FACTORES QUE INCIDEN SOBRE EL CUIDADO INFORMAL

Socrates, whom we have already met, has been revered in the West as the first thinker to bring philosophy into the everyday and raise the question of the considered life. He took delight in asking questions of his fellow Athenians to see how they ticked, and through this technique had them question their presumptions and narrow-mindedness. Socrates presented the desire for happiness as something quite natural to humanity. That we desire happiness seems to be such an unimpeachable statement that it is difficult to take on board the notion that in identifying it and claiming it as natural, Socrates gave life to the very idea of the desire for happiness. Before him, we hadn’t considered it as acutely. And his great idea has obsessed humanity ever since.

Prior to Socrates (he lived 469–399 BCE), we of course enjoyed ourselves, and pleasure often came in the form of Dionysian festivals. Dionysus was the god of wine and merrymaking, of ecstasy and debauchery. Today, he would preside over the club scene and its modern excesses.

In contrast to Dionysus, we can posit another god, his brother Apollo. The latter represents that rational, logical, high-minded part of us where ‘each thing is

coherent in itself, separate, clearly bounded and distinguished from everything else;

everything is what it is, and not confused with anything else’.¹ Meanwhile, in the opposing, passionate, intoxicating realm of Dionysus, such clear individual identity gets lost. In his bawdy world, we are reconciled with both nature and our fellow man, and are ‘on the way to flying into the air’.

These gods weren’t used in this way to illustrate the twin poles of human experience until some two thousand years after Socrates, but still offer a noble way of thinking of our characters, as these two forces in our nature pull us one way then the other. Dionysus is our instinctive, animal side that sits in contrast with our mediating, careful self. Apollo is Edward Norton in Fight Club; Dionysus is Brad Pitt.

Many of the conflicts within us can be seen as a result of these opposing urges pulling us in opposing directions, and an important part of life involves recognising and respecting the power and validity of both, rather than denouncing one and attempting to live entirely by the other.

They are at work in the way we impose order on chaos and randomness. These realms of heated chaos and cool logic fused together in the great Greek tragedies as audiences followed a hero trying to impose order (the Apollonian urge) on whatever random fate threw his way (the Dionysian drive). Here on the one hand are our aims, and here on the other is fortune. Does this sound familiar? You might recognise our x=y diagonal as an honest assessment of what it is to live wholly.

We can also draw a parallel with Kahneman’s bifurcation of the self into its experiencing and remembering counterparts. We can see the Dionysian element in his experiencing self as it instinctively suffers or enjoys the chaotic emotions caused by uncontrolled, fleeting experiences – or, if you like, by fate. Likewise, we can recognise the detached, cooler Apollonian tendencies of the remembering self as it imposes order on that chaos by forming a clear narrative. And of course those clear and precise Apollonian stories become part of our identity and inform our supposedly cool decision-making (giving Apollo at least the illusion of having the upper hand).

Meanwhile, back in ancient Greece, Eros, the god of love was hard at work.

Socrates recommended that to live happily, we should elevate our relationship with this fickle deity. First, we should rise above an attraction to beauty in a particular person and allow ourselves to be drawn to a more general picture of beauty and finally to the Idea of beauty itself as an archetype, with little erotic regard for mere mortal examples of it. We should try to move, in essence, from sexual attraction to a kind of contemplation. This is where the idea of ‘platonic’ love or attraction comes from. Not, of course, to everyone’s taste.

Socrates wrote nothing down. We know of him only through the writings of Plato (hence ‘Platonic’), his famous protégé. While we attribute the process of asking astute and probing questions to the older man, many of the ideas that emerge from his discussions are inseparable from Plato’s thought. Plato, then, had much to say about the elevated, elusive Idea of things (such as beauty) that existed beyond the specific material examples that are scattered around our world. Plato doesn’t hold

these Ideas to be imaginary things. In fact, he says, the Idea of beauty is part of a realm more real than the beautiful things we see every day.

How can he mean this? In his famous analogy, he describes the things and qualities of our everyday world as if they were shadows cast on a back wall of a cave.

We look at the shadows and mistake them for real things, but we miss the fact that they are mere umbrageous shapes and silhouettes. Plato believed it to be the job of philosophers to direct our attention towards the light and reveal the true objects creating the shadows. Comprehending these true objects – his Ideas – constituted the most authentic way of living. ‘The Truth is Out There’, as Mulder and Scully told us, and it is embodied in simmering, sublime concepts quite external to our limited everyday experience. We have to get beyond our normal way of seeing to apprehend them.

Plato still informs our notion of truth. Seeing what’s real as something separate from our mere experience is built into the foundations of our two major ways of seeking truth: religion and science. Religion (at least our understanding of religion as laid out by St Augustine in the early fifth century) gives us a structure where God, grace, as well as beauty, truth, knowledge, justice and any other concepts we might care to identify with Him, exist quite independently of our own mortal soul-searching. Religious ethics are not about finding truth in our own value system but about learning how to see beyond the blinkered vision of our knowledge and grow closer to God. That Divinity embodies uncorrupted versions of those qualities we encounter here on Earth in the form of pale imitations. Truth is Out There, not In Here.

Science, despite being squarely opposed to religion, operates on the same principle.

Scientific truth is not about looking within ourselves. The process of good science concerns itself with finding ways to bypass subjective experience and human error to describe as accurately as possible the ‘Truth’. Whatever it is, it coolly operates Out There, independently of our value systems and biases.

The alternative approach would be to look for ‘truth’ subjectively. This happens when people turn to their feelings as evidence and regard empirical data as irrelevant. The two approaches will clash, for example, when one person passionately claims that a holistic remedy ‘works’ because her experience of it was positive, while another points out that it doesn’t work on enough people to justify its claims. Subjective truth also comes into play when we consider matters of ultimate meaning and authenticity: we are more likely to look within ourselves (and our personal stories) than we are to turn to the pages of a textbook.

Meanwhile, this notion of elevating ourselves above individual attraction to a beautiful person may strike us as oddly detached and somehow wearyingly typical of the lofty and arid airs we expect from a philosopher. We probably see no point, for example, in trying to avoid attraction to an individual by looking beyond his or her personal beauty to the larger notion of Beauty itself. Yet, if we bring this idea down to Earth, we might see some advantages to what is being recommended.

For example, we can recognise what it is we like about somebody (some aspect of

For example, we can recognise what it is we like about somebody (some aspect of their beauty, or their goodness, or intelligence, or wit) and admire it as a quality quite separate from that particular person, rather than confusing it with him or her.

We can learn from it, perhaps try to develop it in ourselves and know how to recognise it in others. We may also appreciate that those positive qualities continue to reside in a person even when they are annoying us and seem to have lost all their redeeming aspects. An ability to see beyond the individual may be of great therapeutic value if we find ourselves infatuated with someone. We are far less likely to come to idolise a person if we can recognise that what we admire about them are qualities that exist separately from the particular (and therefore flawed) example that they constitute. An appreciation of something like the Platonic Ideas (also known as ‘Forms’) can help us shed feelings of envy or unhealthy hero worship. In the same way that the Platonic Idea of, say, tree-ness is different from and so much better than any particular tree we may see (which will have branches missing and other imperfections), so a person will never embody the qualities we perceive in them as perfectly as we might imagine. While the loss of self that we feel when worshipping another can feel intoxicating (and appeal to that Dionysian side of us), there is no doubt that it can bring much pain when the all-too-human qualities of the targets of our obsessions become crushingly apparent.

At least that is the idea. While it may help us to see qualities as separate from their examples, it’s asking a lot for us to forego such things as individual attraction and ponder instead the concept of Beauty. And I’m not sure it would make us happier.

Part of the fun of sexual attraction is the intensity of idolising the object of our affections. It can allow us to find all aspects of them – how they wear their shoes, the glimpse of a tattoo, their choice of hairstyle – wildly sexy. In terms of pleasure, there’s no contest. But Plato can help us: if we wish to take the sting out of a crush, there is no better way than getting to know its object. It isn’t long before a range of imperfections make themselves known and we realise we are not dealing with an ideal Form but a mere shadow cast on the wall. Once our idealised impressions of a person are loosened up in this way, we can make better decisions regarding what to do about them.

The important point to remember is that Socratic happiness was about self-questioning and about appreciating the reality of an unseen world that lies beyond the physical realm. We might glimpse it through a process of contemplation and self-realisation. Happiness was indistinguishable from a rising above, a virtuous elevation, a higher plateau. This idea would stick around and bother us for a very long time.

Meanwhile, we were about to turn 180 degrees to start looking inwards for great and virtuous qualities.

Aristotle

After Socrates’ death, the idea of happiness and virtue was developed and expanded

After Socrates’ death, the idea of happiness and virtue was developed and expanded by Aristotle, Plato’s most famous pupil. He tutored Alexander the Great (who grew up to conquer the known world) and was the first great – and maybe the greatest – biologist and taxonomist, classifying and studying an enormous range of plants and animals. All forms of life seemed to fascinate him. He studied in Athens under Plato, though would later become Plato’s strongest critic.

Plato, as we’ve just seen, had set out his ethical system whereby such ethical notions as goodness, virtue and justice were identified as far-off, objective concepts, known to us only by their pale imitations that we are able to perceive here on Earth.

No amount of human introspection could bring us closer to these eternal truths;

instead, it was the job of philosophers to see beyond the subjective nature of human experience and point us towards the reality that lies beyond what we perceive. Such things exist quite outside of ordinary human discernment, and in fact the latter only gets in the way of the eternal truths that might otherwise be revealed to us.

Aristotle’s approach was different from Plato’s, and far less lofty. He was very interested in life, and living, and his approach to ethics had none of the cool detachedness of the Platonist apprehending these sublime Ideals out there on some heavenly plane. Rather than the Truth being Out There, he encouraged us to look inwards to find out what matters most. His approach to happiness was more down to earth, and he had no time for the vertiginous, mystical touches of his tutor. In Raphael’s famous fresco The School of Athens, Plato and Aristotle take centre stage, the former pointing to the sky and the latter to the ground.

In 335 BCE, Aristotle set up his school in the area known as the Lyceum, in Athens.

His adherents were known as Peripatetics, which means ‘walking up and down’ – this may have derived from the peripatos or ‘walking ground’ in the Lyceum, or more endearingly from the fact that Aristotle liked to pace back and forth while lecturing.

Aristotle was interested in how we might be good, rather than know goodness.

Thus when he taught ethics, his aim was to improve the lives of his pupils at a practical, everyday level. Like Plato, he saw the natural aim of human life, and the best condition of the soul, as eudaimonia, which is roughly synonymous with happiness, or more accurately ‘flourishing’. But he had a different way of getting there. What should we have in place in our lives to secure this state?

Plato did not have the common touch; Aristotle did to a greater extent, and his ideas are more intuitive to us today. He points to the fact that we judge something to be good if it does well the thing that it is uniquely designed to do. For example, we say a shoemaker is good if he or she makes good shoes. Likewise, a good arm or leg is one that is strong and supple, and does its job of lifting or running successfully; a good eye is one that sees clearly. Goodness and proficiency lie in the successful execution of the unique function of that person or thing.

Likewise, people should learn to best fulfil their nature. But what do human beings do when they are being particularly successful at being human? What is our unique and therefore proper function, and therefore, Aristotle would say, the key to our happiness? In other words, what separates us from other forms of life? Aristotle supplies us with the answer: reason. What, then, is the highest aim of this reason? To ensure happiness. Success at being human would amount to the best, or most virtuous, use of reason. Flourishing – Aristotle’s take on happiness – is ‘an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue’.²

Buried therein is another new thought: that there is an aim (or a telos) to human life. The telos is a goal to which human life should point, and one that will bestow goodness upon being reached. Aristotle suggests we are to fulfil what is highest in

our nature, and rather than doing this in the way that Plato encourages (through the contemplation of lofty, eternal Ideas), we should instead use our reason to work out the best thing to do in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

In fact, rather than tell us that we must overcome popular opinion of what happiness must be, Aristotle was happy to grant weight to and address it in his system. Believing that ‘if a statement is true all the data are in harmony with it’,³ common perceptions of what happiness should entail were included in his ethical instructions. He was more charitably disposed towards the role of everyday pleasures in making us happy, and encouragingly looks for balanced qualities to ensure an ethical life. Thus virtue, according to Aristotle, could be found in balancing extreme qualities with their opposites: finding the mean.

For example: courage taken to an extreme is foolhardiness; its opposite is cowardliness. A virtuous person treads the middle path. Between licentiousness and asceticism lies temperance; between shyness and shamelessness lies modesty.

Temperance and modesty, then, are amongst our virtues. Excessive behaviours tend to be easier to exhibit than virtues, so in order to tread the middle path we must practise well, as a musician practises his instrument, and be on our guard against temptations, our biases and our unhelpful tendencies. There is a sort of muscle-memory to ethics: we learn to act in a way that is appropriate until it comes naturally.

Working from intuitive ‘common sense’, Aristotle thus built on Plato’s ethics to form a longer list of cardinal virtues: justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence and wisdom.

So happiness is now to be found in virtuous activity of the soul carried out in accordance with reason. The best sort of virtuous activity, Aristotle still suggests despite the common touch of his approach, is that of contemplation. The ability to devote ourselves to intellectual pursuits is what makes us unique and therefore connects us to the gods, and thus contemplation is divine.

‘Virtuous activity.’ Virtue may seem to us to be a very outmoded concept. As, to many, does the concept of ‘the soul’. This latter term we can mentally substitute with ‘the innermost person’, though I quite enjoy the no-fuss employment of ‘soul’.

This was an age when such a thing was meant without any implication of religious dogma, millennia of which since are unfortunately responsible for our uneasiness with the word today. Despite this, we are certainly every bit at home with the idea of our innermost self as we were in Aristotle’s time.

‘Virtue’, however, appears to the modern mind’s eye in only faint adumbrations of knightly incorruptibility. We rarely talk of people today in terms of their goodness or their virtue. We might describe someone as an ‘upstanding pillar of the community’, but such a cliché does not seem to touch upon the inner life of that person; in fact, it even has about it the whiff of potential scandal. But the original

‘Virtue’, however, appears to the modern mind’s eye in only faint adumbrations of knightly incorruptibility. We rarely talk of people today in terms of their goodness or their virtue. We might describe someone as an ‘upstanding pillar of the community’, but such a cliché does not seem to touch upon the inner life of that person; in fact, it even has about it the whiff of potential scandal. But the original