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I’m becoming very interested in Aristotelian ethics as a framework for looking critically at our world — and how that relates to the genesis, diagnosis, and treatment of ADHD and similar akratic symptoms.
I also think there is something very good and necessary about the diagnosing and treating of ADHD, which can modify Aristotle’s aristocratic exclusion of people who are incapable “by nature” of becoming rational virtuous agents.
There’s a whole miasmic battle in views on ADHD involving nature vs nurture, early developmental issues, trauma, schooling, coercion, medication, institutions of modernity, exercise, willpower, etc — virtue ethics seems like a deep, rich tradition with which to approach it all.
For Aristotle, rational agency is something a human being attains as part of growing up within the type of household and polity that adequately fosters the virtues. Practical rationality isn't separable from virtue, and society can fail to foster rational agency.
If the polity suffers from some systemic dysfunction in this aspect, we would expect the citizens of that polity to suffer increasingly from "disorders" that prevent them from attaining practical rational agency.
MacIntyre points out (in "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?") that Aristotle regarded slaves and women as incapable of attaining rational agency, for reasons which we today must judge as erroneous. He fails to consider that their very exclusion was the CAUSE of their non-agency.
MacIntyre's critical project is to show how modernity, from his revised Aristotelian view, fails to provide just the kind of order & structure that would be necessary for a good polity to allow for practical rationality.
I became fascinated by "After Virtue" at a time in my life when I had left home to attend university and found myself somehow deeply disheartened and uninspired by that milieu. Becoming a professional computer programmer did not alleviate my disappointment...
It's impossible for me to extricate my symptoms of depression, anxiety, and dysfunction from these feelings of disappointment with respect to "the world."
But I also now understand that if I had been diagnosed with ADHD sooner, the world would have appeared as more inspiring.
But I also now understand that if I had been diagnosed with ADHD sooner, the world would have appeared as more inspiring.
In a way, I can see the diagnosis and medication of ADHD as a way for the polity to tell its maladapted citizens:
"Yes, somehow we failed to endow you with the preconditions for practical rationality; sorry—it's not so easy. Medicine and therapy is what we can offer."
"Yes, somehow we failed to endow you with the preconditions for practical rationality; sorry—it's not so easy. Medicine and therapy is what we can offer."
It is quite confusing to think about the morality of maladaptive states like ADHD and depression. I might wonder, am I somehow guilty? But haven't I been trying, am I not a good person deep down?
This confusion also seems like it stems from "MacIntyre's catastrophe."
This confusion also seems like it stems from "MacIntyre's catastrophe."
MacIntyre's catastrophe is the drawn-out series of events in the history of European thought that fundamentally ruptured the semantics of ethical thinking. He marks its origin in the turn towards "voluntarism" in medieval theology!
Voluntarism rejects the Aristotelian view of ethics as the study of flourishing. Being good becomes a matter not of practical rationality but of being oriented towards obeying God's divine command which is distinct from earthly well-being.
And so for example Luther referred to Aristotle as "the blind pagan teacher," being "to theology as darkness is to light," his Ethics being "the worst of all books" — "Away with such books! Keep them away from Christians."
The problem with Aristotle for Luther is precisely that his ethics is about flourishing in the world, rather than about faith and obedience. When secularized, this becomes the view of morality as being fundamentally only about evil selfishness vs good altruism.
But selfishness versus altruism isn't really a coherent, compelling framework for ethical thought. Modernity adds a bunch of other frameworks like human rights, utilitarianism, Kantian duty, etc—but for MacIntyre it's all basically incoherent.
So this "catastrophe" has led to a situation where ethical thinking is in severe disorder, where ethical discussions have a "characteristic shrill and interminable quality," where the available frameworks don't seem actually useful for guiding one's life in practice.
And it seems quite clear that there is no clarity and order to be found in the ethical thought of modernity when it comes to the extremely salient issue of the youth being afflicted with depression, executive dysfunction, and various disorders that hinder their flourishing.
There is some helpful structure to be found in the therapeutic and psychiatric fields, but there is some kind of blatant disunity and confusion, one consequence of which is the medicalized alienation and stigma that surrounds it all.
Well, everybody knows there's something wrong about "capitalism" or "modernity" or whatever. My symptoms would be assets in the state of nature; my disorder will wither away after the communist revolution.
I think issues of blame & forgiveness are part of the Christian synthesis of virtue ethics with the love of Christ—but I haven't gotten that far in my research! I know MacIntyre later became convinced Thomas Aquinas was basically right. https://twitter.com/androt/status/1354416669360328704?s=20
