27: What Should We Desire?

     I want to begin by wishing my readers -- all four of them -- a belated Happy New Year. My New Year's Resolution is to write more blog posts in 2019 than I did in 2018, but whether or not I will be able to do so depends in part on the challenges presented by my mother's declining health (mentioned in the previous post).

     There is a sense in which New Year's Resolutions are about desire, because they reflect what we want to achieve or attain or acquire in the next 12 months. In Letter 27 to Lucilius, Seneca has the following to say to his friend regarding desire:
          "Loud and clear I tell myself: 'Count your years, and you will be ashamed to have the same wishes and intentions you had as a child. Give yourself this gift as your day of death approaches: let your faults die before you. Dismiss those turbulent desires that cost you so much: they do harm both ahead of time and after the fact. Just as the worry over criminal acts does not depart, even if they are not discovered at the time, so also with wrongful desires: remorse remains when they themselves are gone. They are not solid, not dependable: even if they do no harm, they are fleeting. Look about, rather, for some good that will remain. There is none but that which the mind discovers for itself from out of itself. Virtue alone yields lasting and untroubled joy. Even if something does get in the way of that joy, it is interrupted only as daylight is by clouds, which pass beneath but do not overcome it.' When will it be your lot to attain that joy? You have not been idle up to now -- but pick up the pace. Much work remains to be done; and you must be the one to put in the attention and toil if you want results. This is not something that can be delegated."  

     My own desires seem to have evolved as I have grown older. When I was younger, for example, pleasures were never far from my mind. Now that I am middle-aged, I spend more time pondering virtue. I would like to believe that this is the result of me becoming wiser with age; however, a cynical person might observe that I am just experiencing one of the inevitable consequences of aging -- as pleasures become less frequent, we desire other things in their place.
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     Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2015), Letter 27, 2-4, page 95.

21: Bipartisanship Now And Then

     Senator John McCain's recent death and funeral have caused me to reflect upon the idea of bipartisanship. Some of my international readers may not know John McCain's history, apart from his loss in the 2008 American presidential election to Barack Obama. McCain attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. After graduating, he served his country as a military pilot during the Vietnam War. Shot down over what was then North Vietnam, McCain was injured, captured, and spent five years as a prisoner of war. Although McCain was the son and grandson of U.S. Navy Admirals, he refused to use his connections to get himself released ahead of his fellow prisoners. After the war, McCain went on to serve the state of Arizona as a Republican in the U.S. House and then the Senate, the latter for three decades. McCain developed the reputation as a politician who was willing to work across the aisle and was the co-sponsor, among other legislation, of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (popularly known as McCain/Feingold). At McCain's funeral at the National Cathedral, he was eulogized both by former Republican President George W. Bush and by former Democratic President Obama. There is perhaps no more damning indictment of President Donald Trump's character than the fact that McCain and his family did not wish Trump to attend any of the Senator's memorials.
     As noted in my post of 12/30/2017 -- "2: Virtue Or Pleasure?" -- Seneca frequently quotes the philosopher Epicurus in his letters to Lucilius, despite the fact that Epicurus was the founder of a rival philosophical school. Seneca's twenty-first letter includes two quotations from Epicurus, the second of which is on the subject of desire. Apparently, Epicurus once wrote to his follower Idomeneus that if he wished to make their mutual friend Pythocles rich, he should subtract from the former's desires rather than add to his money. Seneca goes on to tell Lucilius:
          "This saying is too clear to need interpretation, and too well phrased to need improvement. My only addition is to remind you not to refer it only to wealth: its import will be the same wherever it is applied. If you want to make Pythocles honorable, what you must do is not add to his accolades but subtract from his desires. If you wish to make Pythocles experience constant pleasure, what you must do is not add to his pleasure but subtract from his desires. If you wish to make Pythocles live a long and complete life, what you must do is not add to his years but subtract from his desires. You need not regard these sayings as belonging to Epicurus: they are public property. I think philosophers should adopt [Roman] senatorial practice. When someone has stated a judgment that pleases me in part, I ask him to divide his opinion, and I follow the part I approve. These splendid sayings of Epicurus ... ."
     My hope is that the passing of John McCain will remind Americans (and others) of the importance of the ancient concept of bipartisanship.
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     Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2015), Letter 21, 7-9, page 77.
     Wikipedia, 9/1/2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain.