Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity.
Wendell Berry, How to be a Poet
Happy Friday!
I took some time off from posting weekly updates to focus on finishing up the spring semester. Summer is here and I am thankful to be back in my routine. Here are five things I want to share with you this week:
Virtue Lab: I started a second newsletter that focuses more on the application side of my current and previous research. I realized that I am reading a lot of journal articles that help me learn about studying virtue, but I don’t really have a mechanism for sharing and applying some of the major findings that I read about on a weekly basis. So, in an effort to “show my work,” I started a newsletter that is all about putting virtue into practice. There will be a paywall up for monthly worksheets that I plan on developing for subscribers, but the first fifty people who sign up will receive lifetime access.
Creativity: I love reading books on creativity, and Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors on the subject. I’m about halfway through his book The Practice, which focuses on the daily habit of showing up and shipping creative work. In March I shared a book by Austin Kleon that deals with some similar ideas.
Research: One of the major criticisms of virtue development as an educational aim deals with the transferability of virtuous traits in contexts outside of the classroom. In short, some argue that virtue pedagogy does not provide sufficient guidance to students regarding how they should act and think virtuously in non-educational contexts. This article does a nice job of engaging this argument. I disagree with the author's conclusions, but I’ve found it to be a helpful resource.
On Substack: Check out Study the Great Books by Jacob Allee. I really enjoyed his post on moral virtue, especially this quote:
“Every time we repeat a moral action (or an immoral action) it creates an impression in our soul. The longer we repeat those actions the deeper the rut becomes and the harder it becomes to dislodge from that path (for good or ill).”Philosopher you should know: I’m working through some articles and chapters by philosopher Myles Burnyeat. His chapter, “Aristotle On Learning to be Good,” Is a fantastic introduction to the Nicomachean Ethics.
Until next time,
Tanner