Soulcraft
On the Cultivation of Character
Aristotle wrote three books with “ethics” (ἠθική) in the title, where the word ἠθική is derived from the Greek word for character (ἦθος). Yet to modern ears, “ethics” brings to mind commandments, guardrails, and other restrictions on behavior. Thus arises the question: how best to render the word ἠθική into English?
After much reflection, I’ve provisionally settled on soulcraft, in part because it contrasts nicely with statecraft as a rendering of πολιτική; politics deals with the public world of societal interaction and governance, whereas ethics deals with the private, personal world of character and cultivation of one’s highest self.
These rather arcane matters of translation are bound up with what lately I’ve been calling public philosophy vs. private philosophy. Consider a beautiful statement that, according to Plato, Socrates made at his trial (Apology 29d-e, Grube translation modified):
I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet: ‘Good Sir, you are an Athenian and a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for sagacity [σοφία] and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, status, and prestige as possible, while you do not cultivate [ἐπιμελέομαι] nor give mind [φροντίζω] to wisdom [φρόνησις] or truth [ἀληθεία], or the best possible state of your soul [ψυχή]?
Although I use the word soul, I wish to avoid misunderstandings about belief in an “immortal soul” within various religious traditions. By contrast, for Aristotle the word ψυχή meant something closer to “aliveness” (since he argued that animals and even plants have ψυχή) or, for human beings, “personhood”.
One may wonder: since ψυχή (commonly Romanized as psyche) is the source for our word psychology, could it be that soulcraft is properly the concern of psychology rather than philosophy? More specifically, cultivating the best possible state of your soul might sound like something that the recent school of positive psychology could help you accomplish.
The relationship between psychology and philosophy is a large topic that I can’t hope to cover with any thoroughness in one of these brief journal entries (expect further reflections in coming weeks). However, as I see it psychology and philosophy should be able to work together to clear the underbrush on this path, with further contributions from literature, anthropology, history, and biography among other disciplines, none of which has possession of the complete truth (if there even is such a thing). Soulcraft is nothing other than the great task of figuring out how to be human, and in that endless endeavor we can use all the help we can get!
Another great essay on this theme revealing the “superior” philosophical focus on the personal and prosaic rather than impersonal and theoretical. You are plowing new ground only touched upon by most other thinkers but well rendered by the wisest — Epicurus, Montaigne, Santayana, Nietzsche, Hoffer and Deleuze. Yet the Occident refuses to embrace fully these Sages of the prosaic and of multiplicity, as the West is still bogged down in looking for the “one Ring that binds us all”. Whither we turn, we are mostly offered secular or religious Gods (oneness). But as Epicurus keenly observed, even if there are gods, they are not concerned with us, nor should we be with them. The statecraft/soul craft distinction you have posed is an innovative step, echoing Nietzsche in H, ATH. Excellent!
There's no way for me to know if this was in your mind as you were thinking about and writing this piece, but it leapt out at me immediately: this is the most stirring and clear statement of the value of a liberal arts education that I remember ever encountering. And although I got a pretty good one, at this remove I see enough holes that I wish I could get another.