In another incarnation, I taught ancient philosophy at Eugene Lang College. It actually was not even that long ago. I have been teaching at university throughout my time in graduate school in philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and only just stopped last year. I gave away one of my teaching fellowships due to the fact that CSC has become my full time job and also because I need to finish writing my dissertation. If you have ever wondered why my spring retreat to Costa Rica is always in January and/or March, it’s to fit the academic year calendar — winter break extends into January, and spring break is always in March (as we have been reminded all too painfully this year). It just so happens that I also spent the last four semesters of undergrad studying ancient Greek. I had completed all of my other requirements, had already studied Latin, and was advised to get good at Greek if I wanted a shot at ever teaching higher education in the fields I was interested in: religion, philosophy, and history. I once had a favorite surfboard — a 6’0” Doc Lausch Surf Prescriptions from off the rack at Aqua Surf Shop with a squash tail and single concave running through the bottom — on which I had written the complete list of Greek prepositions (you in fact use these prepositions almost every day whenever you use words that start with ana-, an-, apo-, dia-, en-, cata-, meta-, etc.). Since I surf so much this proved to be a great studying aid!
An example of some of my reading/lecture notes from when I was teaching college.
I am not sure whether or not I will return to teaching university classes. I do enjoy it. But I also enjoy the flexibility of being able to drop everything and go surfing. In recent weeks the ability to drop everything and go surfing has met a roadblock far more ominous than a university teaching schedule: the moral dilemma about whether or not it is right to go surfing during this peak moment of the SARS-COVID-2 (COVID-19) virus outbreak. Just last Monday I put up a video post about my decision to not go surfing. On the one hand there is always the risk of injury, and we don’t want to be crowding hospital beds for something like stitches. Then there is the simple injunction just to stay home as much as possible. Even if you live near the beach you’re going outside of the home to exert energy doing something that is indeed fun and healthful, but you are still opening yourself up to risk if you are not mindful of your every move. Also, some people may be going surfing more now because they have been furloughed or laid off or are working remotely. This makes the lineups more crowded, which nullifies the injunction for social distancing. On the other hand, some people, like me, have geared our entire lives to be in touch with the ocean and to be able to, well, drop everything and go surfing. So when I willfully abide by other social norms I can feel constrained and start to get depressed. Surfing also provides for my sole livelihood now that I am not teaching at university, so I feel an extra pressure to be in touch with the ocean and even get in some coaching. But then again, a lot of other people cannot do their jobs or their passions right now either or are having to rethink how to do them from home.
Overall it seems the right thing to do is for all of us to stay home and not surf to the best of our ability until the virus peaks and starts to get under control. Even if it is relatively safe to surf and you are able to do so without touching anyone or anything (including the sand — wear booties), there is also the base COVID-mania-induced paranoia that you’ll pick it up on your path to and from the ocean, and then you really won’t be able to go surfing, and you’ll be super sorry you did go, if it was in fact from your excursion that you got the bug, and became yet another person to overwhelm our already overwhelmed health system. While all of this seems to be the logical and right reasoning, it can be difficult to not do one’s favorite thing. In full disclosure, I have already broken down and gone surfing. I went last Friday. It felt good to hit the lip and to get some pumps in, but it has had a bit of a bitter aftertaste. I was paranoid driving home that I somehow came into contact with the virus despite the fact that, unlike others, I wore a mask to check the surf, didn’t touch the railings or public pieces of property on the boardwalk, and after much hunting found a peak all to myself. There were waves yesterday (Sunday) and today (Monday) and I couldn’t bring myself to drive out there for them. I just could not rationalize the trade of some fun for the potential of contracting the virus. As I mention in the video, I’ve been injured for months at a time before, and in those cases I cannot surf even if I want to. Every time I have been done with an injury there have still been waves to surf! But I am not injured right now, so I don’t have physical pain to keep me in my place. As I continue to mull about the moral dilemma of surfing vs not surfing in these trying times, I am reminded of Aristotle’s concept of ‘akrasia’ or ‘weakness of will’.
My moment of akrasia last week: I was compelled to check the surf. If we do check the surf right now, we ought to be wearing masks.
Aristotle introduces us to his concept of ‘akrasia’ in his great moral work the Nichomachean Ethics. The treatise is supposed to serve as an ethical handbook for his son, Nichomachus, and for other young noble men who were set up to become leaders of society. Aristotle was the tutor for a young Alexander the Great. As some may or may not know, Aristotle did hold some rather unfortunate views on women and slavery, but I think that should he put his own philosophy to the test today, he would be forced to abandon them. I have a strict policy of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We should note where thinkers are wrong, mark them wrong in those places, and retain what is worth retaining. Usually these parts, the good parts, if they would have looked hard enough or had a larger historical perspective, is at odds with their more reprehensible views.
The first lines of the NE are memorable ones: “All skills (technai) and all methods (of inquiry) (methodos), in the same way as every action (praxis) and rational choice (prohairesis) is thought to aim at some good (agathou tinos); and so the good has been well described as that at which everything aims. But it is clear that there is some difference of (their) ends, in some the end is the activity, and in others it is some product (of the activity) (1094a1-5).” Here Aristotle is setting us up to not only to inquire after the highest good(s) in life, but also to show us how things both have particular and universal meanings (which forms the basis for deductive and inductive reasoning). All things aim at some good, but this good might look different according to the particular nature of each. His examples are: the aim of medicine is to produce health; shipbuilding, a ship; military science, victory; domestic economy, wealth. They are unique in their particular order, but are all in service to some higher good, which because man is a political or social animal, is a well ordered, fair, and just society. The highest good is political, and therefore for Aristotle the master science is politics. The Greek politikē can mean either social or political. The root word is polis or city, and what Aristotle is basically saying is that because we live together in relative proximity we need to agree upon the best ways to live with one another. This means that we need to agree on norms and laws and values in order for the polis to function well. Functioning well for Aristotle would mean that the most amount of people are all aiming at the good with their individual skills and methods and actions and rational choices. Agreeing on what these are and what this looks like and how it is organized and governed is usually thought of as coming to terms on a social contract. I will table for now what the best overall political structure might be, but will agree with Aristotle that seeking one is the highest of all possible pursuits.
In our quest for the highest good we should ask what kinds of actions are and are not in our control. For example, it is not up to us whether or not we can survive without food. We cannot survive without food, so we must eat. We cannot survive without human connection, so we cultivate friendships and romantic partnerships. We have various levels of appetites and desires that always move us along and organize our lives — drives in psychoanalytic language. Modulating these drives we may say is the task of human existence. Each person is set up in such a way that we all feel similar drives but in variance of degree according to many different variables (historical, sexual, class background, trauma, etc.). We can think of drives in the sense of the Greek word for power, strength, and force: kratos. In Aristotle’s language a person who is good at modulating his drives is enkrateia. Enkrateia is often translated as ‘self-controlled’ or ‘continent’ and is a virtue akin to ‘temperance’, which in Greek is sophrosunē. These are traits of character that Aristotle feels are most desired because the ethical habits they foster are based upon calm, rational decision making, which consciously aims at the highest good. The highest good is again, not what can bring me the most pleasure right now, but that which brings about the greatest political good — it is more community-minded.
Example of the Greek text.
The opposite of enkrateia is akrasia. Akrasia, the word, is created through the alpha-privative ‘a’, which means ‘not’, ‘without’, ‘lack’, plus ‘kratos’, so lacking strength, without power, weak vis a vis the drives. The more common translations are ‘incontinence’ or ‘weakness of will’. In Book VII, a discussion dedicated to ways of missing the mark, akrasia is defined as one of the three character traits most to be avoided. The other two are vice (kakia) and brutishness (thēriotēs). Aristotle, a thinker of the golden mean, is always more concerned with middle terms because they most represent the truth of human life. A truly bad or vile person, often called ‘intemperate’ (akolasia), is an extreme case — someone that willfully and rationally chooses bad actions in full knowledge that they will cause harm to self and others — as is ‘brutishness’. The word for ‘brutishness’ is thēriotēs which is taken from the word thēr for ‘wild animal’ or ‘wild beast’. This would be a person who somehow missed the civilizing process and acts only on base drives in a completely unreflected manner. Considering that there could even be such a kind of person is probably part of Aristotle’s more racist thoughts that should be tossed out. Where he shines is in his consideration of akrasia. Through his compassionate understanding he shows how this middle state of ‘badness’ seems to be a major part of, to use Nietzsche’s words, being human all too human.
We are all of us, at one time or another, akratic, or lacking in power over some action or another. In Aristotle’s view of the soul or composition of the human being, we are both logical (logoi) and illogical (alogoi) or rational and irrational. He is a rationalist and thinks we’re better off the more that the logical part of ourselves leads the illogical part, but he also understands the strength that the irrational drives exert in daily existence. Because the logical and illogical parts of us ‘communicate’, there are times when we behave irrationally — we get angry, we eat too much ice cream, we touch a railing with our bare hands then text on our cell phones during a pandemic — and then we feel bad afterwards. We regret having given into the drive because in the long run it did not make us more powerful or more fit to achieve the common good. We see that we did not act out of rational deliberation. For Aristotle this ability to reflect on those moments when we acted out of akrasia means that it is not even a vice because such behaviors, once conscious, can be changed by reflection after the fact. He also understands that some people may suffer akrasia due to early childhood traumas, which is kind of crazy for the 4th century BCE!
“The akratic person is not like someone who knows and is attending to his knowledge, but like someone asleep or drunk. He acts voluntarily (because he knows what he is doing and for what end), but he is not wicked; his rational choice is good, so that he is only half-wicked. Nor is he unjust, since he does not plan his misdeeds. Of the two, one type is not disposed to stand by the results of his deliberation, while the other, the excitable person, does not do wrong deliberately at all (1152a21-28).”
All these people are touching public property with their bare hands during one of the worst pandemics in human history. This is an example of akrasia. It’s nice to lean on something while you look at the ocean, but you also can stand up and not lean on it. Right now such unreflective action can harbor true societal ills. Hoping they all went home and washed hands, wiped down cell phones, and put clothing in a plastic bag. Our biggest concern in next few weeks is keeping people out of hospitals.
In surfing we see all kinds of akrasia in action. And in some cases we see vile wickedness, but more often akrasia. Surfing is fun. It gives so much pleasure. It is great exercise. It feels good to be in nature. But if you just caught a wave, for example, do you need the next one you see, especially if there is another person waiting for it? What is driving you to spin and go when you should be satisfied from your last ride? Or what about when the unknowing beginner paddles out to the most crowded peak because he doesn’t know to recognize where the best spot for him might be and instead simply follows his herd instinct and paddles out into a pack of people? This is not wicked, but is done, as Aristotle says, from a state that is akin to being asleep or drunk. He has some knowledge, but the knowledge he would require to act virtuously is not active or attended to. What about when you burn someone? Could you just not wait for another wave? Or did you not see the person taking off? Perhaps you are meting out justice for a past burn? Could that justice have been better meted out through a conversation? Anytime we act without rationally deliberating we are bound to fall prey to one kind of akrasia or another. And the decisions we make vis a vis our drives add up to our character, which because we are human, is bound to be mixed with good and bad qualities.
Ultimately, however, the goal is to lessen the bad pangs of conscience (bad faith in the language of Sartre) by acting less akratically and more enkratically. The more one habituates oneself to considering drives and motivations before acting on them, the more one becomes practically wise (phronimos). The more that people aspire and cultivate practical wisdom — this includes becoming virtuous at a skill like surfing — the better societies can operate.
The question is now: is it practically wise to surf right now? Is there an overall social political good that surfing brings about in this time of global crisis? On the one hand, it is good to have healthy, happy, and satisfied citizens. If surfing calms you in a way that makes you a better partner, father, mother, brother, sister, and friend, then you need to consider how much surfing is required to put you in that state. You must also consider the risk you may pose to society at large in engaging in surfing at the present moment. Can you truly get to the beach and back to your house while taking all the proper precautions to not contract the invisible enemy attacking the polis? Unlike in normal times, this means not taking public transit, not carpooling, not talking to friends at the beach, wearing a mask and gloves while checking the surf, and then safely getting in and out of the water without hurting yourself. It also means a heightened observation of the norms that already exist in surfing: not crowding around certain peaks, taking turns, observing rip currents, paddling out of the way of other surfers, not burning people, not snaking people. Just to observe these norms in non-pandemic times takes an immense amount of enkrateia and rational deliberation. It is in the observation of these rules of etiquette that we witness the most akrasia. If we cannot model ideal political behavior in the lineup then surfing truly is not a societal good on the larger view.
If you do choose to surf, the enkratic thing to do is to find empty peaks like this one. There is always a way to surf and observe appropriate social distance.
One of the main reasons I created CSC was to teach people the skills necessary to engage in the surfing lineup as virtuously as possible. This means that you are always engaging in a reflection on and overcoming of your akrasia. As you gain skills in wave judgment, lineup reading, and in general fluidity of navigating a board in the ocean and on and through waves, you become more empowered to make better political decisions vis a vis our surfing polis and the larger world polis. If you are constantly burning people in ignorance, crashing on your board all the time, surfing in an aesthetically displeasing manner, and crowding around a peak unnecessarily, you’re not making surfing better for the rest of us — you are not acting with the greater surfing polis in mind. It is not just your practice or your ocean. The pursuit is not just individual wellness and gratification — it’s communal, social, and political. When I see you surfing virtuously it inspires me to be a more virtuous surfer. This is the right kind of contagion.
It is also important to remember, however, that becoming a practically wise virtuous surfer is a process of continual work. We will continue to err. What is crucial is that we deliberate and reflect before we act. Then when we act we must act decisively. Whether you decide to go surfing or not, make sure you are attending to your knowledge.