evaluate the way the item involves the sin, and explain:  does the item show special insight into the nature of the sin?  does it teach us something important about the sin or about its causes or consequences?  Is there a mistake or confusion of some sort in the item's engagement with the sin (if so, what is it, and why is it a mistake or confusion)?

Due Date TBA

The Obsessive Nature of the Sins; Sins and Self-Knowledge

One thing I will be trying to highlight--particularly in our "Phenomenology" sections--is the way in which each of the deadly sins can take over a life.  Each sin creates or requires a particular kind of (morbid) preoccupation--with self in the case of Pride, with others in the case of Envy.  Because of this, each of the sins crowds out other things in our life, including crucially many good things.  Pride leaves us little time or energy for thoughts of things other than self.  Envy leaves us little for thoughts of things other than others.  (And of course we are not, when Envious, thinking of others in a good way!)

It is the fact that the sins can take over a life that makes them so deadly (at least in a this-wordly sense).  To be in the grip of a vice, like Pride, is to be misfit for happiness.  

One difference between Pride and Envy is that whereas Pride is typically invisible and hides from us, Envy is not typically invisible, does not hide from us.  (Although we try to hide it from others.)  We might put the point like this:  Pride typically eludes introspection; envy typically does not.

This is an important point.  Let me add to it.  We can be Proud and not know it, even in cases where we are not guilty of willful self-deception.  It is just hard to recognize our Pride.  But if we are Envious and do not know it, I think we are willfully self-deceived.  In other words, we are actively hiding our Envy from ourselves; after all, it, unlike Pride, does not hide on its own.  Envy is not hard to recognize unless we are working to hide it from ourselves.  Of course, we can try to hide our Pride, too, if we recognize it.  But often we do not have to do that.  Pride hides itself.  (We do not typically come to know we are Proud by introspection.  We come to know it typically as what the philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, called "acquired character".  That means we come to know it in ourselves by watching ourselves as we might watch a third person, and noting, observing, the sorts of things we do and say.)

Envy

"Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister": Envy

Reading for Wednesday

Wednesday reading. Fairlie on Envy.

Farlie on Pride

Reading for Monday.