Savoring time: desire, pleasure and wholehearted activity

There is considerable appeal to the Aristotelian idea that taking pleasure in an activity is sometimes simply a matter of attending to it in such a way as to render it wholehearted. However, the proponents of this idea have not made adequately clear what kind of attention it is that can perform the surprising feat of transforming otherwise indifferent activities into pleasurable ones. I build upon Gilbert Ryle's suggestion that taking pleasure in an activity is tantamount to engaging in the activity while fervently desiring to do it and it alone. More specifically, I draw upon insights into the sort of evaluative attention involved in having a desire to generate corollary insights into the sort of attention that makes activity pleasurable. My aim is to offer a compelling account of a certain class of pleasures, and to shed light on their relation to reasons. I argue that prospective pleasures in this class are not always reasons for action, and that even when they are reasons they have this status only derivatively, as vivid apprehensions of an independent realm of values. This does not mean that such pleasures are never good. They are good provided that they track real values, for then they constitute a proper savoring of one's activities and/or circumstances, and provide a valuable respite from the distractions and unwarranted doubts that so often leave us at odds with ourselves and alienated from our own doings.     

Globalization and the Soul—According to Teilhard, Friedman, and Others

Thomas L. Friedman's recent book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree , sees a religious value in globalization: "globalization emerges from below … from people's very souls and from their deepest aspirations" (1999, 338). Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made similar claims in 1920, calling globalization the "deep-rooted religious movement of our age" (Teilhard 1979, 211). He came to this awareness through his experience in World War I. There he began connecting globalization to its roots in evolution and to the mystics' desire for the "All," a desire he saw animating the work of believing and unbelieving scientists. He found confirmation of his ideas in the letters of Saint Paul, who told of God eventually filling all things. Teilhard used the vocabulary of mysticism to describe global developments in technology, industry, politics, and the environment, and the ardor of his texts has led to their being widely used for secular gatherings on global subjects.     

Thomas: The Apostle of Scientists

Richard Dawkins suggests that the way “doubting Thomas” demanded evidence for Jesus’ resurrection should endear him to scientists. A close reading of Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel suggests that Thomas’ confession of Jesus’ divinity does indeed resonate with how scientists make progress, but not because he demanded evidence. Rather, the similarity lies in the way he went beyond the immediate evidence to reach a bold conclusion, the implications of which took a lifetime to work out. A comparison with the way J. J. Thomson discovered the first sub-atomic particle, the electron, shows that this is also how breakthroughs in science happen.     

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS:

Abstract: This article argues that teachers of environmental ethics must more aggressively entertain questions of private property in their work and in their teaching. To make this case, it first introduces the three primary positions on property: occupation arguments, labor theory of value arguments, and efficiency arguments. It then contextualizes these arguments in light of the contemporary U.S. wise‐use movement, in an attempt to make sense of the concerns that motivate wise‐use activists, and also to demonstrate how intrinsic value arguments miss the mark. Finally, it offers some suggestions about further directions for environmental ethics, reasoning that there is a good deal of headway to be gained for environmental ethics by accepting that nature can be owned as property, but nevertheless engaging the idea of private property critically.     

Normatively demanding creatures: Hobbes,the Fall and individual responsibility

This paper explores an internal relation between wrong-doing and the ability to think in moral terms, through Hobbes’ thought. I use his neglected retelling of our ‘original sin’ as a springboard, seeing how we then discover a need to vindicate our own projects in terms shared by others. We become normatively demanding creatures: greedy for normative vindication, eager to judge others amid the difficulties of our world. However there is, of course, no choice for us but to choose our own principles of judgment, or at least some authority to provide these. Unconvinced by Hobbes’ remedies, I conclude with one implication for moral philosophy@ a need to look rather differently at agency and responsibility. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Staring at the Sun: Tragedy,trauma, and ecological harmony

Recently it has become increasingly evident that current theories of civilization are unsustainable. Within this essay I critique three alternative theories: bioregionalism, sustainable development, and The Universe Story. I argue that although these theories address ecological devastation, they fail to grapple with the legacy of white supremacy. Evoking Richard Wright's poem Between the World and Me, I argue that for minorities the landscape is often inscribed with trauma. Consequently, any theory of ecological harmony must take this into account. I refer to the task of contending with the legacy of slavery, colonization, and genocide as Staring at the Sun.     

The Price of Charity: Christian Love and Financial Anxieties

Love and money, according to the intuitive logic of Christian political theology, stand in opposition to each other. Where economic relations obtain, relations of love are understood to be absent or distorted. The opposition between the two has led social theorists and political theologians—including John Milbank, Kathryn Tanner, and Daniel M. Bell—to understand Christian love as a reservoir of opposition to the politics of contemporary financialized capital. This opposition, however, ignores the complex interrelationship that has characterized Christian thought about love and money. Love and money—and their apparent competitive relationship—have been understood throughout the history of Christian thought on the basis of a relationship both maintain to the notion of indebtedness. This paper argues that any apparent tension between Christian theological caritas and oikonomia must to be contextualized in terms of a shared relationship between both of these concepts and the organization and administration of relations of debt and obligation.