MUTUAL VULNERABILITY AND THE VIRTUE OF PROPER [PDF]

Living Well: Mutual Vulnerability and the Virtue of Proper Interconnection Item Type

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Phillips, Elizabeth

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The University of Arizona.

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20/02/2019 05:26:43

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http://hdl.handle.net/10150/595995

LIVING WELL: MUTUAL VULNERABILITY AND THE VIRTUE OF PROPER INTERCONNECTION by

Elizabeth Phillips

__________________________ Copyright © Elizabeth Phillips 2015

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2015

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THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Elizabeth Phillips, titled Living Well: Mutual Vulnerability and the Virtue of Proper Interconnection and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

___________________________________________________________ Date: ______ Mark Timmons

___________________________________________________________ Date: ______ Anita Silvers

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.

___________________________________________________________ Date: ______ Dissertation Director: Julia Annas ___________________________________________________________ Date: ______ Dissertation Director: Michael Gill

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STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.

SIGNED: Elizabeth Phillips

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4 DEDICATION

I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Mary Beth, and Bob, and to all those I count among my family. Your unwavering support, patient presence, quiet counsel, compassionate strength, ardent passion for life and fierce love has given me the courage and capability to learn and live everything I argue for in the pages to follow. I would not be who and where I am today without you. You have my most profound gratitude and unconditional love.

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5 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………… Argument Structure and Methodology………………………………………… Project Overview………………………………………………………………. CHAPTER I: EUDAIMONIST ETHICS: NOT “JUST” ANOTHER THEORY OF HAPPINESS………………………………………………………………………… Happiness as Eudaimonia………………………………………………………. The Nature of Virtue……………………………………………………………. Eudaimonia and Psychological Theories of Happiness………………………… CHAPTER II: INDEPENDENCE, DEPENDENCE and INTERDEPENDENCE…. Defining Independence…………………………………………………………. Interdependence as Mutual Vulnerability……………………………………… CHAPTER III: INTERDEPENDENCE AND THE VIRTUES……………………. Navigating Our Interconnectedness in Relationships………………………….. The Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence……………………………………. CHAPTER IV: CULTIVATING COMMUNITY: THE VIRTUE OF PROPER INTERCONNECTION……………………………………………………………… The Virtue of Proper Interconnection…………………………………………... Proper Interconnection: On the Cooperative Nature of Human Beings………… Inculcating Proper Interconnection in Children………………………………… CHAPTER V: LIVING INTERCONNECTED LIVES: SELF-NARRATIVES, PRACTICES AND TRADITIONS…………………………………………………. Proper Connection within Practices……………………………………………. Proper Interconnection and the Narrative Structure of Life……………………. Finding Proper Interconnection Within Social Tradition………………………. CHAPTER VI: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………….. Future Research………………………………………………………………… REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………

6 8 9 14 28 30 36 43 55 57 74 93 95 109 121 123 143 148 156 157 165 177 190 202 208

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6 Abstract

Most philosophical work on ethical questions concerning disability and impairment, human vulnerability and the cycles of life is found within feminist care ethics and the philosophy of disability. When it comes to eudaimonist virtue ethics, a discussion of such truths about our human condition usually falls within an account of external goods. Alasdair MacIntyre’s work is the most notable exception. In his book, Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre (1999) argues that the cultivation of the virtues of acknowledged dependence is necessary for living a eudaimon life. Rather than focus, as MacIntyre and some care ethicists do, on our often contingent dependence, I argue that it is a right orientation toward our interdependence which allows us to live with the vulnerabilities inherent in the human condition and live well. To that end, I put forward a hitherto unspecified virtue, which I call Proper Interconnection and argue for its necessary role in sustaining human flourishing in an interdependent world. I establish that Proper Interconnection is a legitimate virtue in its own right by demonstrating that it meets the conditions that Hursthouse (2007) in “Environmental Virtue Ethics,” and MacIntyre (2007) in After Virtue specify must be met in order for a trait to qualify as a virtue. In accordance with Hursthouse’s conditions, I show that Proper Interconnection is a deep-seated disposition of character comprised of four cognitive and emotional components: recognition, compassion, acceptance and shared responsibility. Proper Interconnection is integral to the acquisition of practical wisdom, can be inculcated in children and plausibly fits within an account of human nature. Turning to MacIntyre’s conditions, I provide several examples from anthropology which I argue suggest that Proper Interconnection is both central to and helps sustain particular practices and traditions—such as the practice of hospitality and traditions of kinship. MacIntyre argues that, just as the virtues help sustain practices and traditions, they also enable us to flourish

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by sustaining the integrity of our character and, by extension, our life narratives. We are both the authors of our lives and inextricably interconnected with those whose life narratives intertwine with our own. As our individual flourishing cannot exist apart from the flourishing of the whole, we cannot live an integrated life narrative by engaging in just any form of interconnection. We need to cultivate the virtue of Proper Interconnection, as we search and strive for both our own good and the good of humankind.

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8 INTRODUCTION

“Care is a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair our world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.” -- Joan Tronto, in Hollie Sue Mann, Ancient Virtues, Contemporary Practices: An Aristotelian Approach to Embodied Care “We are by our very nature both individuals and dependent creatures and any plausible account of the sheer delight of personal achievement must make reference to that dependence.” -- Mendus, in Michael Fine and Carol Glendinning, “Dependence, Independence, or Interdependence? Revisiting the Concepts of ‘Care’ and ‘Dependency’” “Permanent peace and prosperity will come only when we realize and incorporate into our lives the truth that we live by each other and for each other and not unto ourselves. We must work all together for a world organized for peace.” -- Helen Keller, “The Great Choice” “Jamie would not grow up on his own, any more than you or I did. … He would become an individual little human and perhaps someday he would even achieve the kind of individual autonomy that’s been prized in the Western world, since the eighteenth century or thereabouts, as the philosophical foundation for political and ethical action, but he would achieve these things partly by modeling, partly with a little help from his friends. … He would realize his individual potential only by leaning on our mutual human interdependence--just like everyone else, only a bit more so.” -- Michael P. Barube, Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family and an Exceptional Child

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In this dissertation, I put forward and describe a hitherto unspecified virtue which I call Proper Interconnection and argue for its necessary role in bringing about and sustaining human flourishing in an interdependent world, thereby demonstrating its place within eudaimonist virtue ethics.1 Eudaimonist accounts of virtue ethics, such as the one I will be arguing for in this dissertation, make the questions of how I ought to live and what constitutes my living a good life foundational to ethical inquiry.2 On such a eudaimonist account, acquiring the virtues is necessary for a person to live well. That is, a virtuous character allows a person to make choices and respond to life’s circumstances with practical wisdom and emotional balance. Virtues are needed and discovered when it becomes clear that an already existing segment of human life contains within it the potential for a deep-seated character disposition, the cultivation of which is found to be integral to human flourishing. I show that, as with any virtue, the possession of Proper Interconnection informs every aspect of a person’s life, helping them to become all that they are and it is needed alongside the development of the other virtues, in order for a person to become fully practically wise. The addition of Proper Interconnection to the list of virtues, as well as a robust definition and articulation of interdependence and its integral role in our lives, contributes to furthering our understanding of human flourishing and adds to our conception of our place in the world. Argument Structure and Methodology My central arguments for my position rely on an interdisciplinary approach. The core of

1

The name and conception of the virtue Proper Interconnection is wholly my own.

2

Eudaimonia is a Greek term most often translated as happiness or flourishing.

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my project consists in a defense of a eudaimonist account of virtue ethics, which relies on and incorporates research from other philosophical sub disciplines, as well as includes key examples of interdependence in action from the field of anthropology. The majority of the philosophical literature which discusses the interrelated concepts of interdependence, vulnerability, cycles of life, impairment, illness and connection is most prevalently found discussed in two related fields: the philosophy of disability (including Brownlee and Cureton, 2011; Morris, Fine, and Glendinning, 2005; Scully, 2008; and Wendell, 1989) and feminist care ethics (e.g., Kittay, 1998 and Ruddick, 2002). These theorists focus on a wide array of issues such as the difference between disability and impairment; the place which disability occupies within political theory, bioethics, or popular culture; how to navigate the power relations between care givers and the cared for; and profound dependency and the need for a foundation for equality. However, rarely, if at all do theorists in these fields put forward an argument or account in virtue ethical terms. Halwani’s (2003) article constitutes an important exception to this generalization. Halwani argues that care ethics should be subsumed under virtue ethics, in part to answer several important objections to the care ethics project.3 Meanwhile, though virtue ethicists concern themselves with questions of living well, character development and our social nature as human beings (among much else), it is rare to explicitly find mention of disability and impairment, cycles of life, vulnerability and dependence, unless the focus of the discussion is on the loss of external goods. MacIntyre’s (1999) book, 3

Halwani (2003) contends in this article that care should be a virtue. Unfortunately, Halwani

does not provide enough detail about the kind of disposition of character care might be for me to contrast his account with my own. What he does say leads me to suspect that we are engaged in different projects.

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Dependent Rational Animals, is the most notable exception. As I will discuss in Chapter III, MacIntyre creates, alongside the standard virtues such as courage, honesty and the like, a set of virtues he calls the virtues of acknowledged dependence. Gratitude, just-generosity, forbearance and charity constitute a few of these virtues. For MacIntyre, the cultivation of these virtues within communities of giving and receiving fulfill the need for an account of the virtues to make sense of and incorporate the fact of our vulnerability into its scope. Though MacIntyre’s argument and those arguments put forward by Kittay’s (1998) and Ruddick’s (2002) ethics of care differ substantially in ethical approach and theoretical aims, they do share one striking element in common. Both approaches, when considering questions of vulnerability and connection (whether the context in question be illness or impairment, childhood or old age, or emotional vulnerability such as that experienced in loss) frame the discussion as one about dependence and care. In contrast, while Kittay (1998) seeks to build an ethical theory around the concerns and interests of the profoundly dependent and MacIntyre (1999) argues for a eudaimonist account of acknowledged dependence, many disability theorists criticize the use of the term dependence in relation to people with disabilities, as often the term is used to characterize both cognitively and physically impaired individuals alike. But as Silvers (1998) argues, people with physical impairments are only dependent contingently. If we could eradicate physical barriers in the environment and the pervasive ignorance, discrimination, marginalization and fear surrounding what it means to have an impairment or atypical embodiment, the social construct of disability would disappear along with the dependence perceived to accompany it. Unfortunately, prejudiced misconceptions about acquiring impairment continue to persist in philosophy as well as the wider culture. A handful of such assumptions include: life with a disability is not worth

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living, losing a sense perception not only initially, but persistently, is experienced as a debilitating loss and the view that the best thing to do about disability is make people with impairments as normalized as possible to help stave off the disquieting reminder they give ablebodied people about their own vulnerability. So, when disability theorists talk about dependence, it is most often in the context of arguing against the ableist biases and discrimination responsible for creating dependency and, in cases where dependence cannot be avoided, seeking to rid dependence of the stigma that usually accompanies it. Such theorists can find themselves at odds with care ethicists who focus on the central role of communities and relationships of caring in their ethical accounts while overlooking the presence of ableist attitudes, policies and power relations between and “care givers” and “the cared for.” I contend, along with the disability theorists, that while those who are reliant on others for whatever reason are vulnerable, vulnerability is not in itself an indicator of dependence, weakness, or fragility. Vulnerability is a universal experience among humans, whereas dependence such as that which is assumed to accompany disability is a contingent relational fact that applies to some humans all of the time and most humans, to varying degrees, at some time or other. If we are human, we are vulnerable and it is our vulnerability and willingness to be vulnerable as we relate to one another, which makes connection possible. On the view of virtue ethics I will be developing in these pages, I argue that it is our shared vulnerability, rather than our often contingent dependence, that provides the mutual ground on which interdependent relationships form. Unlike care ethicists such as Ruddick (2002), I contend that even in the case of individuals who are profoundly dependent, such as Kittay’s (1998) daughter Sesha who is severely cognitively impaired, a form of interdependence is still possible (the acquisition of any virtue, of course, is not). I argue in Chapter II for this

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claim, showing that the universality of human vulnerability is sufficient to bring people together no matter how dependent, or independent, they are. My account also differs from that put forward by MacIntyre (1999) for similar reasons. I take an acknowledgment of our dependence to be only half the story where genuine human connection is concerned. I will argue that, no matter where we are in the cycle of life, or what kind of embodiment we are currently experiencing, it is not our dependence, but our interdependence, which is most important to whether or not we live with excellence and live well. Before moving on to briefly discuss each chapter, I wish to speak to how I will be using anthropological data in this dissertation. I recognize that a couple citations of field research for the purposes of furthering my argument, does not constitute a definitive sample in a scientific sense. Nevertheless, the fact that such studies exist and corroborate my position is in itself philosophically pertinent, as examples play an important role in most philosophical arguments and empirical examples, all the more so. The answer, for instance, to the question of whether it is within our human nature to develop the virtue of Proper Interconnection (Chapter IV) needs to rely on empirical evidence as much as on normative arguments. The evidence presented in Tomasello, Melis, Tennie, Wyman, and Herrmann’s (2012) paper, for instance, hypothesizes that there is an evolutionary basis for cooperative and interdependent collaboration within our species. Such a finding points to the need for further research on the topic. But plausibility alone is sufficient to meet the philosophical purpose to which it is put here. The rest of the studies I cite in this dissertation, including Ahn (2010), James (1986), Johnson (1977) and Raeff (2006), serve as real-world examples in which Proper Interconnection is either being acquired or exercised. If it is to count as a virtue, Proper Interconnection should turn out to be a character disposition many people can and do possess, not an interesting disposition invented for

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theoretical interest. The purpose of such examples is to provide concrete evidence of the virtue’s existence in multiple contexts, both to prove that it can in fact be learned and lived, as well as demonstrate that people have possessed this virtue for a long time, without being able to put a name to it. Project Overview The first chapter of my dissertation, then, naturally begins with both an explication of what eudaimonist virtue ethics is and what it is not. Positive psychology and modern philosophical theories such as utilitarianism, which incorporate the concept of happiness, do so in a way that is quite different from the way in which the term is meant in a eudaimonist sense. It is imperative, then, to explicate what happiness means in a eudaimonist framework and contrast it with what happiness means in the psychological context. To this end, I begin with Aristotle’s own argument for his eudaimonist account of ethics, which informs both the rest of my work and the work of other eudaimonists I make reference to in the subsequent pages. On an Aristotelian eudaimonist framework, we seek to be happy above all else and ultimately the projects we engage in and goals we set are all aimed at achieving happiness or the eudaimon life. Happiness on this view is not a state, but an activity. In particular, the happy or eudaimon life is a life lived well, in accordance with practical wisdom. The exercise of such practical wisdom necessitates that a person develop excellence in character that comes about through the acquisition of the virtues. Drawing on Annas’ (2011) work in her book Intelligent Virtue, I go on to provide a more in-depth discussion of the flourishing eudaimon life and the role that cultivating the virtues— deep seated dispositions of character—have in the living of such a life. Annas (2011) notably argues that virtuous development occurs analogously to the development of a skill. In the second

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section of Chapter I, I discuss this skill model of virtue, showing the parallels between how a person learns from experience and role models to play a sport or instrument and how a person similarly learns to be just, brave, honest and so on. The skill model also fits the phenomenology of being virtuous as well. That is, it captures convincingly what it is like to acquire and exercise the virtues from a first-person standpoint. We learn to be virtuous, as well as question how are lives are going, in the midst of living within a myriad of already existing contexts—cultural, social, and familial. Happiness is an evolving, indeterminate goal and while we might have little control over many of our life circumstances, we do have a choice as to how we respond to such circumstances. Developing the virtues and becoming practically wise enables us to both respond to and live life excellently, which is essential to our happiness. Having put forward an account of what eudaimonism is, I then contrast this approach with emotive, pleasure-based and life satisfaction theories of happiness and show, in the process, how eudaimonism’s conception of happiness avoids many of the theoretical pitfalls to which the psychological conceptions frequently succumb. Pleasure theories, for instance, take happiness to either be synonymous with a good positive feeling, or else associate it with a slightly more complex notion of pleasure. Such theories seem to not take into account the evanescent nature of mere feelings which last only as long as the circumstances or activity within which they arise. A person who grows up taking her happiness to consist solely in pleasant feelings would often be misguided about the salient features of an activity or relationship and would be unable to point to the difference between kinds of badness—for instance between bereavement and mere annoyance. Desire satisfaction theories run into both the leaky jar objection and the stagnation objection, both of which point to differing ways in which neediness and fulfilling one’s desires fall short of explaining the importance of agency and active participation in bringing about one’s

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happiness. Likewise, life satisfaction theories which take happiness to rest on the assessments which people make regarding their lives on the whole, as well as list theories which locate happiness in the attainment of certain occupations, types of relationship, objects, or ways of life, run into their own difficulties in various ways. I argue that the former type of theory is very subjective, to the point that it is unclear both what exactly is being studied and that such an assessment strategy would adequately take into account how drastically life can and does change, particularly over time. The latter list theory is in contrast to objective and all it takes is one counterexample in which a person fails to attain one or more criteria on the list and is still happy. Eudaimonism, I argue, gets around these problems because it is an activity, not a state; it rightly picks out the right sorts of features of activities that are relevant to happiness, and puts the focus of living a happy life on a person’s response to her circumstances rather than on desire fulfillment. The eudaimonist approach also takes a nuanced approach to questions of objectivity and subjectivity when it comes to assessing whether or not your life is a happy one. Chapter II emerges out of the conjunction of two claims. The first claim, established in Chapter I, states that the exercise of the virtues is necessary for the eudaimon life: such a life can therefore be understood to involve the exercise of the virtues over many domains of activity. The second claim is that interdependent relationships constitute one such realm of activity and a central one at that. To establish this second claim, more definitions are needed. In this case, the chapter seeks to define, in ways that are both explanatory and normative, the terms independence, dependence and interdependence. All three concepts are important for understanding interdependence as a realm of human activity and why interconnection is so indispensable, not just within most of our relationships with others but also with respect to how we conceive of ourselves, our projects and our individuality. Each concept, independence,

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dependence and interdependence, is defined and discussed within its own section. My definitions ultimately differ from the standard dictionary definitions due to the fact that I am interested in discovering what each relation entails when possessed and lived at its best. Such definitions, I argue, need to be normative when applied to relations among humans. One reason for this has to do with the fact that we already use such terms normatively. Independence, for example, is often defined differently depending on which subgroup of people is under discussion. As an example of this phenomenon, I turn to Morris (1991) argument demonstrating that able-bodied people often define independence as being able to execute actions as well as make decisions on one’s own, thereby barring many people with disabilities from qualifying as independent. I proceed to argue against such an ableist conception of independence and instead argue for a conception of independence that places self-direction at the level of decision-making, not action. On such a view, a person is independent when, at the very least, she makes her decisions and manages the ways in which she will meet her needs, whether that is directly or with assistance. I combine this conception of independence with Young’s (1980) account of autonomy, on which an autonomous person is free from restraint, has the ability to make decisions that reflect her own aspirations and values and, lives an integrated, cohesive, ordered life. On my view, then, independence is achieved through being a selfdirected author of one’s life. Independence, as I have defined it, can describe both a state and an activity. The same can be true of dependence. A person can always be in a state of dependence or reliance on others, particularly during certain life cycle stages such as infancy or childhood. More often than not, however, dependence is a kind of relatedness to others, which we actively participate in. According to Morris (1991), dependence is also by definition a normative concept, as its

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existence is due to features of the social, economic and cultural contexts in which we find ourselves. Once again, an ableist double standard on which dependence as reliability is reserved for those with typical embodiments and dependence as personal helplessness and inferiority is reserved for people with disabilities serves as an example, albeit a cautionary one, of how dependence evokes evaluative judgment. In order to rid dependence of the stigma that often surrounds it; I categorize kinds of dependence differently from the divisions put forth in Fine and Glendinning’s (2005) paper. By changing the focus from how to why people rely upon one another, I am able to distinguish healthy forms of dependence from those forms of dependence which genuinely reflect poorly on a person’s character. I argue that there are only two forms of dependence which are intrinsically unhealthy: co-dependence (an unhealthy psychological condition an individual) and dependence due to discriminative collective or social practices which originates with an entire group or society. Everyone relies on one another to varying degrees and this healthy dependence is an integral part of life, whether it is physical reliance on another or sound emotional support. I define interdependence as a relationship among two or more people characterized by a mutual willingness to be vulnerable. I arrive at this definition in two steps: first, through the introduction of Aristotle’s concept of a second self and then through an extended discussion of the limits of the typical notion of reciprocity and the nature of vulnerability. I argue that Aristotle’s depiction of virtuous friendship, in which fully virtuous people see one another as second selves and have a belonging which goes beyond need or enjoyment, is a powerful form of interdependent relationship. All interdependent relationships, though most will not be as intimate or intense as relationships based on Aristotelian philia, are nevertheless formed through the recognition that the other is a second self. The capacity to recognize another as a second self

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requires that a person is willing to be vulnerable. Unsurprisingly, vulnerability can be understood as the state of the uncertainty of life generally or of being in circumstances which pose higher risk or uncertainty. Yet we can also be vulnerable when we show others who we are and allow them to form a genuine connection with us. Using these two concepts of seeing another as a second self and being vulnerable, I argue against the primacy of quid-pro-quo reciprocity and argue for the claim that we can redefine reciprocity in terms of the willingness to be vulnerable. In doing so, I am able to demonstrate why it is that Kittay’s daughter Sesha, who has profound cognitive impairments, is able to form interdependent relationships, as well as show that people who lack the ability to experience vulnerability cannot form interdependent relationships. When we connect with others on the grounds of mutual vulnerability, we form relationships, however close or trivial, within which we recognize each other as second selves. In Chapter III, I turn to addressing the place which interdependence has within a eudaimonist framework of ethics. As Hursthouse (2007) points out in her article, “Environmental Ethics,” a sphere of activity which has not been mapped onto an account of the virtues will either be sufficiently covered by the set of virtues already familiar to us, or will require the discovery of a new virtue which articulates the cognitive and emotional responses needed to engage in that activity with excellence. I have limited myself with regard to this question to two such eudaimonist accounts of virtue: that put forward by Annas (2011) in her book Intelligent Virtue and that put forward by MacIntyre (1999) in his book, Dependent Rational Animals. I discuss each theory within its own subsection of the chapter. Though both accounts are right in many ways, I demonstrate in each case that neither account has sufficient resources on its own to capture and include the kinds of attitudes, emotions, feelings and intellectual responses required to engage in interdependent relationships with excellence.

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Annas’ (2011) account of the virtues uses the standard set of virtues found in most eudaimonist accounts—courage, justice, honesty, generosity and loyalty.) and For this reason, along with her in-depth theory of how virtues are acquired and exercised (see Chapter I), I take her view to be exemplary of eudaimonist ethical theories generally, at least for the most part. In order to demonstrate that the familiar virtues cannot adequately account for the cognitive and emotional responses that are necessary for healthy interdependent relationships, I put forward a two-fold argument in which I defend my claim within the context of both a nonideal and then ideal world. Annas (2011) claims, rightly, that people in oppressive societies cannot fully acquire the virtues. With her claim as my starting point, I show that not only does oppression cultivate viciousness rather than virtue more often than not, but the kinds of vices it instills in people are not the vices associated with any of the standard virtues. For example, marginalization, discrimination, prejudice and othering (the creation of in-groups and out-groups) foster feelings of shame and inferiority among the oppressed. Meanwhile, oppressors often feel superior while distancing themselves from the perceived out-group out of fear. Oppression also perpetuates cycles of unhealthy relationships, as well as provides ample opportunity for people to develop socially counterproductive and self-destructive behaviors and emotions. I argue that such vices lead to rifts and schisms among people and between groups and are, in fact, vices of disconnection and destructive connection, vices specific to how we form and sustain interdependent relationships. As a vivid example of this kind of viciousness, I use Morris’ (2001) discussion of the disability system—a system of oppression which enforces divisions between able-bodied people and people with disabilities through othering and the perpetuation of harmful narratives about disability, impairment and embodiment. Next, I turn to the

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consideration of an ideal world, a world in which oppression, violence, ostracism, prejudice and distrust do not occur. I argue that human vulnerability with respect to the general uncertainty of life and within circumstances such as particular life stages, impairment, or loss, would still exist in such a world. As everyone in that world would be virtuous, Aristotelian friendship would be very common. Exercising practical wisdom would require more, rather than less, of a willingness to be vulnerable. Relying on and being relied upon by others in such a world would require attitudes, emotional responses and practical reasoning not acquired through the cultivation of the familiar virtues. People would need a way to recognize others for who they are, develop the emotional maturity to deeply listen and be present to someone who was suffering, appropriately share in giving and receiving care and support within nested dependencies and be open to engaging with people quite different from themselves. I come to similar conclusions regarding MacIntyre’s (1999) account of the virtues, in which he argues for both the virtues of practical reason as well as the virtues of acknowledged dependence. Included in the virtues of acknowledged dependence are virtues of giving—pity without derision, patience, charity, just-generosity—and virtues of receiving—unconditional gratitude, acceptance and forbearance. I argue that many of the virtues of receiving do not benefit their possessor, but in fact can very easily harm them instead. I point out, for example, that a person with a disability who is relying on an assistant most certainly should not respond to the assistant’s condescension with forbearance. Nor should a person be unconditionally grateful for any attempt to help. Sometimes it is more appropriate to set boundaries rather than show gratitude depending on the way in which a person is going about helping the other. Even acceptance in MacIntyre’s sense is problematic, as the way he discusses it connotes passivity. Dependence is often inaccurately and detrimentally thought of as passive, when in fact most

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people are engaged in reliance on others quite actively. It is dangerous to cultivate passive acceptance, which too much resembles submission. I end the chapter with the argument I discussed briefly earlier in this introduction regarding the conception MacIntyre gives dependence, perhaps unacknowledged until now. MacIntyre blurs the lines between those who are developmentally dependent and those who unequivocally possess practical reason but need assistance. Given the problematic nature of some of the virtues of acknowledged dependence, it is unclear why those with practical reason should possess them, while those lacking practical reason would fail to develop any virtues in the first place. At the same time, dependence in some degree or other is a universal human experience. It is misleading to speak of practical reasoners, as MacIntyre often does, as independent. It is more accurate to claim, rather, that practical reasoners are interdependent. By the end of Chapter III, I establish that: 1. Vulnerability impacts the exercise and acquisition of virtue in a way that the standard set of virtues cannot account for or cover. 2. We are by nature interdependent beings, that is, we engage in relationships defined by mutual vulnerability. 3. We can engage in these relationships either well or badly. Returning to Hursthouse’s (2007) article, “Environmental Ethics,” a new virtue is often characterized by a way of thinking, feeling and acting toward a specific kind of activity and set of practices. Both Chapters IV and V, the final chapters of my dissertation, explicate a precise and thorough account of this new virtue, Proper Interconnection. In Chapter IV, I demonstrate that Proper Interconnection meets Hursthouse’s three necessary conditions for something’s being a virtue. A trait can rightly be called a virtue if:

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1. It can plausibly fit within an account of human nature. 2. It describes a deep-seated disposition of character which is cognitively and emotionally complex, can be learned and has an analog in children. 3. It possesses a way to characterize people with the trait and be capable of picking out those actions relevant to its exercise. I will begin first to demonstrate how Proper Interconnection meets criterion 3. Proper Interconnection is a complex deep-seated character disposition. Central to the exercise of Proper Interconnection are what I call recognition and reciprocity. Recognition involves being able to see people (others and yourself) as they truly are. Such recognition serves as the foundation for the development of empathy and is necessary to possess in order to take others to be second selves. Recognizing others for who they are allows a person to connect with the other authentically, giving her the perspective to both acknowledge ways in which the other is similar to her and be able to accept the other’s differences without prejudice or fear. Reciprocity has three interrelated aspects or components. These are compassion, acceptance and shared responsibility. Compassion is the emotional capacity to acknowledge and soothe suffering, whether that of another or one’s own. Acceptance involves an active acknowledgment of what is currently the case, either with respect to an outer situation or regarding one’s thoughts and emotions in the moment. It involves the cognitive capacity to observe what is happening without judgment, before making a decision as to whether or how to change the circumstances. Such acceptance is crucial to the exercise of Proper Interconnection as it allows people to not judge others simply based on their differences, as well as provides a person with the mental space needed to discern how to relate to another thoughtfully and wisely. Part of the discernment needed for Proper Interconnection comes from the sensitivity to how, when and where your

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responsiveness to others is most needed and welcome. Such shared responsibility is most vivid within nested dependencies. A person with a sense of shared responsibility continually strives for an awareness of how his or her actions impact others, is capable of setting healthy boundaries and is reliably there for those who depend on him or her. I also describe and enumerate the inevitable vices—disconnection and several destructive patterns of connection—which specifically come about through the failure to possess Proper Interconnection or exercise it fully. Disconnection is an active disengagement from relationships, whether with others or when relating to yourself. Such disconnection most commonly brings about apathy, complacency, self-neglect, failure to take responsibility and callousness. There are also forms of destructive connection including narcissism, codependence and the over-identification with a group which I call the Borg Effect. I then proceed to show that Proper Interconnection meets criteria 1 and 2, in the next consecutive sections. As mentioned above, both of my arguments in these sections rely on philosophical as well as anthropological research. I will turn first to Kittay’s (1998) work, in which she argues that any ethical theory must acknowledge that dependency is central to human life. This claim, however, only goes so far when it comes to demonstrating that Proper Interconnection is a virtue which it is in our nature to plausibly acquire. To fully defend this claim, I turn to Tomasello et al.’s (2012) article “The Interdependence Hypothesis.” The data cited in and conducted for this article points to the hypothesis that, due to the greater survival among mutualistic collaborators, especially with respect to foraging, our species evolved early on to exhibit and value cooperation and interdependence. I again turn to anthropology to provide concrete examples of how children of preschool and kindergarten age are learning prosocial attitudes and behaviors that are an elementary starting point from which to acquire Proper

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Interconnection. Both Ahn (2010) and Raeff (2006) provide evidence that, through experience in living and role modeling, young children can and do begin to respond with empathy and compassion, start developing social awareness and learn about functional roles and accountability in group situations. Furthermore, the process by which children learn such prosocial cognitive and emotional responses is in alignment with the skill model of virtue acquisition put forward in Annas (2011). In Chapter V, I turn to MacIntyre’s (2007) three sufficient conditions which a trait must meet in order to count as a virtue. In his book After Virtue, MacIntyre puts forward his three criteria as follows: 1. The trait must be shown to be a part of and help sustain a practice (a complex cooperative human activity such as philosophy comprised of standards of excellence which a person learns by taking up and modeling the values central to that activity). The practice which I consider Proper Interconnection to be particularly central to is that of hospitality. The best example of hospitality I have come across is that put forward in James’ (1986) article which describes how the villagers of Le Chambon sheltered and cared for Jewish refugees during World War II. A mutual willingness to be vulnerable is part of what separates hospitality from charity. To provide hospitality with excellence requires compassion for others, acceptance of the current situation, shared responsibility and seeing those receiving your hospitality for who they really are. 2. It must be shown that the trait contributes to and helps sustain a person’s unified life narrative (defined as the structural coherence and integrity of one’s contextually imbedded story, among one’s authored actions, functional roles and historical setting.

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Our actions, conversations, relationships, histories and lives are made intelligible through narrative structure. Such a structure is formed in part due to our own choices as the authors of our lives and in part due to the way in which our narrative overlaps and is imbedded in others’ life narratives. People who exercise Proper Interconnection not only take responsibility for pursuing their own good in life, but recognize, due to the way in which our life narratives intertwine, that they also need to share in the responsibility for the common good. Acceptance of what is, along with compassion for oneself and others, sustain such a pursuit of the good and this is necessary for the living of a more unified life narrative. 3. It must be shown that the trait belongs to and sustains a tradition (a historical, social discussion engaged in an ongoing, often multigenerational examination of what constitutes the good, such as virtue ethics.) and To demonstrate that Proper Interconnection meets this final criterion, I turn to Johnson’s (1977) anthropological study in which she interviewed second and third-generation members of JapaneseAmerican families in Honolulu. There are four primary values which take central place within this kinship system: obligations to parents and socially superior kin, social embeddedness within the family, reciprocity and dependence. I argue that, particularly among those of the third generation, the exercise of Proper Interconnection both helped sustain and evolve the tradition which shaped how these families lived and raised their own children. Today’s world is an interdependent world. We live at a time of global markets and global climate change. We live at a time when an adequate response to economic and environmental crises can only be sufficiently and sustainably resolved through the collaboration and

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cooperation of states, institutions, organizations, communities and individuals. We live at a time in which collective action is not only a noble aspiration; it is technologically possible and necessary. Our choices and actions affect not only our immediate friends and relatives but countless others as well. It is evident that interdependence is a fact, a fact which demands an excellent response from us whether we wish to collaborate to meet our global challenges or simply live authentic, interconnected lives. It is the acquiring and living by the virtue of Proper Interconnection, which puts us in right relationship with our human vulnerability through acceptance, compassion, shared responsibility and allowing ourselves to be seen, that we may one day feel and know that we unequivocally belong to one human family.

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EUDAIMONIST ETHICS: NOT “JUST” ANOTHER THEORY OF HAPPINESS Are you happy? Whether you believe yourself to be happy or not, have you ever tried to give reasons as to why you think so? To answer these questions, you would need to thoughtfully consider answers to two further questions: What is happiness and what does it mean to be happy. Philosophers and nonphilosophers alike are understandably very invested in finding an answer to these questions; after all, we all want to be happy. Yet as Annas (2011) points out in her most recent book, Intelligent Virtue, a diverse and often conflicting number of philosophical and psychological theories have laid claim to the term happiness, so that the term is now more ambiguous and opaque than ever. Theories of happiness put forward in positive psychology (discussed in the third section below include conceptions of happiness such as a simple good feeling, desire satisfaction, life satisfaction, pleasure or the acquisition of certain objects and goals such as a job, a good family, money, status and so on. Not only do these psychological theories compete with one another, they are also at odds with those philosophical theories of happiness which originated in ancient times, known as eudaimonist ethical theories. In this first chapter, I lay out the foundations of the arguments to come by putting forward an explication of eudaimonist virtue ethics. In doing so, I will not only articulate in much greater detail what such a eudaimonist theory of happiness consists in, but also distinguish it from the psychological conceptions of happiness which pervade academic and self-help literature. I will be drawing on Annas’ (2011) arguments which show that Aristotelian eudaimonism (which I refer to as eudaimonism from now on) succeeds in capturing important insights about happiness in precisely those places where positive psychology does not.

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As noted in the introduction of this dissertation, eudaimonism is an ancient Greek term that is often translated as happiness or flourishing.4 Eudaimonist ethical theories take the questions of how I ought to live and what constitutes my living a good life to be foundational to ethical inquiry. Such an approach can be contrasted with theories that are less agent-centered, which take one or more principles as their starting point. Familiar principles include the greatest happiness for the greatest number or the Categorical Imperative.5 Eudaimonist ethical theories can be divided into two groups: those which take virtue to be integral to living the eudaimon, happy life and those that argue that some other activity or state, other than virtue, is indispensable to happiness. The ancient philosopher Epicurus, for example, argued that the eudaimon life is one of pleasure, defined as a state of tranquility. On his view, the virtues are merely instrumental in helping a person achieve this life goal. As another example, Nussbaum (2006) argues for a eudaimonist ethical theory on which the eudaimon life consists in possessing at least a minimal threshold of a set of core human capabilities necessary for human dignity, such as practical deliberation, empathy and freedom of expression. In this dissertation, I focus on eudaimonist theories of ethics which hold that acquiring and exercising the virtues is inseparable from living the eudaimon life. Not surprisingly, these theories also vary, differing in their accounts of the role virtue plays in human flourishing. 4

I will be using happiness and flourishing as translations for eudaimonia interchangeably.

This is not always done and scholars have their particular and sound reasons for preferring one translation to another depending, often, on emphasis. That said, I do not think my argument rests on or is improved by sticking to one translation over the other. 5

The above principles are found in forms of consequentialism such as Mill’s utilitarianism

and Kantian ethics, respectively (Kant, 2004).

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Generally speaking, however, such theories take virtue, which they define as a deep-seated disposition of character, to be integral to the happy life, necessary for it, or both necessary and sufficient. Debates persist into the present day as to whether and how, virtue could be all that is needed for a happy life and I will not enter into those debates here. Instead, my work focuses on Aristotelian-based eudaimonist virtue ethical theories that hold that virtue is necessary, but not sufficient for happiness.6 In Section I, I articulate what counts as a eudaimonist theory of ethics and show how Aristotelian theories, generally speaking, conceive of happiness or flourishing on this framework. In Section II, I turn to a more thorough explication of virtue, what it is and how it fits in a eudaimon life. In Section III, I discuss the relationship between eudaimonist virtue ethics approaches to happiness and those propounded by positive psychological accounts. Such a comparison, I contend, both further draws attention to features of a conception of happiness particular to eudaimonism as well as further clarifies where this conception diverges from other kinds of accounts of the happy life. By the end of this chapter, I hope that my taking the time to properly situate the concepts found in eudaimonism within the wider scope of philosophical traditions of ethics will happily avoid any confusion as to what might be meant by virtue, happiness and flourishing. Happiness as Eudaimonia In this section, I seek to clearly articulate what happiness, or flourishing, amounts to on a

6

I should add that however the sufficiency debate might be resolved in the future, it is

unlikely that the outcome will have much bearing in either direction on my subsequent arguments.

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eudaimonist account of ethics. I begin by laying out Aristotle’s own arguments for his conception of happiness, before expanding on this conception through a discussion of Annas’ (2011) account in Intelligent Virtue. In Chapter 4 of Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics (Crisp translation), Aristotle proposes that happiness, or Eudaimonia, is the ultimate end or overarching goal at which people aim. There is, he contends, always an end or goal which is the point of our planning and engagement in activities in life. For every action we engage in, we can ask ourselves why we are doing it and as it usually turns out, we do things for the sake of something else. For example, I got on the bus yesterday in order to get home. I wanted to get home so I could eat dinner. I wanted to have dinner so I could stay well nourished. My aim in staying well-nourished was to be healthy. As another example, I pick up the phone to call my best friend. I want to call my best friend because I want to spend time with her, sharing what is going on in our lives and I want this because I value our friendship. Why do I value my friendship or want to be healthy? The answer reasonably seems to be that I aim at such goals because in doing so, I live well. That is, I aim at health and friendship for the sake of happiness. In Aristotle’s view, we pursue all good things, ultimately, in order to lead a happy or flourishing life. Once we are flourishing, there is no reason to seek some further end, since there is none beyond living a flourishing life. In his terminology, flourishing is complete—something we seek for its own sake alone—and self-sufficient—an aim that can stand on its own as our final end (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 I097b). Living a eudaimon life begins with a person’s reflections concerning how her life is going. There are at least several times or occasions while living where it becomes necessary to reflect on our lives, what is and is not working for us and what, if anything, we might wish to

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change. In the process of such an inquiry, we often end up questioning past decisions and actions, long and short term goals and the importance of projects and plans. Sometimes, we even find ourselves needing to reevaluate our values and the kind of person we take ourselves and want ourselves to be. Such questions about happiness are important to us, even when we are not consciously employing an ethical theory to provide guidance as to the answer. But, as an ethical theory, eudaimonism is particularly situated to provide a well-structured framework for such self-reflection, as well as give an account of how living well and living virtuously, coincide. Furthermore, our need to engage in such reflection as well as the experience of so reflecting on the structure of our lives tends to integrate and unify our goals and activities, values and character. The plans we make in day to day life are not made at random, but instead arise as extensions of greater projects, which in turn we pursue for some larger purpose—such as a good career, a family, the fulfillment of a long-held dream and so on. Each of us has a single life to lead and each of us can only control how we respond to the circumstances of that life, as well as develop an idea of what circumstances we’d like to achieve for ourselves to the extent it is possible. We therefore cannot pursue every goal we might have, either because something is preventing us from achieving the goal or because the goal conflicts with something else we value more highly. Either way, reflection on how are lives are going is called for. Our need as human beings to organize our lives, reflect on how they are going and discern whether the goals we have match the life we want to lead, ultimately spurs us to ask the questions that eudaimonist ethics seeks to answer: how ought we to live? And, what is it to live well? and The answer to these questions becomes more and more clear to us the longer we live our lives. Aspiring to live a single life well slowly results in cohesion among our goals, because we cannot simultaneously pursue conflicting or contrary ends. Goals are nested and in

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organizing my goals into a coherent livable framework, I am also organizing my life as a whole. It follows then that it is not just my individual goals which ultimately aim at happiness: my life as a whole also does. Insofar as my life aims at my happiness, happiness is in fact my final end. Such a final end need not be determinate. As Annas (2011) points out, it is not as though each of our lives has a concrete specific goal, the attainment of which integrates all our other goals and activities and achieves us our happiness. There is no such claim in eudaimonism and furthermore, trying to put such an idea into practice would result in a person attempting to abstract backward from a far off goal to determine the best strategy to get there. This is empirically not what life is like. Instead, Annas observes, our lives are predominantly future oriented, such that the further we project our goals and plans into the future, the more unknowable it is just how life will proceed. People live their lives doing the best they can, without much of a solid idea at all what exactly they are aiming for in life. Whatever happiness is, then, is indeterminate and unspecified and is shaped through time and the actual living of that life. Though the future and shape of our lives is largely indeterminate, it does seem that how we live, how we respond to the circumstances of our lives will depend largely on the kind of character we have. As Annas (2011) points out, most of us would rather raise our children to be brave, generous and honest than selfish, cowardly and untrustworthy. Our reasons for why this is so, are not just those concerning how vicious children might be a pain to raise. It is not just that we want our children to act virtuously toward others because this is better for those others. We also want our children to develop the virtues because we feel that a life lived virtuously puts people in the best position to respond well to what happens to them. So we raise our children to the best of our ability to develop the virtues and aspire to become more virtuous ourselves. In

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Annas’ view, virtue is forward-looking, just as the unfolding structure of our lives is forwardlooking. It is the way I respond to the circumstances of my life, rather than the state of those circumstances themselves, which constitutes living well with excellence and practical wisdom. As we develop our character, we are always simultaneously navigating both our current life circumstances as well as negotiating the complex consequences of our past. We develop the virtues amidst dispositions of character we already have, just as we coherently structure our goals and projects in the process of living our lives. Whatever specific account of virtue and happiness any particular eudaimonist account seeks to give, then, it is clear from the outset that the active cultivation and exercise of the virtues and the active shaping of our lives as a whole are mutually informing. The aspiration for the one encourages the cultivation of the other and vice versa and this observation provides the foundation for the link between virtue and happiness. At this point, we cannot get much more precise about what happiness consists in without further argument. For Aristotle, the eudaimon or happy life is a life lived in accordance with virtue--practical reason and emotional balance. A sketch of his argument follows.7 In Aristotle’s view, everything has a characteristic activity, or function. For example, the function or characteristic activity of the eye is to see, the characteristic activity of medicine is healing or health and the characteristic activity of a watch is to tell time. We can now ask the further question, what makes for a good eye, medical treatment, or watch. The answer in each case is any of one or several attributes that designate the thing in question as being excellent. So, a good watch is one that tells time accurately, looks attractive and is well made.

7

See Nicomachean Ethics I.7.

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This same line of reasoning can be applied to human beings and this is in fact where Aristotle takes the argument next. He contends that the characteristic activity of a human being is reason and specifically practical reason. It is a capacity that humans have whereas nonhuman animals do not and it is the faculty that accounts for our sociality, language, self-awareness, thought and so on. This being said, a good human being is one who exercises practical reason well. She is practically wise. If the good life is a life lived in accordance with practical wisdom—excellence in rationality and emotional balance—and our final end is a life lived well, then the eudaimon or happy life is one characterized by the activity of exercising practical wisdom. Aristotle spends the majority of the rest of Nicomachean Ethics arguing for the claim that the virtues are necessary for practical wisdom and therefore necessary for happiness. Roughly speaking, it is in living life honestly, courageously, justly and generously, to name a few of the virtues, that a person acquires the complex dispositions toward ways of thinking and feeling which are necessary in order to act in the right way, at the right time and for the right reasons. Developing a virtuous character just turns out to be how a person excellently participates in the activity characteristic of human beings. She learns to be and then becomes, fully virtuous and, barring grave misfortunes, happy. In Aristotle’s view, virtue itself is not enough for happiness. He argues that some kinds of external goods, a certain level of health, friendship with others, physical ability and material existence, are needed for a happy or flourishing life as well. For Aristotle, many of these external goods simply add to our happiness, such as such as health, wealth, good looks, or favorable birth. However, friendship is both an instrumental good (friends make life easier for us and are enjoyable to spend time with) as well as a good that makes us self-sufficient with

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respect to happiness. That is, Aristotle holds that our social bonds, attachments and need for community is so important to our happiness, that we would fail to flourish without friendship. I will come back to this point again at the end of this chapter and expand on it in greater depth in Chapter II. With respect to the larger claim itself––external goods are also necessary for happiness––Aristotle’s stated views can and have been interpreted in many ways. Russell’s (2012) book, Happiness for Humans, is a particularly informative work on this issue, known as the sufficiency debate. To get into that debate here would take me too far afield. The Nature of Virtue In the last section, I outlined the concept and general argument for eudaimonism and the living of the eudaimon or happy life. Given that the kind of eudaimonist theory I am interested in is a kind of virtue ethics, it becomes equally important to define what is meant by virtue and further specify the intersection between the virtues on the one hand and happiness on the other. In order to accomplish this adequately, it is important to know in greater detail how virtues are acquired, what it means to be fully virtuous and what exercising virtue is like. Once again, I turn to Annas’ (2011) account of virtue to further elucidate these points. Annas’ argument is twofold. First, she characterizes what it is like to be a developing virtuous agent. She does this largely through analogy with learning a practical skill. Secondly, she argues that virtue is constitutive of a person’s flourishing. I take up these two aspects of her theory in turn. In Annas’ (2011) conception, virtues are deep-seated character dispositions which we acquire over time in roughly the same way that we acquire a skill—for instance, when learning to play a sport or an instrument. We learn skills, as we do virtues, through the process of habituation and our aspirations to be better at what we do. Unlike habit, habituation involves

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shifts in character and responses to the world that go beyond repetitive action and learning by rote. For example, a person learning to be honest might repeatedly engage in honest acts. However, habituation requires not just that a person do honest things or sometimes behave honestly. It demands that one develop appropriate feelings such as anger at deception and take pleasure in engaging in situations with honesty. She will also gradually increase her understanding of why her actions are honest, as well as come to recognize that the way to act with honesty in one instance will not necessarily translate or apply to other situations. Part of the disposition of honesty involves being intricately aware of your surroundings and the situation at hand and having the response-ability to adjust your behavior accordingly. For instance, in one situation I might tell a friend who is keen on my advice that her shoes really do not complement her outfit and she should wear something else to her special occasion. However, if the person asking for advice is my boss and I do not want to ruffle feathers, honesty would not require that I blurt out exactly what I thought of her ugly red skirt. Instead, I would reply that I’m sorry, but I really am not the one to say. Though sometimes refraining from mentioning something can be just as deceptive as a lie, silence in this case is prudent and I can remain silent on my opinion while continuing to be open and honest with her. As with most skills, acquiring the sensitivity to our environment needed to fully possess a virtue takes time, repetition, attention and experience. Attaining this sensitivity is something we strive and aspire to, even while we improve and even if, as we are apt to do, we fail to meet the mark. The analogy of virtue to skill also illuminates the phenomenology or experience of what it is like to be a virtuous person. For example, if I want to learn to play basketball or the piano, I turn to role models such as parents (if they know the skill I want to learn), other peers and so on. A child learning to play basketball engages in weekly practice and fitness training appropriate to

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her age level. She gains encouragement and constructive feedback from her coach and builds her skills by mimicking exceptionally good peers. As she learns more of the technique and strategy of the game, she no longer copies, but rather engages actively in the process of learning. Similarly, a person aspiring to be virtuous does not just copy her role models, thereby imitating them. Such imitation does not result in any real learning, but rather unreflective rote conformity. What is needed for genuine learning is the aspiration and ability to make the activity one’s own, developing a grasp of not just how, but when and for what reason her role models act and feel the way they do. In this way, whether she is learning a sport or learning how to be brave, a person makes the shift from being guided by others to also gaining mastery through self-direction. Her improvement leads to greater aspiration to do better and that in turn leads to greater improvement, as she is wholly invested in and self-motivated to continue her learning. At some point, a person ceases to follow her role models at all and takes initiative to selfdirect some of her learning. Further along in the process of development, in both skills and virtue, a person will learn much more through doing, rather than reviewing the rules intellectually. For example, the basketball player, while she still learns from experts or professionals, primarily learns advanced techniques from them, such as how to trust the motion of her body when responding to difficult situations in the game. Crucially, in this way, she becomes competent at the skill and will find, more and more, that she is able to play without having to constantly think about how and when to dribble the ball, about which foot and hand positions would be best for making baskets, when to pass the ball and so on. She will engage in this activity more and more effortlessly. What is more, she finds the activity of playing basketball increasingly enjoyable.

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Similarly, becoming virtuous is a process. It requires effort on the part of the learner to practice and attend to teachers, including parents, role models and personal experience. If I want to be brave, honest, or just, I begin by first doing brave, honest and just actions. Over time, I learn to respond bravely, honestly and justly in a myriad of varied circumstances. A person who is still learning to be virtuous will deliberate about what the virtuous person would do, in the same way that the learner of a sport or instrument deliberates about how to act in accordance with what accomplished people with that skill do. As she gains more experience in living and finds herself in circumstances that call for her bravery or honesty, she will begin not just to do the brave or honest thing, but to be brave or honest herself. The more such a person acquires the virtues, the more she finds doing the brave, honest, or just thing enjoyable and is not attracted at all to the vicious alternatives. Becoming virtuous renders a person both rationally and emotionally wise, such that her desires, over time, gradually fall into alignment with her engagement in virtuous actions. Finally, when she has full virtue, a person will no longer need to wonder about what a virtuous person would do. To understand this, think of the basketball player, now able to play competently. If she were to have to make occurrent deliberations about how best to catch the ball or dribble it down the court, such thoughts would slow her playing significantly. Likewise, if the virtuous person needed to deliberate about whether this were a situation in which honesty or bravery were called for, it would seem both that her engagement in virtuous activity would be impeded significantly and that we would question how virtuous she really is. An aspiring virtuous agent, like the aspiring basketball player, will eventually have enough knowledge and competence concerning the skill to forego overtly inquiring after what to do.

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Although the fully virtuous person does not actively deliberate about what a virtuous person would do, or whether she should do something because it is the virtuous thing to do, she is making real-time, reasoned responses to what is going on. She is able to exercise practical wisdom, which she acquires once she has developed all the virtues and it is with this wisdom that she is able to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. She is able to expertly navigate her way through the intricacies of human interaction. Such a person recognizes that bravery is not always about confronting danger; generosity is not always about pouring money into a cause or giving money to people and so on. The dispositions of character which constitute the virtues are, then, not passive states, but dynamic active responses that have been inculcated over time and are expressive of intelligent cognitive and emotional engagement with the circumstances of the world. Such a fully virtuous person does not develop the kind of answer or response to circumstances that could be memorized and then applied to all situations of that type. Instead, her aptitude for practical engaged assessment allows her to respond appropriately in the moment, so that her actions and feelings are rightly oriented toward the situation at hand. There are some respects in which the analogy between acquiring a skill and acquiring virtue come apart. While there are certainly social and cultural contexts surrounding a game such as basketball, the lessons needed to train to be a basketball player are relatively homogenized. Virtuous development, on the other hand, is done from the outset in varied cultural contexts—within the family, among friends, in interactions with school teachers, faith leaders and work colleagues. These social and cultural contexts are themselves embedded in the wider context of social and political structures, economic realities and world affairs. We do not simply learn to be brave or honest in some abstract way, for example in the way we might learn about numbers or history. Some children will develop courage while living in refugee camps,

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others by dealing with bullies at school and others by asserting their worth in the midst of prejudice. One child might learn about generosity by working for a charity, another by adopting and caring for a stray animal. Our upbringing, family life, opportunities and circumstances we are exposed to all impact our virtuous development. Furthermore, not only do we adopt the norms of the people who surround us, but once we are old enough to put our lives in order and wonder how to become an honest or brave person, we will have already internalized many vices, habits and personal traits that, along with potentially virtuous dispositions, make us who we are. We do not learn to be virtuous only when we have reached adulthood and are able to consider the kind of people we wish to be. Instead, we develop the virtues at the same time that we develop a sense of self, decide what we like and dislike and grow up with all the complicated entanglements that maturity and responsibility bring with them. By the time we ask ourselves the questions of how we ought to live and who we’d like to be, we are well underway to having or not having many of the virtues necessary for living, with excellence, the life we wish to live. With the above account of virtue to draw on, it becomes clearer just why and how eudaimonia is an unfolding indeterminate goal, one shaped and defined through activity, responsiveness, reflection, trial and error and greater stores of experience over time. It is this observation, that we become virtuous in the midst of living, when we have already begun putting our lives together in the contexts in which we find ourselves, that the need arises to consider the distinction between the circumstances of a life, i.e., what happens to us and the living of that life, i.e., how we respond to our circumstances. Russell (2012) puts the distinction slightly differently: on the one hand we are patients and on the other, agents. While being acted on is an experience we all are familiar with, virtue and by extension flourishing come about through our

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active engagement in our circumstances. That it often feels like we are just passive beings upon whom life circumstances happen and to whom events occur without our control, does not mean that we are always passive or that patiency is the only side of our human experience. Undoubtedly, growing up, getting into an accident, dying and getting hit on the head with an acorn are things we have little control over and there is a definite sense in which they simply ‘happen’ to us. However, a virtuous life is an active life. Every situation that we encounter in life is an opportunity for us to fully engage with the world and actively respond to it. We can respond to being caught in a fire with courage or cowardice, we can choose honesty or deception when faced with an awkward or delicate life circumstance and when discriminated against we can choose to act with resentment and bitterness or be compassionate and just toward whomever wronged us. Virtuous agents live a life full of embodied virtuous activity within which they set goals and create meaningful projects and relationships. In other words, they have the character dispositions necessary for living a eudaimon life. Annas (2011) also maintains, along with many virtue ethicists, that the virtues must be fully integrated into and unified within a person’s life before she is fully virtuous. As an example, to be fully honest, I must do so bravely, justly and with appropriate self-control. To fail in this would be to overlook important aspects of the virtue of honesty. Likewise, it takes honesty with yourself and others, generosity and courage to be fully just and fair toward others. For example, justice sometimes requires fair redistribution of resources and a generous person will do this gladly. To fully possess courage, a person must already have the disposition to act honestly, as well as authentically––that is, act out of a changeable yet deeply held core awareness and understanding of self. Someone who engages in a brave action, but does so in part out of a deeply held self-deception, might appear to most

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people to be courageous, while nonetheless failing to possess courage as a deeply seated character disposition. For this reason, it is only the person who both possesses all the virtues and can exercise them in an integrated way who is fully virtuous and practically wise Eudaimonia and Psychological Theories of Happiness As I pointed out in the introduction to this chapter, there are a myriad of modern psychological accounts of happiness being put forward in academia and popular culture, which have grown to be of interest to people of all kinds. In the last two sections, I have laid out a brief explanation of eudaimonist ethics, what the eudaimon life consists in and how virtues are exercised, acquired and relate to the happy eudaimon life. There is much more that could be said by way of adding greater detail to the above account of eudaimonist ethics. There also is a need, given the primacy of positive psychology and the sometimes even older assumptions about happiness on which it rests, to clearly articulate what distinguishes eudaimonism from these theories. By the end of this section, I aim to point out some nuances to the eudaimonist approach to ethics, as well as make clear what eudaimonism as a kind of ethical theory is patently not. I have already shown that eudaimonism is an ethical theory that takes living happily to be a final end. Following Annas (2011) in this explication, I demonstrated how happiness on such a view is an indeterminate, gradually evolving and nonspecific goal. A life’s goals and projects and relationships are unified under a final end to the extent that a person successfully can carry this out, because all the goals in question pertain to the one life and it is the only life a person can live. Theories in positive psychology, on the other hand, need a specific variable to study, track, control against and observe over time. For this reason, these views forego conceiving of happiness in a eudaimonist sense. Instead, they either postulate that happiness is determinate, specific and measurable, or else pick out a related measurable variable that might lead to a

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hitherto undefined notion of happiness. Such views do not only differ from eudaimonism in this respect, but do so objectionably. That is, insofar as such theories define happiness in terms of the variable they study, they will run into serious problems that eudaimonist theories of ethics avoid.8 The following discussion will have to be necessarily general as there are more kinds of positive psychological accounts of happiness than I can cover here and to do so would be a project in and of itself. However, psychological views of happiness usually fall into several different categories that can be distinguished by the broad definition they claim for happiness. The most frequent ways to define happiness are: pleasure or a positive feeling; desire satisfaction; and overall life satisfaction. I will point out the problems with each kind of theory sequentially below and then show how eudaimonism avoids such conceptual and practical difficulties. Both classic utilitarianism and some studies on happiness in psychology take happiness to be identical to pleasure. For many utilitarian’s, happiness comes about for an individual by

8

As mentioned above, it is possible that some psychological theories of happiness claim only

to study a measurable variable or phenomenon that they take to be related to happiness. I will not be discussing this possibility in what follows. Suffice it to say that any psychological account of happiness which studies variables merely related to happiness begs the question of what exactly is under study while failing to actually define happiness in a way which would seem empirically acceptable. Furthermore, if the use of data on such an account is to make scientific observations about a nebulous concept that seems like happiness to most people, then there are far greater methodological problems at hand.

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maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, possibly with a few minor qualifications such as accounting for quality of pleasure. The greatest happiness for the greatest number is brought about through maximizing pleasure for all.9 On some psychological understandings of happiness, I am happy whenever I am experiencing a good feeling. When I am positive, joyful, or cheerful, I am happy; when I am sad, upset, angry, or lonely, I am unhappy. Such a state can be measured. Besides this, the pleasurable feeling view of happiness satisfies our intuition that something has gone very wrong if happiness has nothing to do with pleasure at all. For surely, if attempting to live a happy life routinely entailed misery, no one would bother with it. One problem with equating happiness with simple good feelings or short periods of feeling good is that it fails to say anything about a person’s life as a whole. The feeling of pleasure in an activity disappears when the activity is over. The pleasure of eating a slice of chocolate cake, for instance, only lasts while I’m eating it. Its purchase on me is quite fleeting and it seems that these kinds of pleasures will not make me satisfied in any long term way. I’ll be in a constant need of pleasant feelings and when those are absent; my happiness will vanish with them. Furthermore, Annas (2011) contends that there are at least two other reasons to think that pleasurable feelings pick out the wrong sorts of features on which to base a conception of happiness, particularly if it is the sole criterion on which to determine whether or not a person is happy. First, on such a view, a person might easily grow up misguided as to what most take to be the salient features of an activity. Second, a person who adopts such a view would fail to be able, on the basis of her theory, to distinguish between significantly different forms of badness.

9

While classical utilitarianism equates pleasure with a mere feeling, later consequentialist

theories have a much more complex account of pleasure.

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To illustrate the first problematic implication with the theory, suppose you believe you are only happy when experiencing a positive feeling and you want to get a dog because you like the pleasurable feelings that come about while with the dog. Your happiness does not depend on, or involve your caring about the dog or your relationship with her apart from how the dog makes you personally feel. It would follow from your motives that, were you to suddenly find the dog did not produce pleasant feelings in you (perhaps the very first time the dog chews something, or gets sick), the dog would be irrelevant to your happiness. There is something gravely wrong, both ethically and with respect to our overall tendency toward caring for other beings besides ourselves, if, on a theory of happiness, it would be deemed acceptable for a person to abandon a dog or some other being as soon as a mere pleasant feeling about them were absent. To illustrate the second point, that it is not possible on such a pleasure theory to explain the intuitive gulf between particular instances of badness, I take up the example of the loss of one’s keys versus the loss of one’s parents. If happiness is just a simple pleasant feeling, the opposite of which is pain, then how can we account for the small annoyance of losing our keys as opposed to the deep grief experienced when losing our parents? and The answer should probably not be that one is just a greater, more intense, feeling of pain than the other. There are at least two reasons for this, but the main points are firstly, grief and loss affect a person’s life as a whole in a way that fleeting feeling theories can never make sense of adequately and secondly, it seems that loss is a different kind of pain than annoyance, rather than being a more intense version of pain on the same pleasure/pain gradient. Unlike the above account, eudaimonist theories incorporate pleasure in a different, more holistic way that gets around the above problems. As mentioned earlier, virtue and happiness are

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both activities on a eudaimonist framework and both have to do with the living of a life, rather than the circumstances of it. Pleasure is found in activity, both in living virtuously and in living well generally. Just as people take pleasure in improving a skill, to play piano say, people learning to be virtuous take pleasure in getting better and better at exercising virtue. A similar thing can be said about striving toward living your life in a way that helps it go better, rather than worse. This doesn’t mean that a courageous person gets pleasure from danger or violent destruction. The engagement in the activity of acting courageously itself is what such a person takes pleasure in. The pleasure of living an integrated life, aligned with your character, is something you have a say about regardless of the circumstances around or befalling you. Such an account of pleasure answers to the worry that pleasant feelings are not the right kind of thing to value in many activities. For the pleasure relevant to the eudaimon life is found in the right salient features of that activity, such as acting honestly, being generous, demonstrating compassion and so on. Since happiness doesn’t depend on the circumstances of life, it also avoids problems regarding the relative badness of misfortunes since, however trivial or grave the circumstances, it is how you respond to them that matters to living well. As with the account of pleasure, the desire fulfillment psychological account of happiness also encounters problems. According to the desire satisfaction theory, the more desires a person satisfies, the happier she will be. Both the nonideal version of the theory in which people try to satisfy desires in the current world and the idealist version in which everyone’s desires are met, face serious challenges. The nonideal version faces the leaky jar objection. Annas (2011) references this objection in Chapter 8 of her book and it originates with Plato. Most desires need to be satiated time and time again, perpetuating a basic human condition of scarcity and want. As embodied mortal humans, we are always in need of something: food, drink, a job, money,

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acquaintances, a hobby, a marriage, clothing, approval. It is as if the human person was like a jar with holes on the bottom, through which water constantly drains. No matter how many times you try to fill the jar (your life) full of water (your desires,) you will never have enough. Annas points out that the objection is not aimed at our neediness itself, but rather a particular kind of relationship to such neediness, in which desire, arising out of lack real or perceived, drives us in a never ending pursuit for more. Even in cases where the metaphor does not precisely fit, for instance eating after we are full; the discomfort we feel when overindulging in excesses beyond our capacity is also related to a faulty relationship to need. On a eudaimonist account, desires are important of course and we still have the human needs just mentioned. But the needs are part of the circumstances, rather than our active response to, our lives. Fulfilling our needs is still preferable, but our happiness need not and does not depend on constant satiation of various longings and wants. Rather than being slaves to our desires, then, we can acknowledge our desires and act on them, or not, in a way that is practically wise. The eudaimon life does not depend on our constant meeting of our needs, or on how much we can compensate for the perception that we are not/don’t have enough and something is missing. Instead, it is possible to feel fulfilled in life even in undesirable circumstances. The ideal version of the desire satisfaction theory on which all our needs are met suffers from the objection that growth and aspiration would cease to be meaningful or sought after. In such an ideal world, there would be no more perceived or real lack, no scarce resources and no disappointment. Everything we desire would come true and, as Annas (2011) rightly points out, a person would have nothing to strive for in such a world. In many ways, such an existence would be empty, as there would be nothing to overcome, take pride in succeeding at, or aspire to achieve. Torpor, rather than happiness, seems to be the most likely result of such a situation for

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human beings. Growing would not be possible. The main difficulty here is that desire satisfaction theories conceive of the happiness brought about by desire fulfillment as a state. In contrast, happiness on a eudaimonist account is an activity. The engaged aspiration, development and dynamic living of a life is not the sort of happiness that can come about through desire satisfaction alone. Finally, Annas (2011) discusses two other types of noneudaimonist theories of happiness, both of which run into problems. The first group of theories, which take happiness to consist in life satisfaction, run into difficulties due to their highly subjective conclusions about happiness. The second group of theories, which define happiness as consisting in fulfilling a determinate list of necessary criteria, face the objection that they are too objective. Since the terms subjective and objective have multiple meanings in varying contexts, I will first say something about how I am conceiving of the terms in the discussion that follows, before going onto explicate the theories themselves. I understand a theory to be subjective if it bases its account, observations, or conclusions on factors which arise from and are indexed to, a particular viewpoint. So, for instance, theories such as life satisfaction theories are subjective because the data such accounts of happiness rely on are solely indexed to the subject, or person whose life is under consideration, rather than on any factors external to the person. In contrast, a theory is objective if its account or observations or conclusions are at least partly based on factors and considerations existing within an external sphere of accepted knowledge. A theory of human nature that was in part based on empirical data from biology, evolution, or anthropology would count as objective in this sense. A theory based on a list of criteria, such as the one discussed below, is objective in this sense because, presumably, the criteria are established independently from the methods for gaining results. Considering these two types of theory together not only

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sheds light on why such definitions of happiness are inadequate: it also helps to illuminate and clarify how eudaimonist accounts of ethics have a more nuanced conception of happiness, which is both subjective and objective. Life satisfaction is broadly defined as an assessment of how a person’s life is going on the whole. Annas (2011) points out that, due to the numerous ways the question of life satisfaction can be asked and answered, studies on the subject are unclear at best. For example, people can judge their life to be satisfactory due to an occurrent positive feeling at the time of the asking. Yet again, they could place greater priority on goal achievement than emotional soundness and so answer differently from a person who is not so concerned with achievements but whom, rather, focuses on how much joy she has found in life. Furthermore, if what is being studied is a person’s life satisfaction insofar as it is a true holistic assessment, it must be taken into account that life can change drastically with the passage of time. Depending on a person’s life stage and current circumstances, she might answer the question concerning life satisfaction very differently now than she would three years ago, or will five years from now. It is unclear how her assessment at present could be indicative of something more than her current subjective perspective based on her circumstances, values, character, or feelings at the moment. Objective list theories, on the other hand, argue that happiness is achieved by satisfying a particular list of circumstances, events and accomplishments. For instance, a theory might postulate that people are happier when they go to church, are in a relationship, have lots of friends, have a fulfilling career and have a certain level of material comfort. Lists such as this one mitigate the issue that my happiness might be whatever I take it to be, either in this moment or over my life so far. The list theory also gets around the concern, raised by life satisfaction accounts of happiness, that people might have an inaccurate or incomplete perspective and

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understanding of the circumstances of their lives, in which case it is unclear whether they are really happy or just think they are. The objective list conception of happiness avoids this unanswerable question by taking the assessment out of the person’s hands entirely and directing the person to a specific prescriptive set of circumstances wholly external to any reflection on their behalf. But the objective list theory faces the difficulty that, for every list made out to be necessary for happiness, there will be a counterexample of a person having nothing in their life on the list and nevertheless leading a life that they and others would recognize as a happy one. For example, many people who are poor or have severe disabilities live flourishing lives and the truth of this would challenge any list theory which insisted that being well off or able-bodied is necessary for happiness. The same point can obviously be made of lists containing any profession or vocation, leisure activity, or major life-altering event. In contrast to both the life satisfaction and list theories of happiness, eudaimonism takes happiness to be a subjective matter in some respects and an objective one in others.10 Eudaimonia is subjective insofar as happiness, from the perspective of any individual concerned, is “my” personal happiness. I do not aim at someone else’s happiness, but only at my own. Furthermore, I am the only one who can live my life and author my responses—actions, values, aspirations—in the circumstances in which I find myself. Happiness is therefore an agentcentered activity. Its achievement cannot be determined for a person by anyone else, particularly in any set or standard way. Rather, since the eudaimon life is one a person must actively live, happiness originates from within the person herself. At the same time, the eudaimonist conception of happiness is objective in that it recognizes that a single person’s life is embedded and intertwined with others’ lives, social networks and cultures. My happiness is therefore not

10

For an extensive discussion of this point, see Hursthouse (1999), Chapter 11.

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whatever I want it to be, but must make reference to the world outside myself. Eudaimonism is also objective as it holds that it is always possible to live life well or badly. I take up the latter point first. My happiness is not exclusively relative to myself only— my feelings, perspectives, wants and agendas. I do live my life with (and as I will argue in the chapters to come, by and alongside) others and my happiness is also determined relative to them. Such an objective stance on happiness rules out any possibility that lists of circumstances will be directly relevant to happiness, since what is important is not the circumstances but how a person responds to them. Nor does eudaimonism specify a particular procedure or circumstantially prescribed kind of life—such as the life of the mind, a spiritual life, or a life of service to others— to be necessary for the attainment of happiness. However, as I have already mentioned, eudaimonist theories do make the claim that some lives are lived better than others. Such a claim is made, of course, with respect to how a person lives her life. As argued in the first section of this chapter, it is the acquisition of the virtues which enables a person to live well. A vicious person, on the other hand, will live her life badly, because she lacks the necessary character dispositions to do otherwise. For instance, a person who is honest, brave and kind to herself and others will be able to live authentically, whereas a person who is cowardly, dishonest and cruel or apathetic will not. It is difficult for a vicious person to reflect on how her life is going and not end up with her conclusions being as flawed as her character. What helps a person organize her life in a unified way which, over time, coalesces into the final end of her happiness is the ability to act with practical wisdom and emotional balance. In other words, having and exercising the virtues enables a person to respond well to life circumstances, structure her life wisely and by doing so, aim well at her happiness. A vicious person, lacking such resources, will live a life gone badly and by extension, not be

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happy. On many eudaimonist theories, a vicious person who wished to become virtuous would, most likely, need to work through years of accumulated false beliefs and self-deception before having the mental and emotional constitution that could potentially lead to acting justly, bravely, with humility, with honesty and so on. On other views the person might need to inculcate mindfulness, an ability to self-reflect and a lifestyle of greater simplicity in order to achieve personal tranquility. I will assume throughout the rest of this work, along with thinkers such as Aristotle and others that vicious people live ignobly and badly. Despite what affluence some might hold, such vicious people cannot be said to be flourishing. The eudaimon or happy life is, then, not the life of pure hedonistic or appetitive pleasure, nor necessarily a life in which all a person’s actual or optimal desires are realized. It need neither be a life only full of enjoyment, nor a life of good feeling, nor a life in which all your dreams come true and your set goals are more than met. Instead, a eudaimon life consists of active character development, engagement with the world and in general, the cohesive and practically structured pursuit of living wisely. Happiness on a eudaimonist framework, for this reason, turns out to be an activity, the ultimate nature or end goals of which are ongoing, evolving and indeterminate because they are constantly being created and shaped by the actual living of that life. Both our personal character development and the nested cultural, familial and relational contexts in which we develop contribute to who we are in a dynamic, mutually reinforcing way.

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As Aristotle notes in the Politics and elsewhere, “We are social animals.”11 In his view, while people can certainly live alone and in isolation, they will not be able to live a eudaimon life this way. We lead interwoven lives in which our happiness extends to include the happiness of those around us, particularly our friends (Sherman, 1987). Relationships are therefore indispensable to our happiness. Such a shared life among friends points to a particular kind of interdependence, based on mutual affection and choice (Sherman, 1987). In the rest of this dissertation, I inquire further into the scope and nature of human interdependence, reconsidering the role it plays in eudaimonist virtue ethics. In doing so, I focus on whether and if so how, our interdependence as human beings might be more than simply an external good and instead play a part in forming and informing virtuous development and the exercise of practical wisdom. In the final section of the next chapter, I put forward and argue for a definition of interdependence which takes as a starting point Aristotle’s claim that a friend is a second self. This definition serves as a foundation for the rest of my argument.

11

Aristotle, Politics II.I.1253a.

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INDEPENDENCE, DEPENDENCE and INTERDEPENDENCE In the last chapter, I claimed that human beings are interdependent beings and implied that such interdependence might have an important place in eudaimonist virtue ethics. The main focus of that chapter was to provide an overview of eudaimonist virtue ethics, which both articulates what it means to flourish or live a eudaimon life and explicates how virtues are necessary to such flourishing. As we develop as virtuous agents, increasingly able to respond to life’s situations and organize our priorities and activities wisely, it becomes clear that relationships are a rich and profound domain of human life in which to learn, love and grow. Certainly, we can relate to ourselves or to others either well or badly. The question naturally arises, then, as to what is involved in relating to one another well, with practical wisdom and emotional balance. More often than not, the form of connection which our relationship with others takes is a form of interdependence. This is the kind of relationship I will be interested in discussing throughout the rest of this dissertation. Toward this end, the current chapter seeks to define the term interdependence, as it is crucial for what follows to have a solid grasp of the concept under discussion. In the next three sections, I lay the foundations for a definition of interdependence, grounded on the fact of our need for connection. I argue that such interdependence specifies an important realm of human activity, whose landscape can be mapped along the intersecting lines of two related concepts: independence and dependence. Finally, I argue that all three components of connection—independence, dependence and interdependence—require vulnerability. Without our willingness to be vulnerable, we could not achieve a life balanced among and constitutive of individuality and community, creativity and cooperation, the pursuit

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of our specifically chosen life projects and the healthy acceptance of life’s universally felt transitions and stages. The definitions I put forward in this chapter extend and in some ways modify, the standard meanings of the words independence, dependence and interdependence. In the process of refining these definitions it becomes clear that, far from being a mere description of relatedness, the terms can and do quickly come to be used normatively. Each term, due to the vagueness conveyed in the standard definitions, is often used to legitimize or marginalize, empower or disempower, unify or segregate. In light of this, it seems imperative to develop normative meanings for each term and in doing so, argue for an inclusionary conception that does not favor a particular group’s mode of reliance and reliability over another’s. Beginning in Chapter III and beyond, these normative definitions will serve to orient the discussion concerning the place which interdependent relationships have within a eudaimonist virtue ethics. In Section I, I argue for a definition of independence that incorporates the understanding of independence put forward by the Independent Living Movement together with Robert Young’s (1980) conception of personal autonomy. I show that an autonomous life which is characterized by creative and authentic self-authorship requires that a person not only be vulnerable, which is a given, but allow themselves to be vulnerable with others. I then show that independent actions can and do partly make up an important component of interdependent relationships. With the help of data from anthropology, I provide evidence for the claim that independent and interdependent components of cultural activities are inherently interconnected. In Section II, I argue for an understanding of dependence that classifies dependencies based on physical needs as being separate from dependence based on emotional needs. I motivate this distinction by way of an example. Many disability theorists point out a pervasive

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ableist double standard on which dependence is regarded as a reliability issue with respect to able-bodied individuals, but is considered a matter of helplessness and weakness of character when it comes to people with disabilities. Drawing on these theorists’ work, I continue to argue against this double-standard, proposing instead that co-dependence—an unhealthy psychological response when relating to self and others) is the only instance in which dependence occurs due to flaws in an individual person’s character. I next turn to a discussion of Kittay’s (1998) conception of nested dependencies which she puts forth in her book Love’s Labor. I argue that most human activities possess a dynamic interplay between dependence and interdependence, Kittay’s nested dependencies serving as a case in point. Finally, in Section III, I turn to defining interdependence. I preliminarily consider whether interdependence is just the balancing of dependence and independence in a relationship. However, this way of conceiving of interdependence turns out to be too simplistic as there are cases, such as that of Kittay’s profoundly cognitively impaired daughter, Sesha, who might not be thought to possess the capability of engaging in interdependent activities colloquially construed. In her article “An Appreciation of Love’s Labor,” Ruddick (2002) makes just this objection and I spend the remainder of the third section responding to it. I conclude by defining an interdependent relationship as a relationship characterized by mutual vulnerability. Among the virtuous and those with the capacity to develop the virtues, it is our willingness to be vulnerable which allows us to take a stance toward others, somewhat analogous to Aristotelian friendship, in which we recognize others as second selves. Defining Independence Independence is a word with many connotations, which often change depending on the social, cultural, or political context in which the term is being used and conceived. To my

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knowledge, no philosopher has ever defined independence as the refusal to rely on anyone for anything. It is common sense that, whatever independence means, complete isolation in a life is not it. As children, we are dependent upon adults. We rely on roads to safely get to work. We rely on friends when we are feeling down and depend on our friends to be there for us during our life celebrations as well. However, there is a particular understanding of independence that, although it is not based on the concept of total isolation, nevertheless insists on an improbable and deleterious standard of connection for its foundation. This notion of independence is best discussed and exemplified in the context of disability and disadvantage. My argument for a workable definition of independence thus begins with an objection to a conception of independence that does great harm to everyone in our relations to each other, while perpetuating an unjust doublestandard concerning people with disabilities. In her book, Pride Against Prejudice, Jenny Morris (1991) argues that nondisabled people use independence in a way that usually disqualifies people with disabilities from being independent. They conceive of independence as synonymous with having the capacity for immediate physical autonomy. On this view, a person is only independent if and whenever she engages in a task without assistance and entirely with her own effort. So, for example, a quadriplegic fails to independently get dressed because she physically cannot put on her own clothes, even though she pays an assistant to help her with the task. As a person who is blind, I cannot shop independently because I need a sighted person to describe what is on the shelves and place the items I choose in my basket, as well as guide me around the store. It might be thought that an understanding on which independence is conceived solely in terms of the exercise of raw capability is old-fashioned and not operative here and now.

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Unfortunately, this view of independence is quite modern and ubiquitous and people with disabilities continue to advocate against it on a daily basis. The unjust double standards and ableism that this definition reinforces is often taken for granted, for example when school districts provide individual education plans for children with disabilities. Growing up as a totally blind child, a great deal of pressure was put on me to perform, function and act like my ablebodied peers in contexts ranging from academics to shopping, laundry, travel, mopping, social introductions, eating and self-presentation. The expectation was that I needed to be as independent as possible, which the district defined as mastering every facet of human life until I could do it completely on my own and do so exactly at the same pace and stage as was expected for sighted children. Morris (1991) explains that when people with disabilities cannot perform tasks such as bathing, dressing, shopping, reading, or speaking on their own, they are “consigned” to the role of a dependent (p. 128). This was also the case for me and many of the people Morris cites in her book. In my case, my able-bodied teachers of the visually impaired were convinced that I ought to only be allowed to seek assistance on a task if I first learned to do it myself. When I asked for assistance on tasks that took exceedingly long or otherwise did not make sense for me to do on my own before I had proven I could do them, I was in fact consigned, with negative connotations, to dependency. This was true, likewise, for all those tasks and social situations for which an adaptation was obviously necessary from the beginning. By definition, people with disabilities have impairments that make accommodation necessary and insisting that independence is only possible when a person with a disability does something alone creates a double-standard that unfairly privileges able-bodied individuals while glossing over the fact that those able-bodied individuals rely on others for what they need every day. Furthermore, were circumstances different, such able-bodied people might need assistance

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for physical tasks they now perform on their own. As Brownlee and Cureton (2011) point out in their book, Disability and Disadvantage, ways of conducting oneself in the world are only disadvantageous relative to the larger context surrounding them. To give a couple examples, deafness might be an advantage in an incredibly noisy environment. In a world where humans were normally eight feet or taller, people of what we take to now be average height might find themselves needing adaptations and assistance. Normal is in fact a very context-sensitive concept that should not be fixedly determined by any one group’s point of view. When independence is defined as the immediate ability to personally carry out a task, it relies on a fixed ableist concept of normal for its plausibility. What is more, defined this way, independence is cut out to be a fixed, rather than variable capacity, such that a person is either independent or not. But independence is a concept that is highly variable and can be assessed in other ways than an appeal to the normal. A growing number of able-bodied people as well as people with disabilities themselves are adopting another understanding of independence, advocated by the Independent Living Movement. On this view, independence does not equate to having an immediate ability to act, but rather with the capacity to exercise personal control over life goals, projects and daily activities (Morris, 1991). Such a view of independence acknowledges the extent to which a person of any ability can be more or less independent relative to different circumstances and makes an important distinction between independence and an ableist standard of normal. The Independent Living Movement has coined the term “independent dependent” to describe a person like myself, who has a physical impairment but is perfectly capable of organizing and utilizing resources, technologies and personal assistance to live a fully integrated and fulfilling life. Such a definition of independence eradicates the double standard inherent in the

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problematic understanding of independence discussed earlier. The emphasis on being independently dependent places the concept of independence closer to that of autonomy, thereby affectively equalizing those with and without physical disabilities. Such equality is evident upon the reflection that we are all, in some way, independently dependent. In his article “Autonomy and the Self,” Young (1980) defines an autonomous person as someone who satisfies the following three conditions. First, she has freedom of action. Second, she has the power to make decisions that reflect her own aspirations, preferences and values. Finally, she is able to live a self-directed life that is cohesive, unified and ordered around her plans and goals. For Young, an ordered life is important to the exercise of autonomy not because he privileges a primarily rational approach to living, but because he wishes to distinguish between autonomous people and those with mental illness such as schizophrenia whose lives are so fragmented that self-governance is highly compromised. Severe mental illnesses of this kind prevent people from conceiving of life as a whole or from adopting an integrated conception of self and such people are sometimes incapable of making their own decisions. While the concept of an independent dependent is generally descriptive, Young’s (1980) definition of autonomy is itself normative. Both freedom from coercion and the maintenance of a well-integrated life suggest not just any attempt to govern oneself, but the need to govern oneself well. Like Young, I am most interested in the question of what independence as an ideal would be. I adopt his criteria in what follows. I contend, along with Young, that autonomy, when effective, necessitates living fully as an individual, having the freedom to express ourselves and do so authentically as the authors of our lives. The exercise of autonomy thus defined and the individuality it fosters gives rise to creativity and complexity, both of which could not exist in its absence. We need only recall the myriad inventions, musical compositions,

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universe-altering scientific theories, vast differences in culture and infinite varieties of personal expression that have characterized human beings since our inception in order to grasp just how indispensable originality and personal difference are to a life holistically understood. In emphasizing the centrality of individual creativity and authenticity to living an autonomous life, Young (1980) implicitly conceives of independence as requiring vulnerability. Vulnerability is crucial to any comprehensive definition of independence for several reasons. First, any act of creative expression, invention, or important life decision comes about when a person is willing to be vulnerable (for instance, to the possibility of being wrong or making a mistake). Second, experiences in which we are more vulnerable or reliant on others than usual can both provide an opportunity for us to realize what we are worth, as well as, perhaps ironically, serve as a catalyst for the exercise of independently motivated authentic action. For example, take a person who must spend many days in hospital, who finds she must rely on others to bathe, dress and eat. She cannot change this situation, but she does have a choice about how she responds to it. She can run from and resent her circumstances, possibly feeling anger toward those who are there to assist her; or she can be open to what the experience can teach her about being human and be grateful for the love and support which others show her. In the first case, her decision and subsequent emotions and behavior actually confine her to dependency in the ableist sense of the word. She may be less independent than usual, given the circumstances, but such circumstances need not and do not dictate that she ought to cut herself off from experiencing connection and belonging. Though there are things she cannot do on her own, she has not, for this reason, lost her independence as if such independence is an all-or-nothing state of being. On the definition of independence I am adopting, her exercise of autonomy is not lost, only altered and her decisions about her attitude toward herself and others is just as much up to

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her as it was before she was hospitalized. In effect, the person in this first case is choosing to let the experience dictate to her how she will respond to the circumstances of her life, rather than chart her own way through her circumstances as the director of her own attitude and author of her thoughts. She has chosen neither an autonomous nor an authentic way of being in the world. In the second case, the person is able not only to make peace with vulnerability, but to choose to be vulnerable with others. Far from making her more dependent, such an active choice to be authentically vulnerable with others would testify to her independence: it would be just that kind of action which would meet Young’s (1980) three criteria for autonomy. What is more, her willingness to be open to the experience and reach out to the people she is relying on further fosters connection and relationship. While someone living according to the ableist definition of independence would most likely experience disconnection—potentially, shame even––-when faced with unexpected dependence on others, a person who lived according to the autonomybased definition of independence would most likely find her unexpected dependence on others nonthreatening. She may even come to see such dependence as an opportunity to forge closer relationships and gain greater confidence in her ability to live a self-directed authentic life. For, despite her challenging situation, she would continue to govern herself with integrity. This example, then, demonstrates that independence is not only compatible with connection, but increases the potential for such connection. It also highlights the fact that people will experience independence and dependence to varying degrees; both over time and from one circumstance to another and this variability ought to be expected. Finally, it highlights how independence is both a state of being and an activity. There is a sense in which, unless we are conjoined twins, we will always exist as physically separate individuals. Even conjoined twins

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experience this separateness insofar as their thoughts and perspectives are not directly shared. Living life independently as defined above constitutes what is active in being independent. But interestingly, Raeff (2006) (whose work I will return to in Chapter IV) argues in her article, “Individuals in Relation to Others: Independence and Interdependence in a Kindergarten Classroom,” that most activities we engage in with others have both independent and interdependent components. Using both theory and data from her fieldwork, she argues that, “when a person participates in cultural activities with others, his or her behavior is not purely indicative of either independence or interdependence but, typically, of both simultaneously” (Raeff, 2006, p. 530). For example, students conduct themselves independently when giving their opinion in class, but this action, embedded in the wider context of turn-taking, indicates that the student is simultaneously also engaged in orienting her action toward the common expectations and goals of the group as a whole. Her action therefore inextricably conveys independence along with interdependence. Raeff’s (2006) hypothesis that independence and interdependence are inseparable components of human activity has several important theoretical implications, if adopted. For one thing, it would no longer be fruitful to study whether activities in a culture emphasize more independence or interdependence (for example, whether western cultures exhibit more egocentric independence-dominated behavior and eastern cultures exhibit more sociocentric interdependence-dominated behavior, or not). Doing so would ignore the dynamic interplay between independent and interdependent components within most, if not all, cultural activities. The better-formed question would be how independence and interdependence are structured within particular cultural activities (Raeff, 2006). Raeff’s findings do indeed support this hypothesis (which I expound upon in detail in Chapter IV).

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The takeaway point for now is that independence occurs within cultural contexts that also involve interconnectedness. This anthropological finding supports Young’s (1980) claim that autonomy involves more than just the capacity to make decisions and stay clear of coercion. It also involves the living of a well-integrated authentic life. Both the example of the independent dependent and Raeff’s (2006) findings point to the inherent interrelatedness of independence with connection, such that our autonomous actions and our interactions with others, are not as separable as might otherwise be thought. Defining Dependence Types of Dependence Fine and Glendinning’s (2005) article, “Dependence, Independence, or Interdependence” and Ruddick’s (2002) article, “An Appreciation of Love’s Labor,” seek, in their own ways, and to situate dependency within the usual goings-on of human life as a typical human experience, a ubiquitous social condition and a necessary part of living well. In this section, I draw on both these philosophers’ insights, as well as Kittay’s (1998) work, to which Ruddick’s article title pays tribute, to inform my definition of dependence. Just as when defining independence, my definition of dependence will be a normative one. Both Fine and Glendinning (2005) and Ruddick (2002) acknowledge that the term dependency has many meanings, most of which are negative and that these negative connotations are often neither acceptable nor accurate.12 While many cultural and social norms are quite useful and necessary to help us navigate complex webs of relationships and develop relatively 12

Since dependence is already understood within a normative context, then, I seek to define an

alternative conception that transcends the stigma associated with it and place it where it appropriately belongs—at the center of human interaction generally.

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stable standards for acceptable social, ethical and legal conduct, not all norms are created equal. There are norms encountered in everyday life, such as norms surrounding dependency and who counts as a dependent person, which are often established with the implicit or explicit intention to standardize and privilege some particular group’s perceptions, beliefs and principles over another’s. These principles, beliefs and judgments then usually come to normatively define the normal, prescribing with respect to each group what members are expected to typically do, look like, feel, need, or want. I call such norms exclusionary norms. Exclusionary norms are those prescriptive judgments and assumptions that lie at the heart of most prejudice, discrimination, social inequality, ignorance and fear. They affect both traditionally marginalized and privileged groups alike, though in different ways. I contend that the negative stigma surrounding dependency derives from an exclusionary norm that able-bodied individuals have long held regarding people with disabilities. People with typical embodiments who have not had, or knew of a person who had, a disability often assume that physical dependence on others is especially suggestive of a flaw in a person’s character— that a person is lazy, passive, submissive, or depressed. For this reason, when people perceive someone with a disability having to depend on another, they often simultaneously pity the person and fear the way such a person’s dependence reminds them of their own vulnerability. Morris (1991) argues that dependence does not exist apart from the social, economic and evaluative contexts in which it occurs. Furthermore, while able-bodied individuals take their physical dependencies (for example, on water from the tap) to be a matter of reliability, they view physical dependence due to impairment as a sign of personal helplessness and inferiority (Morris, 1991). Take, for example, Anna whose impairments make it so that she needs to rely on an assistant to get dressed. Morris writes:

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The nature of the problem when Anna’s personal assistant fails to help her get dressed when and how she wishes is determined by the structure within which the service is provided. … When Anna does not have control over the provision of her personal care, the problem is considered to be her own dependence and her demands, which do not fit in with the service provided. If Anna employs her own assistant, the issue for her is whether the assistant is reliable; in contrast, if Anna has little or no control over the personal assistance she needs, the issue becomes her dependence, her helplessness and subordination. (p. 138) In Disability, Difference and Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy, Silvers, Wasserman, and Mahowald (1999) cite that some philosophers have argued that the helplessness experienced by people with disabilities is enough to warrant others deciding for them the type of fully inclusive life they ought to lead. Furthermore, it is not uncommon, at least in the field of bioethics, to find arguments to the effect that people with some kinds of disability should not exist and it is considered just or benevolent to prevent them from doing so (Silvers et al., 1999). As long as there remains a double-standard concerning and failure to recognize the often contingent nature of, dependency, there will continue to be an unnecessary divide between those with typical and those with atypical embodiments. Fine and Glendinning (2005) bring up a related point concerning dependency and physical impairment. The expectation that a person, in order to gain acceptance and full inclusion in her culture or society, must engage in and pursue, any and all methods that might normalize her arises, in part, from a pervasive false line of reasoning, an explication of which follows. First, disability is presumed to be inherently bad enough to make a person’s life worse than before which, second, can be justified by the fact that

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such people are often contingently dependent on others: therefore, the solution is to render them as much like able-bodied people as possible. Such an exclusionary norm gives rise to attempts to normalize disability. Forcing deaf children to learn to lip-read rather than sign, even though this marginalizes expression in their own language in favor of communication techniques designed to put hearing people at ease, is one example of normalization. The separation of conjoined twins, even in the face of cumulative evidence that such twins are often happier and healthier when not forced to live as singletons, is another example (Dreger, 2004). The assumption that such normalization practices make is that individuals are better off in culturally sanctioned bodies engaged in culturally sanctioned modes of communication. It allows the typically embodied permission to neither change their views on dependence or disability, nor confront their own vulnerability to impairment, aging and illness. It is important that the stigma around dependency be eradicated alongside the exclusionary norms that create the stigma in the first place. One way to do so is to challenge the relevance of certain understandings of normal over others. For example, I have already pointed out that dependence does not actually correlate with our abilities or lack thereof, but is experienced by every person in every embodiment, typical or otherwise. This fact would imply that dependence itself is a normal, in fact inevitable feature of human life. Insisting that a certain group of people are inferior or need to normalize in part because they engage in the normal activity of relying on others is arbitrary at best, deeply destructive at worst. If we are interested in valuing a normal aspect of human life, I contend, why not adopt a view on which dependency is expected and accepted, rather than stigmatized and feared. It is for this reason that I begin my investigation into an alternative, unprejudiced definition of dependence with the claim that human beings are dependent beings, period (Kittay,

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1998). Human beings are dependent and rely upon each other for food, clothing and shelter; for cars, books and computers; and for comfort and companionship. Furthermore, we are dependent on animals, plants and ecosystems for natural resources and our very survival. Children, the elderly and those who are ill are some of the most obvious examples of people existing in a state of dependency (which, as the examples imply, does not have to be permanent). Our reliance upon one another constitutes the active component of being dependent, whether it is for emotional or physical support. This said dependence, though central to human life, is not always healthy. It is imperative, therefore, to distinguish kinds of dependency among people or within social practices that warrant ethical criticism, from kinds of dependency that are normatively neutral. Fine and Glendinning (2005) begin an exploration of meanings of dependency with the following categories: economic dependency, socio-legal dependency, political dependency and moral or psychological dependency.13 A person who is dependent need not exhibit all forms of dependence simultaneously although they can—for instance if they are infants. Also, many of these forms of dependency overlap. An elderly person and a young child may, to varying degrees, both be financially, psychologically, physically and politically dependent. In all these cases, dependence is expected, though how much a person is dependent always falls along a continuum. After explicating various ways in which a person can count as dependent, Fine and Glendinning (2005) ask whether such dependence results from social conditions or is merely a 13

He goes on further to list another way to categorize dependency put forward by Walker

(1982): life-cycle dependency, physical and psychological dependency, political dependency, financial dependency, and structural dependency.

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personal attribute come by individually. I contend that the question, which implies a distinction between dependent individuals and sociopolitical dependence, seems to be badly put. Whereas Fine and Glendinning create categories of dependence based on how, or in what ways, a person can be dependent, I categorize dependency with respect to why a person is dependent. There are, of course, sociopolitical structures that create dependency. Many socially created systems of dependence are destructive. Dependence due to disability (as opposed to impairment), the dependence cultivated in an abusive relationship and dependence created through a social system such as poverty, are all socially constructed kinds of dependency. These are dependencies we ought to eliminate in systematic and social ways, rather than continue to mistakenly expect individuals to resolve such issues through personal development. On the other hand, not all social systems that foster dependence are negative. For instance, while there have always been children, the social construct of childhood came about rather recently in human history and has both prolonged the period in which children are considered dependent while encouraging children’s development through a variety of programs and resources. Deciding that a form of dependence is in fact socially constructed says very little about whom such a system is serving and why, a question I believe to be far more important when seeking to carve up dependence into its various types. Again, a similar argument can be made when it comes to the dependence of individuals. Simply discovering that a person is dependent and not due to a social system, says nothing about whether the dependence is acquired—such as in the case of some kinds of impairment or bereavement—or whether the person’s dependence arises from purely biological considerations—she is a child, an elder with dementia, a woman giving birth, a conjoined twin. In the list above, biological life cycle dependencies such as being a child or elder, characterize

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particular individuals, but are neither acquired nor result from socioeconomic or sociopolitical structures. Such dependence due to life stage constitutes, I contend, a significant third type of physical dependence. It is a universal type of dependence that all living human beings share. If the focus remains on a dichotomy between socially constructed and individually acquired dependence, it is easy to gloss over another distinction that I take to be even more important, given what has been said about disability and ableist notions of dependency. If dependency is to lose its stigma, then it is important to distinguish dependence that really does in fact arise from flaws in a person’s character and dependence that comes about for reasons not having to do with a person’s character. If a person is codependent broadly construed, or suffers from a substance addiction, then and only then, can her dependence—whether physical or psychological––be considered to at least in part arise from a flaw in character. Socially constructed circumstances that force individuals to rely on others due to discriminative environmental, economic, or evaluative systems constitute forms of dependence that ought to be eradicated, but are not the result of a single individual’s character. Such socially constructed dependencies do not warrant the kind of shame, stigma and feelings of personal failure that people who are so dependent often feel and face. If blame is necessary, it is on their societies and those unwilling to take their needs seriously within their culture, rather than on the people who are not being accommodated themselves. Since an individual has little control over her dependence within such destructive social systems, she, as opposed to the system itself, ought to be free from criticism. Finally, dependence due to unusual embodiment, impairment, life stage dependencies and the day-to-day psychological and emotional dependence on friends and family for love, support and belonging, are all perfectly healthy forms of dependency. On my view, the way a person’s dependency on others manifests is less important than the reasons for or behind it. It is only

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when considering why, rather than in what way, a person is depending on others that we can make any valid assessment of the individual herself. If the person is seeking to rely on someone to provide her with parts of her identity or character she can only inculcate within (acquire for) herself, her reliance on that other is destructive and open to criticism. But, depending on one another for physical or emotional reasons is only expected. As long as the person relying on the other has a healthy sense of her psychological and emotional boundaries and doesn’t manipulate her situation, such dependence is perfectly acceptable. The Nature of Nested Dependencies In the previous subsection, I argued that independence and interdependence as components of human activity are themselves interconnected. Perhaps less controversially, it is also not possible to separate out components of dependence from interdependence in our activities. In this subsection I argue this point using Kittay’s (1998) notion of nested dependencies, which she puts forward in her book Love’s Labor. Nested dependencies are, as the term suggests, an ever-widening set of dependency relations between those reliant on others and those relying upon others. Kittay (1998), whose work seeks to articulate a new principle of justice that can apply to both practical reasoners and people like Sesha, argues that nested dependencies begin first and foremost with those individuals who are profoundly dependent on others in every way. She uses the term “charge” to denote such people. Those who care for the charge are called dependency workers. While dependency workers—parents, siblings, paid assistants, friends—care for a charge, dependency relations do not stop there. Kittay points out that dependency workers themselves need care and support in order to care for their charges well, as well as continue to live a balanced and healthy life. Thus the ever-expanding network of those reliant upon others continues to grow.

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One of Kittay’s (1998) concerns is to make clear the complexities and importance of caring for charges and to argue that dependency work needs to be more highly valued if we wish to live in a just society. One way to value such work is to garner more support for those who engage in the ins and outs of such care on a day-to-day basis. To engage in dependency work well, a dependency worker must have the skills to competently and compassionately provide care, have concern for the charge and connect with the charge with love, respect and a sense of responsibility. This is an intimate and delicate kind of work that puts many demands on a caregiver’s time, energy, emotional availability and ability to provide practical attention. Such work also requires that the caregiver know how to set and maintain healthy boundaries and often identify the welfare of the charge with that of her own. A person who cares for another, who cannot balance her and her charge’s needs, is unable to remain practically wise and in emotional balance. She would be in danger of burning out, or developing co-dependent behavior—thereby potentially harming herself and/or her charge––were she unable to receive adequate pay, personal care, appreciation, attention, rest, or find an outlet for her own emotional difficulties. It is for these and other reasons that dependency workers need to rely on support from others if they are to sustain their commitment to seeing to the charge’s needs. Nested dependencies do not only occur in the context of dependency workers and their charges. The whole concept can be extended to cover interdependent relationships more generally. For example, I depend on those who bring food to the local grocery store, depend on the gas company and the electric company and depend on my friends to be there if I need them. These people in turn depend on a stable economy, global markets, the non-imminent demise of our nation, the stability of their personal lives, the availability of healthy food in their own neighborhoods so they can feed their families while delivering food elsewhere and the assurance

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that they will not be let down by their own friends and family. Our dependence and reliance upon one another, then, helps form the basis of our ongoing engagement in interdependent activities. Indeed, nested dependencies, though they can be formed around a myriad and strikingly dissimilar content, are necessary for the continuation of any healthy community. Interdependence as Mutual Vulnerability Throughout this chapter, I have continued to emphasize the importance of interdependence. In this final section, I put forward and argue for a definition of interdependence, as understood within human relationships. Interdependence is often defined as a relationship in which two or more individuals, groups, nations, etc., mutually rely on one another. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s discussion of a virtuous friendship is a prime example of such interdependence. Aristotle argues that friendship based on utility or pleasure is possible, but the greatest friendship is based on virtue. Friends who base their relationship on virtue and the disposition of their character recognize the same aspiration toward acquiring practical wisdom in their friend as they find in themselves. Such friends mutually encourage and challenge each other to grow to become fully virtuous. Their personalities and character development, whether similar or complimentary, contribute to the friends’ further bonding and development as persons. Living among and sharing our lives with the friends we make on the basis of character leads us to recognize aspects of ourselves in our friends and identify with them as a second self. In her article, “Aristotle On Friendship and the Shared Life,” Sherman (1987) argues that taking a friend to be a second self does not blur the boundaries of individuality, but instead leads to a person acting unconditionally for the sake of her friend, keeping her friend’s welfare in mind when making practically wise decisions and conceiving of a friend’s happiness as part of her

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own. Part of the reason that virtuous friends enrich our lives and are indispensable to our happiness is that we live a shared life with them (Sherman, 1987). Virtuous friends make joint plans and organize their lives to spend time with one another, often rethinking a life change if it would adversely affect the closeness between them. Even when our friends are engaged in an activity in which we do not take part ourselves, we find that we are at least sharing in the same emotions that our friends experience, delighting in their accomplishments and grieving in their losses. In recognizing a friend to be a second self, each friend is able to mirror the other’s virtuous character and practical wisdom, creating ties of belonging which go far beyond those of need or enjoyment and are based instead on being seen for who each truly is. I will come back to this idea of recognition in Chapter IV, where I expand on it further. For now, I claim that Aristotle’s account of virtuous friendship, which admittedly I have only briefly outlined here, exemplifies a particularly intimate and powerful relationship in which interdependence arises and that less closely knit interdependent relationships can be characterized analogously in recognizably similar terms. In particular, I take interdependent relationships generally to be those relationships in which each person in some way takes the other to be a second self. In the way I use the term second self generally, I do not mean to suggest that every interdependent relationship involves a mutual mirroring and equity of excellent character. Such a claim would be far too strong and implausibly defensible. Rather, I take the general sense of second self, for which virtuous friendship serves as the ultimate ideal, to involve at a minimum recognizing, in your interactions with others, that you and they share in the same human condition. Importantly, this is not to say that we have to love, be friends with, or even wish to be in the same room with everyone. Instead, taking others to be second selves

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helps cultivate an attitude and awareness of others that allows you to approach them according to who they are, with the understanding that they are part of the human family. A person living according to an awareness that other people are, at least in some ways, second selves, will realize the scope of her interdependent relationships extends far beyond a small circle of friends. There are many people besides our friends whom we rely on and who rely on us, so a person who is ideally conscious of her interdependence will consider many facets of how her actions might impact others before carrying them out. She will consider how she will impact not only someone in the same culture, class, social group, or organization as her, but also consider people who, due to disability or some other reason, are marginalized by her society. Hopefully she will, after some reflection, also critically think about how her actions might affect others who are utterly dependent, such as infants or Kittay’s (1998) daughter Sesha. Many of us directly or indirectly impact hundreds of people, or more, through our connections, choices, attitudes and actions. Finally, taking others to be second selves, if it were widely done, would have a profound impact on our relationship with, acceptance of and way of approaching human life stages, such as infancy, childhood, adulthood and old age. For example, I contend that we would come to recognize the value of intergenerational relationships, be more accepting of growing old and of elderly people and realize that one life cycle stage, such as young adulthood, is not more superior to another such as childhood. We would realize the value of each life stage in making a person who they are and be able to more easily accept our own transitions into new life stages. Interdependent relationships, then, have the potential to foster, as Aristotle says of virtuous friendship, a mutuality through which each person can participate fully as who they are.

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However, friendships based on full virtue may always remain the exception. If virtue is not what most interdependent relationships have in common, then on what basis can we define interdependence so that taking each other to be second selves remains an intelligible concept? So far, I have argued that an answer to this question needs to be something that allows us to interact with one another in ways that help us to recognize our own experience of the human condition in the other person, and that have the potential to help us be seen for who we are. In what remains of this chapter, I flesh out the details of such an answer. I argue for a definition of interdependence as follows: interdependence is a relationship formed between at least two people, characterized by mutual vulnerability. It is this mutual vulnerability that grounds our being able to take each other as second selves in any sense, whether the interdependent relationship in question is a brief encounter of strangers or one of Aristotelian virtuous friendship. This argument is made most strongly by addressing an important objection to the ethical ideal of interdependence. In “An Appreciation of Love’s Labor,” Ruddick (2002) argues that interdependence should be abandoned as an ideal for human relationships. She writes, “Reflecting on Sesha’s relationships has led me to doubt the adequacy of the ideal of interdependence in other typical dependency relations with, for example, young children, or people who are seriously ill, or lonely and despairing” (p. 219). For Ruddick, dependency relations cannot be characterized in any way as interdependent for two reasons. First, such relations are prone to abuses such as domination, power struggles and codependence. Second, such relations do not conform to reciprocity between equals, which she takes to be necessary for mutuality and interdependence generally. I will reply to each of Ruddick’s two claims in succession.

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Ruddick (2002) first draws attention to the fact that utterly dependent people are quite prone to domination and control. What is more, able-bodied adults, being physically and mentally more capable, can easily exploit, overpower, or mistreat a charge, or anyone who cannot equally defend themselves. I agree: Ruddick notes rightly that dependency relations bring with them considerations and situations not typical of adult-adult relations (when the adults are able-bodied, healthy, cheerful, young and a bit self-involved). However, I do not think this fact rules out the possibility of interdependence, either for utterly dependent charges, or for children and those who are gravely ill or depressed. I do not hold that a greater potential for unwarranted power over such as exploitation rather than empowerment of others calls the centrality of interdependence into question. In order to provide appropriate care for someone who is ill or who has a developmental disability, for instance, it is imperative, at the very least, to make a commitment to yourself as well as the person dependent upon you that you will care for them in the most unobtrusive way possible. Unobtrusive care involves the capacity to respectfully and tactfully assist the person with what they need, while ensuring they can still exercise whatever amount of autonomy they possess. It involves nondominance, attention to detail, the ability to forgive yourself when you do not live up to your commitments and a willingness to align your interests with the interests of the person for whom you care. A mother nurses her baby at 2 AM even when she is exhausted and has not had a good night sleep in weeks. A woman takes time off work to care for an ailing guide dog. The parents of a child with Down Syndrome organize each day around giving their daughter as much stimulation and varied experiences as possible, are present at her IEP meetings, physical therapy appointments, speech therapy appointments, occupational therapy appointments… and find time to raise their other two children and go to work as well. Caring

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for an utterly or mostly dependent person requires a commitment to not only empathize but also identify with the dependent’s interests as you would your own. Kittay (1998) calls such a self, the self that identifies the charge’s interests with her own, the moral self and it is this moral self which must be regulated and closely attended to so that a person balances her own life projects, goals and needs/interests with those of her charge and knows the difference between them even while viewing the charge as a second self. Without the presence of a moral self, or the inculcation of the virtues, it is highly likely that a person will dominate anyone, particularly a helpless charge. When a person cannot think, act, or speak for herself, she is much more prone to physical or emotional abuse, manipulation, or being taken advantage of on account of her vulnerability. For example, a dependency worker might put down her charge for his physical limitations, or make her charge feel ashamed for needing her help. There are, however, more subtle ways in which even well-meaning people end up dominating a person in their charge. For instance, a dependency worker can easily find herself doing more for a charge than is necessary rather than allowing the charge to very slowly do things on her own when she is able. This inhibits whatever small capacity for growth the charge may possess. As another example, a caregiver can easily project her own issues, beliefs, or interests onto her charge, making it impossible to objectively respond to the charge’s needs or make choices for the charge which align with the charge’s character. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for a father, mother, or paid dependency worker—male or female—to exert unreasonable demands on the charge based on the expectation that the charge fulfill their emotional needs or mend parts of themselves that appear to be broken or wanting. Finally, in cases in which a charge is even slightly more highly functioning than Sesha, domination and manipulation can arise in the opposite direction. For instance, the charge, who is vulnerable and

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reliant on a caregiver in an intimate, encompassing way, can use this position to her advantage, effectively manipulating her caregiver into feeling guilty for meeting his needs rather than hers, even if those needs cannot be ignored. An elder with Alzheimer’s or a whining toddler are apt examples of people who are taking unfair advantage of those who they rely on. Such situations do not arise as frequently among able-bodied adults whose vulnerability and power, status and options, are relatively identical and socially well adjusted. Yet, though there is a difference, say, between the potential for you or I to dominate a vulnerable person such as Sesha in a way that we cannot dominate another adult, inequality as a form of domination and control defines most of our more tragic social and political circumstances among healthy ablebodied adults today. Sexism, racism, ableism, ethnic hatred, discrimination against the LBGT community, poverty, greed and domestic violence demonstrate time and time again that dominance and control need not and do not preclude themselves to only those relationships between dependency workers and their charges. Indeed, the striking thing about Kittay’s (1998) and Ruddick’s (2002) concerns about interdependence as too prone to domination and unhealthy relationships is that they both seem to overlook the fact that such dangers arise in almost any intimate relationship, whether or not the people involved share a symmetry or equality of power and standing. In dependency relations, the charge must be given more protections against paternalism, exploitation and domination than capable rational and able adults need. We can walk away from unhealthy or abusive relationships, usually, while charges cannot. Yet even here there are gray areas. A battered spouse often develops identification with the interests of her abuser/oppressor. This is so common that psychologists have termed this phenomenon Stockholm syndrome. In this type of bonding through trauma, a victim comes to identify and empathize with an abuser.

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She convinces herself and comes to perceive the abusive relationship as mutual so that she fails to recognize her situation for what it is and try to leave. As another example, in the history of our own country, women were told exactly what place they ought to occupy in society—a place as a wife and mother. Women at work were ostracized, sexually objectified and given—are still given—wages that are not equivalent to men’s wages. In other parts of the world, women cannot drive cars or even go out of their homes unaccompanied. Able-bodied children die every day from child abuse and neglect. Able-bodied adults living in poverty live not only with little means and sustenance, but also with the shame which their culture, whose survival depends on poverty’s continuation, informs them they must feel. Even individuals whose embodiment and status and abilities render them able, on Ruddick’s (2002) view, to have mutual relationships often find themselves trapped in situations of unequal power and control. Able-bodied women in our society are systematically still viewed as prey, or lacking, or more vulnerable than men despite their documented emotional and mental equality. Rich white men who wish to redefine in part what it means to be male in our society face discrimination of their own. Perhaps, then, we should conclude that no one can be interdependent because we all, every last one of us, live with the constant uncertainty that we may experience despair, loneliness, life cycle changes, varying abilities, etc. This makes us more vulnerable to domination and control than the rest of us (though who this rest of us would be we would be hard pressed to point out, given we have already specified every human being who ever lived). Alternatively, we could conclude that everyone meets the ideal of participating in interdependent relationships, because we are all vulnerable, though in different ways, to the same human vices

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and there is no point on the spectrum of human existence to draw a threshold between the haves and the have not's here. It would be more than unfair to exclude some from an ideal because of the potential of harm from others. It follows that in this view, we ought to exclude everyone from every ideal we have ever proposed as ethicists. People harm one another. They should not, but they do, period. These people are not living well, they are vicious, but since when has someone suggested that we should get rid of an ideal because "There are bad people out there?" and It behooves everyone who wishes to work with profoundly dependent people to strive to walk the tight rope between too much and too little care, unjustified power over and empowerment, identification with the needs of others without codependence and so on. Arguably, it behooves us all to do this when relating to others even if these others are able-bodied or privileged or capable young adults because, although we are strong and autonomous, we are also always prone to vulnerability and needs we would never dream we could require another’s help to accomplish. Such vulnerability to domination and control, to physical dependence, to grief or abandonment is not countered by rejecting our interconnection with other human beings and reliance on one another for support, friendship and profound care. On the contrary, it seems that interdependence is the very thing that is needed to help extricate ourselves from the prejudice, domination, control and power struggles that are a symptom of our disconnection from and unhealthy connection with one another. By the end of Chapter IV, it will become clear how I can both make and justify this claim. As I see it, striving for interdependence as an ideal is more necessary than ever. I now turn to providing a response to Ruddick’s (2002) second objection against interdependence as a meaningful ideal. This is the objection that interdependence, as an ideal, would have too limited a scope, since its demand for equal reciprocation would automatically

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exclude those who are too impaired, dependent, young, old, frail, or miserable to reciprocate in this way. I argue that, rather than failing to be an adequate ideal due to the ubiquity of unequal relationships, it is precisely the existence of such unequal relationships that makes interdependence such a worthwhile ideal to strive to attain. Recall that in the first half of this section, I defined interdependence partly in terms of a relation in which each person takes the other to be a second self. I contend that some of the most crucial, meaningful, and pertinent relationships, in which we should and must view others as second selves, are relations between givers and receivers of care. What must be moved away from is the equating of interdependence with the notion of symmetrical reciprocity. It is therefore not the ideal of interdependence itself, but rather the idea that interdependence must necessarily involve relationships based on symmetrical reciprocity, which is objectionable. Many theories of justice, such as Rawls’, place much weight on the idea of a contractual agreement among rational members of a newly forming society, who are as yet ignorant of their position, status, abilities, allotment of resources, race, or gender within that society. In a different context, Aristotelian friendship among the virtuous consists of fully virtuous equals who are able and prepared to stand by one another in ways that are equivalently reciprocal. Our autonomy in our engagements with those around us, contracts, conceptions of freedom and ideas about individuality and equal opportunity rest on this notion of mutuality. Such a conception of mutuality indeed has its legitimate place in our dealings with rational adults. Its role in human connection is important, albeit restricted to interactions within this limited population. Insofar as we are independent in the way I defined in Section I, we rightly place great weight on the reciprocity of equals.

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However, not all of us can participate in a mutual relationship formed on the basis of shared rationality or autonomy. Someone like Sesha experiences a dependency so profound that any of the usual forms that conceptions of reciprocity take among equals are unavailable to her. I concede that unlike people with the full capacity to reason, Sesha cannot engage in a mutual relationship in any conventional sense. She cannot offer a friend a shoulder to cry on, cannot insist that she drive the carpool three days a week and her friend drive the other three, cannot decide to attend anyone’s birthday party, cannot vote, cannot work and contribute a tangible something or other to commerce and livelihoods or even engage in projects and activities that most people find rewarding and extremely important. She cannot raise children. She cannot eat, dress, walk, comb her hair, brush her teeth, or get into bed by herself. If this were the entirety of Ruddick’s (2002) objection, I would have no need to argue against it. Of course, there is much more to the objection, for Ruddick also claims that Sesha’s embodied world is so limited and unlike anything we have ever known that she is completely outside the scope of relationship, period, at least in any relevant way the rest of us would value. Of course, as her mother and the one who knows Sesha best, Kittay (1998) would adamantly deny such a harsh and unequivocal dismissal of her daughter based on an uncompromising conception of asymmetry and mutuality. We should therefore proceed to ask after what mutuality means when it is applied to humanity as a whole, rather than a specialized group. If it means material quid-pro-quo, an IQ competition, a theoretical symmetry game in which people’s capacities for physical strength, vigor, jump rope, reciting the fifty states in alphabetical order, eating independently, talking about Plato, sharing secrets, using a telephone, inviting others over, making a living, or starting a family are pitted against each other to determine a tie or a winner, Sesha will lose every time. This does not make Sesha and others

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like her inadequate or capacity-deficient enough to warrant the judgment that they are incapable of any active participation in a relationship. The reason is an epistemic one. Imagine an avid environmentalist arguing that we are dependent on the land and animals in this world to survive, while nonhuman animals equally depend on us to not destroy their habitats or cause their extinction. As we grapple more and more with our species’ role in global warming and the disruption of ecosystems, this kind of argument is becoming increasingly well known. Such an environmentalist argument, of course, relies on the concept and ideal of interdependence to gain purchase. Now imagine that someone counters this environmentalist by pointing out that animals do not have the rational capacity of human beings and cannot reciprocate in an interdependent relationship forged in quid-pro-quo reciprocity and what’s more the land is actually inanimate, so the environmentalist is wrong to assert that there is any interdependent relationship here at all. I’m sure this is now a familiar argument as well. Can we make sense of the notion of interdependence when speaking about the land or nonhuman animals? I believe the answer to this question is yes. Take the partnership between working animals and humans generally and that between a person who is blind and her guide dog more specifically. Both the person and her guide dog gain companionship from and share a loving bond with, one another, a bond which each is willing to entrust themselves to with their lives. Every day, the blind person places her trust in the dog’s training and abilities as together they cross streets, climb up and down stairs, navigate complex routes and avoid dangerous obstacles. Every day, the dog trusts that his human will provide food, shelter, play time and praise for good work done. The relationship between human and dog in such a case certainly involves interdependence. Though each party to the relationship contributes something invaluable to the independence, safety, or well-being of the other, each one’s contributions are

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certainly not equal in any quantitative sense. After all, the person who is blind can direct and author her life, while the guide dog cannot. Yet both gain from the relationship, if not identically, at least immeasurably, in ways that make each far better off than if they never formed such a partnership to begin with. Sesha and others who are as profoundly dependent as she is have much more in common with rational adults than they have with the land or nonhuman animals. They are human and therefore are subject to the human condition, life stages and everything we pass on to others in our species. I would like to suggest a new criterion for mutuality: mutual vulnerability. Are there any relationships, or lives in general, that do not involve vulnerable moments due to loneliness, despair, childhood, illness, or disability? If you think there might be, consider the following. Even if you are a young adult who is not ill, disabled, lost, despairing, or a parent, surely you and, for example, your equally able and affluent friends have cried on each other’s shoulders and have shared secrets you would not wish to share with me, a total stranger to you. You have had worries, you have had fears and you doubted whether you were in the right profession or continue to regret something you have done. Clearly, there is a significant difference between the vulnerability you allow yourself to show on a day-to-day basis to live a healthily independent life, and the vulnerability Sesha shows and vividly so, simply by existing. But where do we draw the line? Is it a difference in scope, of kind, of degree? To answer this question, it is necessary to say a bit more about vulnerability and the different contexts in which I use the term. With a more explicit understanding of vulnerability at hand, it will be easier to see how it can provide the basis for human reciprocity: the kind of reciprocity which all humans can engage in. In discussing Ruddick’s first objection to someone like Sesha’s ability to engage in interdependent relationships, I used the term vulnerable to

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indicate the kind of relationship human beings have with uncertainty. Vulnerability in this sense is part of our human condition. No matter our current circumstances, we are each equally susceptible to uncertainty, to potential joy or loss, and of course, mortality. Understood in this way, our human vulnerability is constant and universal (which is why I sometimes use the word natural when discussing it.) and But there is also a narrower use of vulnerability which relates to our specific life circumstances and is a matter of degree. Someone like Sesha is far more vulnerable than you or I, due to her profound need to rely upon others. A woman is more vulnerable than a man when walking down a dark street in a bad neighborhood at night. Large minority populations are more vulnerable than the majority population and of course, any person or group can be more or less vulnerable than any other at any particular time. What both these conceptions of vulnerability have in common is that each characterizes the state of a particular relationship we have to our circumstances or humanity. There is a third sense of vulnerability, however, which only arises when engaged in the activity of relating to others. Vulnerability in this context is not just a state you are in because, at the very least, you are human and are subject to uncertainty. Vulnerability in this sense is something you can participate in, and to which you can even aspire. For example, we can choose whether to hide what is true about us from others, or decide to be open and vulnerable with them. In choosing to be vulnerable, we allow ourselves to engage authentically with others and the world around us. When two or more people are willing to be vulnerable with each other as well as transparent with themselves, they will form an interdependent relationship. Any mutual relationship is going to be one in which, however intimate or trivial, the point is to form a connection: otherwise, why take the trouble? Sharing any amount of who you are with someone requires that you be at least a little vulnerable. This is not to say that interdependent relationships ought ideally to lack

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boundaries: not every relationship is formed or continued for the same reason or intention. In fact, boundaries make it easier for people to be themselves with others whether the relationship is one of acquaintanceship, friendship, romantic partnership, or family of origin. Furthermore, to say that being vulnerable is necessary for connection is not to say that you ought to be vulnerable with everyone. Not everyone is worth trusting, even in a brief encounter and some people (those who have proven they can be abusive for example) are not worth continuing a connection with at all. In such cases, the most honest and authentic response is to leave or greatly distance contact. Not every relationship is an interdependent one. Being vulnerable must be coupled with being discerning in any intelligent approach to living life with other people. How vulnerable a person chooses to be will depend on the purpose, nature, duration and depth of any particular relationship, as well as that person’s epistemic limits. At any given time, then, people will be and allow themselves to be, vulnerable, to different degrees, depending both on their circumstances (state of vulnerability) and how comfortable they are engaging with the uncertainty, unpredictability and inherent risks that come with being a human (active expression of vulnerability.) and In order to further clarify this point, an analogy will be helpful. With respect to the virtues, there is a distinction between virtue on the one hand and natural virtue on the other. Natural virtue belongs to children and those who have not cultivated dispositions of character. It is a tendency to do things that appear virtuous which remains untried; the person fails to have the depth of experience and understanding required to not only do some virtuous looking actions, but also be a virtuous person. Likewise, being vulnerable can be a nuanced, skill, involving cognitive and emotional intelligence and learned strategies for practicing openness and discernment. For instance, we can and often do, consciously choose to share more and more of ourselves with the people we trust, decide to take a risk and follow our dreams, or

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be honest in the face of fear. It often takes a great deal of courage as well as practice to stay authentic and open in interactions with others. Though being vulnerable can amount to a conscious choice, we can also actively display vulnerability in noncognitive or sub-rational ways. Arguably for children and even infants and nonhuman animals, expressing vulnerability happens without the need for deliberation. Any reflection on the behavior of infants and nonhuman animals shows this to be the case. As examples, if a dog trusts you, he will roll onto his back for you to pet him; if he feels it is too risky to be vulnerable, he might walk away or get aggressive. An infant might scream around someone she feels isn’t trustworthy, but let another unfamiliar person rock her to sleep. It is possible to be vulnerable (or not) without the self-aware thought that this is what you are doing. Sesha not only exists in relationships with others, but participates in them as well. Kittay (1998) has written extensively about how her daughter hugs everyone who walks in the door, bringing a smile to the most disgruntled and disheartened person who might ever come over. Sesha laughs often and without self-conscious censorship. She responds to music with joy and exuberance. She brings love and light to everyone who walks her way and responds when others do the same. Although she is unable to do many things, her life is not defined or diminished by what she cannot do, because she is epistemically unaware of her limitations. Her epistemic purview is extremely limited and so she cannot fathom that she lacks anything which we might deem essential to a life lived well. My claim, then, is that Sesha can participate in interdependent relationships not despite her limitations, but because of them. Like an infant, or small child, Sesha participates in relationships, presumably without the explicit self-knowledge that she is participating in a relationship. Yet this is what makes her human interactions so profoundly moving and meaningful. Part of what endears her to others, even if unconsciously on

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their part, is Sesha’s utter, vividly evident vulnerability which she never expresses selfconsciously. In a highly ideal world, it would be possible to be vulnerable with others without fear of getting hurt. But in the world we live in, many of us who are more epistemically complex than Sesha develop psychological mechanisms to hide our vulnerability from others as well as from ourselves, hoping that by doing so we can avoid discomfort and keep ourselves safe. In truth, without allowing ourselves room to express our vulnerability in relationships, we disconnect from and push away the very others we want a connection with. While Sesha’s epistemic position is uncommon, her vulnerability is as ubiquitous and pervasive as our own. We can relate to it and Sesha responds to us without consideration of all the ways we try to hide our uncertainty, despair, dependence, or emotional wounds. Sesha is so utterly vulnerable, that she is not even aware of her vulnerability. She is quite at peace with uncertainty. Surely she is a gift to us, whose epistemic privilege gets in the way of acknowledging our need for one another. Most of us fight, or at least actively seek to minimize rather than accept our inherent vulnerability to uncertainty, whenever possible. When engaging with Sesha, perhaps the very full extent of the vulnerability of being human is mirrored back to us, such that we recognize we are equals in the face of the uncertainties of life. We recognize her as a second self. Before closing out this chapter, there is one more possibility to consider with respect to Ruddick’s (2002) objection. Suppose that Ruddick concedes that Sesha is profoundly vulnerable, without yet being convinced that a mutual willingness to be vulnerable is necessary for interdependence. In response to such a potential concern, I show that people who lack the capacity to be vulnerable to any degree also lack the capacity to engage in any connection we would wish to call a relationship. Sadly, such groups of people who are both incapable of being

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vulnerable with others and forming relationships at all, whether interdependent or otherwise, do in fact exist. In psychology, they are called psychopaths. Due in part to their inability to experience vulnerability, psychopaths have no conscience and are actually incapable of telling right from wrong. Consequently, psychopaths fail to show empathy, remorse, social emotions, or affect. Their interactions with others are generally characterized by domination, control, subjugation and abuse. While Sesha cannot be virtuous because of her profound mental disability, psychopaths lack virtue because regardless of their reason and status and “equality” with respect to others they are incapable of any willingness to be vulnerable, even to the degree necessary for the most rudimentary of ethical reflection. Sesha is as profoundly vulnerable (and dependent) as a psychopath is disconnected and separated from participation in the normative life of human community. The inability to be vulnerable separates someone like the psychopath from ever experiencing or participating in mutual love, authenticity and joy. In contrast, Sesha actively expresses and spreads joy, as well as gives and receives love, almost effortlessly. This is yet one more reason to suppose, then, that interdependent relationships ought to fundamentally be defined in terms of mutual vulnerability. The aim of this chapter has been to redefine independence, dependence and interdependence in a way that is explicitly normative, resulting in term meanings not identical to what might be found in the dictionary. In fact, even the dictionary definitions, in order to be practically useful, already lend themselves to multiple normative interpretations: take for example independence, defined as freedom from outside control or support. I have argued, by way of examples from the philosophy of disability, that what we take independence, dependence and interdependence to mean often depends on one’s conception of normal and its place in

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determining acceptability and can be reflective of one’s insights or prejudice. Furthermore, I have provided anthropological data that strongly suggests that interdependent relationships and activities often, if not always, involve independent action and have also shown how interdependent relationships are created through nested dependencies. These further considerations point to there being a mutually informing relationship between the three concepts when understood to be picking out not just states of being, but dynamic forms of activity. In light of these arguments, my definitions are as follows. Independence refers to both the state and exercise of autonomy, understood to include freedom from restraint, the capacity to make one’s own decisions about the use of resources and the ability to live an integrated and coherent life. Dependence refers to the state and active engagement in reliance upon others due to physical or sound emotional needs. In other words, I rule out co-dependence (an unhealthy psychological condition) or dependence due to discriminative collective or social practices as normatively acceptable forms of reliance. Finally, I define interdependence as a relationship among two or more people characterized by mutual vulnerability.

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In the last chapter, I argued that independence, dependence, and interdependence can all be understood either as states of being or as active realms of doing. I further showed that the active components of dependent, independent and interdependent activity often overlap, intertwine with and inform one another. These claims and arguments point toward there being one single conceptual sphere, one realm of human activity, within which our mutual relationships can form and evolve. Within a eudaimonist account of virtue ethics, every realm of human activity constitutes a domain in which to act virtuously and the realm of human activity characterized by interdependent relationships is no exception. In this chapter, I begin to explore where interdependence might fit in to an account of the virtues, as well as inquire into its place within a flourishing life. In particular, I begin to inquire into what it means to engage in interdependent relationships excellently, with practical wisdom and emotional balance and consider whether a select number of eudaimonist theories of virtue existent in the literature already possess the theoretical framework needed to settle such a question. I begin with the following clarifying sub-questions: What would a virtue ethical theory be like which took interdependence, defined in terms of mutual vulnerability, to be indispensable to living well? Is the standard set of virtues found in most eudaimonist virtue ethical accounts— such as honesty, justice, courage, moderation and generosity--sufficient for specifying excellence in interdependent relationships? How will the answers to the first two questions point us toward a way to break down the barriers and resistance we often have toward being vulnerable, so that we can not only be more open to including people whose differences make them more susceptible to social marginalization, but so that we can all lead better, more authentic lives?

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As I discussed in Chapter I, the exercise of the virtues involves engaging in particular fields of activity out of deep-seated character dispositions that are characterized by emotional soundness and practical rationality. Such emotional balance and wise reasoning seems to require an investment of the whole self. Here, I adopt Russell’s (2012) conception of self as “the totality of those central relationships, commitments, attachments and projects that give one’s life its unique shape as being one’s own” (p. 96). Such a conception of self seems very compatible with Young’s (1980) autonomous and authentic agent, as well as being a particularly conducive way of understanding the self in interdependent relationships. The person whose attachments, projects and relationships are central to her self-conception will be vulnerable not just in loss, but in love, not just in pain, but in joy. As argued earlier, it is our willingness to be vulnerable that allows for connection in the first place, and the more our relationships, attachments, and projects become part of our self-conception, the more we feel we have to lose. In the case of interdependent relationships specifically, how we respond to each other determines whether we connect and interact with one another well, or badly and as such interdependent relationships are part of our conception of self, having a direct impact on who we are. It would be reasonable to expect, then, that some virtue or set of virtues are necessary for cultivating balanced and wise responses to the need for and risks involved in being vulnerable with others, while enabling people to connect with each other excellently. However, through thinking about the lives of those, such as people with disabilities, who can be more circumstantially vulnerable at times than others, I conclude that the set of virtues found in works such as Annas (2011) and MacIntyre (1999) fall short of fully capturing what is particularly salient about excellent responses to our inherent interconnectedness. I wait until the next chapter to put forward an alternative.

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In Section I, I argue that, regardless of whether or not oppression and systematic marginalization of particular groups of people—known as othering––exist in our world, the standard set of virtues do not fully specify the kinds of dispositions needed to connect with ourselves and others wisely. As it will turn out, the reasons why differ depending on whether we are considering the current nonideal world, or a hypothetical, highly ideal world. In Section II, I turn to MacIntyre’s (1999) account of the virtues of acknowledged dependence. While MacIntyre’s account of virtue ethics goes a long way toward explicating what a theory that specifically accounts for our ubiquitous dependence upon one another would look like, I argue that it runs into problems of its own. In particular, I contend that several of MacIntyre’s virtues that a dependent person should exercise while receiving assistance do not in fact benefit their possessor.14 Second, I show that MacIntyre’s account cannot, as such, appropriately acknowledge the nature of dependence. In order to do so, his account would need a way to further describe, in terms of a virtue, the excellent acknowledgement of and engagement with our interdependence. Navigating Our Interconnectedness in Relationships In this section, I argue that the cultivation of the standard virtues discussed in Annas (2011), do not sufficiently orient us to excellence within interdependent relationships. My argument is two-fold. The first sub-section focuses on an argument from a nonideal standpoint. I begin from the, hopefully uncontroversial, claim put forward in Annas that people aspiring to be virtuous in oppressive societies will be unable to fully develop the virtues whether they be one of the oppressed or the oppressors. I contend that when a person from such an oppressive society 14

See Hursthouse’s (1999) On Virtue Ethics for the reference to the effect that a virtue is a

disposition that, at the very least, benefits its possessor.

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tries to be virtuous, the reasons for which she falls short cannot be fully explained away by imagining that she fully cultivates the standard virtues. In other words, there are particular kinds of viciousness that the current set of virtues does not account for explicitly and which seem to have a particularly negative impact on our interdependent relationships. In the second subsection, I take up my argument in a hypothetically proposed ideal world. In this world, harmful social systems are nonexistent and everyone is fully virtuous. In such idyllic circumstances, oppression disappears along with discrimination, prejudice and the fear and shame associated with othering. However, I contend, perhaps surprisingly to some, that uncertainty and the need to be vulnerable do not vanish in idyllic circumstances such as these. Whereas considerations of the role of vulnerability in forming connection points mainly toward vices preventing us from relating well to one another in the nonideal case, the role of vulnerability in forming connection points toward the need for virtuous responses not sufficiently realized in the ideal case. What turns out to be needed to completely fill out a eudaimonist account like Annas’ (2011) is not the set of standard virtues, nor a severe idealization of the world, but some additionally inculcated disposition(s) in a person’s character which would allow her to be able to relate to others well, whether vulnerability or discernment or both were called for. Virtue in a Vicious World Annas’ (2011) account is one of the most comprehensive and cogent explications of virtue and its role in eudaimonism that I have come across. It is for this reason that I rely on her understanding of the virtues in the following argument. In this subsection, I expand on Annas’ claim that no one can be fully virtuous in a corrupt world. I show that this truth, when examined in the realm of interdependent relationships, reveals that there are particular kinds of vices that

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we will continue to possess even were we to fully acquire the standard virtues. In particular, I will argue that it is possible for a person to be just, kind, generous and courageous and still participate in systemic social marginalization and othering. In such circumstances, a person’s inability to relate to herself and others in the right way, at the right time and for the right reasons cannot be explained simply on account of her lack of one or more of the standard virtues. Many marginalized social groups find themselves grappling with a world that often dismisses, diminishes, or distances itself from them. In “Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability,” Wendell (1989) writes: Feminists are grappling with issues that disabled people also face in a different context: Whether to stress sameness or difference in relation to the dominant group and in relation to each other; whether to place great value on independence from the help of other people, as the dominant culture does, or to question a value-system which distrusts and de-values dependence on other people and vulnerability in general. (p. 104) Wendell goes on to point out that; on the whole, elders are also discriminated against, either because they acquire disabilities, or because they simply function slower than young adults and are no longer as productive to the work force. Although it is obvious to each of us that we will most likely grow old and acquire age-related disabilities, many people living by the values upheld by our current western culture often end up discriminating against elders in a way that is quite othering, even when they are not aware of what they are doing. Young people will act on biases toward the aging, even though strength and youth are physically temporary and eventually always outgrown.

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I will use the example of people with disabilities (including elders) to make my point, as this is a marginalized group with which I am most familiar and because the ways in which such individuals can be vulnerable are particularly vivid. Those of us with disabilities are sometimes made physically vulnerable through our impairments and are often socially vulnerable through the exclusionary norms with which the wider culture tries or fails to try to understand and define us. Garland-Thomson (2002) argues that disability fits a dominant culture narrative that aims to tell a particular story about the way in which people with and without disabilities should experience atypical embodiment and conceive of the impact of impairment on human lives. This story is and has often been, used to control the bodies of people with disabilities through normalization and is largely responsible for the labeling of unusual embodiments as “deficient” or “deviant.” These practices and attitudes in turn create what Garland-Thomson calls the disability system. The disability system is a social system that seeks to create two distinct groups of people: the able-bodied and the disabled. Part of the role of this disability system is to further entrench exclusionary norms by persuading people in both groups that its way of understanding people and their bodies is the correct and right way. Far from being commendable or exemplary, however, this system undermines empowerment and self-worth and perpetuates inaccurate self-assessment; an inability to accept difference and variation; and the denial that vulnerability to physical impairment is a human, rather than minority, experience. As with most, if not all, oppressive social systems, the disability system makes it painfully obvious that, while we live our lives imbedded in cultural and social contexts, we need to put more of an effort into foregrounding this fact as a conscious and constant consideration when cultivating our attitudes and characters. The oppressive cultural and social systems in which most of us live are designed to encourage and reward behavior and dispositions of

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character that facilitate our forgetting just how nested our social structures and ourselves within them, really are. Such a denial of our interconnectedness as individuals and then again at the wider social level is, I think, responsible for much of the prejudice, bias and fear that fuels oppression. In other words, one reason systems of oppression are so vicious is that they tend to take advantage of, or else deny, our human interdependence. Within systems such as the disability system, the creation of an “other” creates an in-group and an out-group, thereby imposing rules of separation on our natural human interdependence. Various ways of thinking about and feeling toward “us” and “them,” both within and between our artificially segregated groups, foster character dispositions that work against the full acquisition of virtues such as honesty, courage and justice. Yet none of these virtues can mend such separation on their own. The viciousness inherent in how we interact with one another under false or forced segregation has an origin in connection itself. For one thing, such segregation prevents forming relationships on grounds of mutual openness and vulnerability. In fact, the fear produced through the creation and enforcement of segregated relationships only serves to bring about greater defensiveness and disconnection. The result is that it is even less likely that people will express themselves openly and allow they to be vulnerable enough to engage each other in the difficult conversations that could lead to resolution and understanding. Furthermore, when, through her own experiences and direction from her role models, an aspiring virtuous person comes to believe that oppression and its divisive messages of us and them are normal, natural, or unfortunate but “just “how it is,” then she, just like those before her, will not ordinarily possess the perspective needed to even conceive of something different. It is not clear in what way inculcating the standard virtues such as courage, honesty, generosity and justice will enable a person like this to realize that she has, through her actions and omissions, been relating to herself and others in the wrong way, at the

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wrong time and for the wrong reasons, though from outside the system it might be possible to see that this is so.15 While a fully virtuous person might be able to maintain practical rationality and emotional balance in the face of such hurtful messages and despite the people who have internalized them, it is not easy to see how the standard virtues could sufficiently guard against a person’s incorporating such pervasive attitudes into her own character during initial development. Even with the presence of a few dissenting voices, a message such as that you, or some others, are worthless or defective could nevertheless have a significant and in extreme cases permanent, psychological impact on you. I contend it would not take a particularly vicious person to fall prey to our many destructive social systems. Sometimes ignorance due to limited or no interaction with marginalized others, or a lack of awareness to question our beliefs about ourselves is enough to put us on the wrong course. If we grow up in a corrupt society, we tend to internalize both oppression and the beliefs and emotions, which make such oppression possible. Long-term persistence of oppressive social systems also leads to unconscious bias. Unconscious bias accounts for why people who have long since given up participating in blatant forms of discrimination continue to automatically form judgments based on the tenets of these systems. Change is of course possible, if difficult. It is a lack of awareness that such processes such as 15

Notoriously, for example, Aristotle was certainly just, courageous, honest and generous and

none of these character dispositions helped him critically question whether it was virtuous to relate to women as if it were true that they were naturally “other” with other sets of virtues than men. Though we might forgive him for not having the theoretical language or cultural insight to transcend his socially inculcated prejudice, it is unjustifiable to make such an excuse for ourselves today.

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unconscious bias are even going on and being at a loss as to what to do about it prevents a typical, well-meaning person from developing full virtue. Such people living in oppressive societies may not even know where or how to begin questioning their limiting and harmful assumptions, especially when these assumptions are opaque to them or are taken as truth within the oppressive culture. People with and without disabilities who wish to no longer buy into the disability system, for example, must face and overcome the viciousness of social rejection and shame and its ability not only to alienate people from one another, but its perhaps more insidious tendency to alienate a person from herself. Meanwhile, many people with disabilities also have to learn to value and be at peace with themselves, often without the role models and support that they need and all the while surrounded by the messages that they are other, less than and not enough. Sometimes it is their close family members or schoolteachers who, rather than modeling excellence, pass on these very destructive messages instead. A person with a disability who grows up with such messages of inferiority and lack will have trouble learning to be just, but not because she fails to be fair; she will struggle to be honest with herself, but not because she fails to tell the truth; she will find she is limited in courage, but not because she cannot act despite her fears. Rather, it is because she feels and believes in what the disability system tells her she ought to feel and believe, about the able-bodied and about herself, that she develops counterproductive behavior and emotions that continue to perpetuate her engagement in unhealthy relationships and selfrejection. Shame can disconnect a person from herself and, if it is long-term and pervasive, can make a person feel it is not safe to be vulnerable around others. For example, take a person who does her best to be genuine and truthful, who stands her ground in difficult situations despite fear

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and who tries to mitigate prejudice by advocating for or providing accommodations to people with disabilities. She will still be perpetuating the disability system if, despite the above development in character, she continues to think it shameful whenever she can’t do something on her own and has to ask someone for help and this is true whether or not she has a disability herself. Likewise, if she does have a disability and insists on normalizing—in this case in the form of not asking for needed help-- to try to finally fit in and gain acceptance, she is ultimately assisting the very system oppressing her by legitimizing the lack of value that normalizing standards place on those who cannot “pass” as able. She will still be living by exclusionary norms and this will negatively affect her striving to become more honest, more courageous and more generous. An unwillingness to risk vulnerability in relationships limits a person’s ability to acquire any of the virtues fully. Likewise, neither justice nor courage in and of itself can help a person overcome the disability system, in part because the system exists as a largely societal rather than personal issue and in part due to the fact that acting courageously and justly will still not be enough in and of itself to reestablish connectedness in the contexts where our interdependent relationships are most broken. Systems of oppression such as the disability system, sexism and racism are especially vicious in their systematic break-down of connection among people, in their unwarranted divisions they insist on and uphold among people and in their attempts to estrange members of the minority from the truth about who they really are. These are truths such as, we all have worth as persons, we ought never to be ashamed of who we are and none of us are inferior to one another but are instead equal on the basis of shared humanity. Accurate selfassessment, a healthy sense of self-worth, feeling comfortable with your own personal embodiment and being free from shame are all essential to developing as a virtuous person. In

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order for a person to fully develop such an orientation to the world, particularly while suffering from separation, she will not just need to be honest and just, she will also need to directly deal with her sense of separation by cultivating connection. The Limits of Utopia So far, my argument has only focused on nonideal, current circumstances in the world in which people strive to be virtuous amidst systematic prejudice, ostracism and discrimination. I now turn to the question of whether, in an ideal world in which everyone possessed the standard set of virtues—generosity, courage, honesty, temperance, justice and loyalty—we would be able to engage in interdependent relationships with authenticity and excellence. I contend that, again, the answer to this question is no, unless we add something more to the broader account within which we find such virtues. I will argue that, on their own, the standard virtues do not fully answer to the kinds of cognitive and emotional needs that specifically arise within the realm of human connection, even within an ideal environment. My argument for this claim begins with a more detailed exploration of our theoretical ideal world, what it is generally like and how we would relate to one another within it. While prejudice, greed, discrimination and fear would be absent from such a world, susceptibility to illness and accident, as well as the natural process of aging, grief and sorrow, perhaps even disappointment or regret, would still remain. Such is the case because I am assuming this ideal world would still be composed of human beings and virtue cannot make the human body less fragile or impermanent, or mitigate circumstantial challenges arising when parenting children, caring for a loved one, adjusting to a disability, or recovering from loss. Postulating that our inhabitants of such an ideal world are human, the vulnerabilities of childhood and aging and our inevitable mortality, would not disappear. What is ideal in this world is the content of human

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character and that, due to their virtue; people live in a completely just and harmonious society. People would certainly deal with loss, accident and aging with courage and honesty, perhaps even grace and honor. That they would respond well to challenging circumstances, however, would not diminish their vulnerability. If anything, a fully virtuous response to life’s circumstances requires an even greater willingness to be vulnerable, not less. Furthermore, unlike those who are still aspiring to be fully virtuous, people who are fully practically wise do not run or escape from situations which make them uncomfortable when engagement in such a situation is called for. They do not shy away from being present with another person who is suffering, even when they themselves are the ones suffering. They have learned not only to be honest toward others, but also to not deceive themselves. It takes a tremendous amount of willingness to be vulnerable to engage in transparent and honest selfreflection, to exercise the courage required to be present to and fully involved in any given situation and to maintain the willingness to stay fully aware in the face of hardship and loss. Anything less than full virtue diminishes such a person’s capacity for vulnerability by creating defenses between herself and others, as well as between herself and some of her own thoughts and emotions. Such defenses are commonplace in our actual world: guilt, blame, addictive behavior of any degree or kind, rationalization, self-deception, opaqueness, emotional withdrawal such as apathy and many kinds of judgments—particularly those based on assumptions or fear. Without such defenses, a virtuous person will be able to truly live in emotional balance and with practical rationality—colloquially speaking, authentically be herself—and it is precisely the willingness to be vulnerable that makes this possible. In our idealistic world, then, people will be able to authentically respond to uncertainty and vulnerability without judgment or fear. From what has been said so far, it would not be a

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stretch to then conclude that relationships formed in such an idyllic world would be founded on mutual vulnerability, a mutuality people would have the dispositions and personal resources to maintain. Not all virtuous activity occurs within the context of relationships, but often it does. Part of what is needed to allow for the possibility of vulnerability in interactions with others is to recognize that, in order to be just as fully virtuous in their interactions with you, those others also need to be vulnerable with you. If this were not so, fully virtuous friendship, Aristotelian philia, would not be possible. Surely, if the possibility for mutual vulnerability exists at all, it exists in virtuous friendship. Just as such recognition of our equal susceptibility to uncertainty in part underpins fully virtuous friendship, so to it is the starting point from which to develop the attitude or stance toward others in which those others are taken to be second selves more generally. This attitude toward others is also more likely to arise in a world where social inequality is absent and the scope of what can befall a person is split between chance fortune and universal experience. There is this contingent sense as well, then, in which our imagined fully virtuous people would recognize that what happens to one person could, with the same likelihood, happen to anyone. As these people would have no impulse to avoid and in fact might embrace such an idea without any judgment, conceiving of themselves as “other’” in any way that would create a false sense of distance and separation would never arise or occur to them. Indeed, it seems that for the fully virtuous agent, interdependent relationships based on taking others as second selves would be commonplace rather than the exception. In taking others to be second selves, we would be highly conscious of our roles in nested dependencies and, in general, we would strive to rely on others with excellence, as well as fully be present with and when necessary attentive to the provision of the needs of those reliant upon us. When

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conceiving of a person as a second self, we are not engaging in just any kind or variety of interdependent relationship, but an interdependent relationship characterized and informed by practical wisdom. My contention is that the standard virtues fall short of fully capturing the kinds of emotional and cognitive responses that intuitively need to be present for an interdependent relationship to be healthy. Of course, the standard virtues will have at least some impact on our interdependent relationships. For instance, such relationships demand honesty. Fortunately, in our ideal world, such honesty will be impeccable and occur on both sides of the relationship. Honesty contributes to a person’s ability to live authentically, a necessary component of relating well to self and others in the first place. Furthermore, such interdependent relationships could not continue without generosity and I have already mentioned how crucial courage is both in order to maintain such a necessarily high level of honesty and find peace with vulnerability. Courage is also necessary when faced with accident or loss, when raising a child, when taking care of an aging parent, or when standing by a struggling friend. Finally, a sense of justice or fairness is indispensable to virtuous friendship. Taking others to be second selves and the more personal instance of this, friendship, rely on fair nondiscriminatory social systems, an equitable way of distributing resources and a commitment to cooperatively meeting people’s needs. In fact, our supposed ideal world can only exist on the basis of a proper sense of personal and political justice. This is obviously one crucial reason why the example in this subsection is so highly idealized. Yet, as I claimed in Chapter II, quid-pro-quo reciprocity cannot be sufficiently applied in circumstances where reciprocity takes place in a highly vulnerable situation. Though I cannot pursue the topic in depth here, justice in an ideal world composed of interdependent relationships

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where everyone is willing to be vulnerable with others might be conceived somewhat differently than it is now. For instance, just actions would be assumed to take interdependence as a given. Used to considering themselves along with others from the start, people might conceive of what is needed to be just differently than people who conceive of themselves and society as being part of a set of independent individuals. That said, relating to people who are particularly vulnerable for whatever reason in an appropriate way—allowing them space or a place to share, how and when to provide help, how to feel toward the person currently needing physical or emotional support – is not a matter of justice. As far as how and when to help a person, we might think that the virtue of generosity is what we need. Certainly generosity will be invaluable when, say, assisting a grieving friend or providing someone with home care. However, it is often unclear when exercising generosity, without further qualification, whether the disposition involves having sympathy or empathy for others. Sympathy is the ability to care about and feel sorry for another’s suffering. Empathy involves being able to not only care about, but also share in feeling and experience with another. In other words, while sympathy does not require that a person take another to be a second self, empathy does. A person who wishes to give in the right way, at the right time and for the right reasons will need to fully grasp what it is to be interdependent, learn to balance giving with receiving and have the right kind of disposition toward the people she is giving to. A person who is fully generous may be able to give to another person while recognizing that person as a second self. But the capacity to genuinely do this involves more than a disposition to be generous. It requires a person to have further emotions and cognitive stances toward herself, as well as be able to handle herself excellently within a myriad of nested dependencies. Our interdependent relationships require that we give out of a sense of mutual cooperation as well as do so in recognition of our equality with respect to the human condition.

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Likewise, while honesty provides the foundation for the authenticity required in the best sorts of interdependent relationships, living authentically involves more than being honest with yourself and others. We need some further disposition that helps us create honest connection either with ourselves or with others and developing such connectedness is not the same as developing honesty itself. For example, I can be completely honest with you and overshare at the same time. While my willingness to be vulnerable is necessary if I am to be honest with you, it does not require me to indiscriminately spill every thought, feeling and circumstance onto you. Such behavior is sometimes called floodlighting. Not only does floodlighting make others uncomfortable and possibly push them away, it can invite self-indulgence and complicit sympathy. It also demonstrates that a person has an undeveloped or immature sense of appropriateness and boundaries and insufficient awareness of the needs of the other. Courage, while necessary for the vulnerability required in connection, is also not the same disposition we would need in order to sustain and be fully connected in our relationships with others and ourselves. Courage gives us the strength to be vulnerable with others, but such strength needs an appropriate way to be channeled. For example, suppose a courageous, generous and honest person does not know how to manage her own emotions as she sits with a friend who is clearly suffering. Her courage allows her to sit with the friend no matter how scared or awkward she feels. She is just as able to be honest with her friend about this, and openly shares that she would like to be fully present, knows this would be the right thing to do, and, yet, does not know how. More of the virtues that she already possesses won’t help her learn and develop the capacity to manage her emotions in a healthy way while reaching out to her friend, who needs to not feel alone in her pain. Such an example points to the need to develop aspects of character that cannot be acquired through cultivation of the familiar virtues.

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My goal in this section was to show that accounts of virtue such as the one Annas (2011) argues for need to say more in order to fully specify the range of cognitive and emotional components of virtuous interdependent relationships. In the next chapter, I make an argument for just what this addition to the account should look like. Before turning to that task, however, there is one other account of virtue ethics, one that explicitly discusses our inescapable dependency, to consider before concluding that an addition to virtue accounts is really necessary. I turn to this task in the next section. The Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence In his book Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre (1999) argues explicitly for a eudaimonist account of the virtues that incorporates and acknowledges dependency, disability, childhood and old age. In this section, I explain what I take to be the most important points of MacIntyre’s theory to the discussion of interdependence. Two related concepts are central to MacIntyre’s account of flourishing. They are: communities of giving and receiving and the virtues of acknowledged dependence. I will discuss each briefly in turn. I will then go onto raise two concerns with his account. First, I am not convinced that many of MacIntyre’s virtues of receiving can really be called virtues. Specifically, I argue that these qualities, far from being cultivated dispositions necessary for flourishing, instead compromise that flourishing. Secondly, I argue that MacIntyre’s account more generally does not properly acknowledge dependence. Communities of giving and receiving consist of independent practical reasoners and those dependent on them. They are groups larger than a family and smaller than a state. Like nonhuman animals such as dolphins, human beings begin life within a community. We learn to become independent practical reasoners due to the care and teachings of our parents, the nature of our relationships with our elders and peers and our membership within a wider culture and

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social context that we often do not question as children. Childhood itself is a natural stage of human life. As children, we rely on others to meet our needs and most of us are provided for. Dependency also partly characterizes the experience of a person with a severe mental disability or somebody who cannot dress or perform bodily tasks herself, a blind person who relies on others for directions or a deaf person who relies on an interpreter. People who are currently independent practical reasoners, in turn, have the resources of character and the insight to acknowledge their vulnerability and accept that they may become dependent again themselves at any time. For example, a mother of several children who is now an independent practical reasoner, may be aware that, when she grows older, she will most likely need to rely on her grown children. As another example, a practical reasoner may get into a devastating car crash resulting in severe brain damage or the loss of important functionality and be in need once more of others’ care. The cared for become the caregivers and the caregivers become the cared for. In this way, dependence and independence are sometimes temporary and always expected ways of being in the world. Crucial to the structure of MacIntyre’s (1999) communities of giving and receiving is a sense of indebtedness and obligation. Not only do I provide for those in need once grown, but I am indebted to those who provided for me while I was growing up and am in turn obligated to give something of myself back to others. This is not to say that a community of givers and receivers need be symmetrically reciprocal or that I directly owe assistance to the very same people who raised me. Those who look to us for assistance may be people who have no relation to the network of peers and adults who raised us. Instead, they might turn out to be those in the wider community who are ill or disabled. Furthermore, the extent to which we can give to others once we become independent practical reasoners roughly correlates with the extent to which we

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received care and concern as children. This exchange of giving and receiving does and should span generations. MacIntyre also recognizes that some people end up giving others far more than they received while growing up. If we were not cared for at all as children, if we were orphaned or raised in abusive homes, then we need not be expected to give back to those in need later in life. Those who are orphans or who were neglected and abused as children—who, in effect, have received little if nothing in upbringing—may be incapable of giving back to their community in the first place and it is the obligation of the community to care for them. MacIntyre’s (1999) account includes the standard list of virtues common to almost all virtue ethical theories. However, he further contends that both independent and dependent people need to cultivate virtues specific to navigating times in human life in which we are more vulnerable or require more help from others. He calls these virtues the virtues of acknowledged dependence. These virtues are subdivided into two general groups: virtues related to giving and virtues related to receiving. The virtues of giving include pity without derision, just-generosity, charity and patience, while the virtues of receiving include unconditional gratitude, graceful acceptance, forbearance and lack of critical judgment. Independent practical reasoners need these additional virtues in order to excellently navigate assisting those who are dependent as well as appreciate the temporary nature of their own physical/mental independence. Dependents also, whenever possible, cultivate these virtues in order to rely on others with excellence and grace. Just generosity is a character disposition involving unconditional generosity, being able to give without expecting anything in return. Someone with the character disposition of just generosity is able to respond to another’s humanity with humanity. A person acting out of just generosity also displays the emotions proper to that virtue, which include pity without its negative connotations as well as the desire or compassionate wish to relieve a person’s plight.

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Just generosity is not only other-directed however. It allows its possessor to ease her own disharmony brought on when she empathizes with the other’s need and recognizes suffering. A person who develops the right affective response to those in need will be able to act out of just generosity for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right way. Misericordia, or pity without derision, is a virtue exercised toward a person who is in dire need. Although we often give to those within our various communities of giving and receiving due to the nested set of obligations that arise for someone who has been on the receiving end in her relationships to give back in kind, misericordia is a virtuous response to community members and strangers alike. Whatever my relationship to you may be, if you are a stranger or family member in grave need my response out of misericordia to you directly takes the nature and extent of your need, rather than your relation to me, into account. In acting out of a disposition of misericordia, I treat you like you are a family member or friend, acknowledging your suffering and perhaps even being moved by the sobering thought that your hardships could easily be my own. So rather than simply taking pity on you or sympathizing with you—although generally I might do this—I meet your needs while also offering you my friendship and a place to belong within the community of giving and receiving of which I am a part. MacIntyre (1999) links charity, part of the virtue of just generosity, to aspects of temperateness or self-control. This is because a person needs strong boundaries, as well as a certain amount of financial security and emotional soundness in order to help others well. For instance, a person might decide to never make a living and so cannot assist others when they need her, or a person might find she is suffering from compassion fatigue after giving to those with less urgent needs, and then being unable to extend herself to those who really do need her empathy and attention. It is not only important to give, but give wisely.

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Likewise, with the possible exception of children, dependents need to develop character dispositions specific to helping them navigate the world of independent practical reasoners well and come to terms with their permanent or temporary limitations and differences. To this end, MacIntyre (1999) argues for several virtues relevant to receiving which are acquired alongside the virtues of giving just discussed. Having the disposition of gratitude coupled with the understanding of how to be grateful toward another without that person feeling obliged to you is one such virtue. So are the virtues of graceful acceptance, forbearance, kindness toward those who help you awkwardly and the withholding of criticism toward those who do not help you enough. Of course, some members of the community will be so impaired that, like Kittay’s (1998) daughter Sesha, their profound cognitive impairments entail that they are permanently and utterly dependent on others for physical and emotional needs. MacIntyre stresses that those who are still independent reasoners within the community should regard such profoundly dependent individuals as members of the moral community insofar as their condition could have occurred to any of us. Furthermore, within communities of giving and receiving, it ought to make little sense to disregard or regard as less than, those who become dependent through disability or disease. The virtues of acknowledged dependence apply just as much to those who are dependent as they apply to those who are currently practically wise, who should not forget how much their moral development depends on past assistance from others. To this end, a kind of acknowledged reciprocity rooted in character development as much as rules of obligation and repayment characterize the relations within communities of giving and receiving. MacIntyre’s (1999) account draws heavily from Aquinas’ focus on virtue within the context of societal rules of conduct and right action. Your helping me now is not merely one of the reasons I take into account when I decide to help you later; I owe you my help because you

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have assisted me. If I cannot directly repay you, then I ought to pay it forward and help someone else. This is, in MacIntyre’s terms, a duty. MacIntyre (1999) argues for two separate explications of why we ought to have such duties and communal rules. First, while individual virtue is the goal, it is not possible to ensure that everyone in society will act in ways that bring about good for themselves and others. There will always be people in communities of giving and receiving who are vicious or less than virtuous and the existence of rules which establish systems of obligation and indebtedness can help mitigate the harmful consequences that arise when people refuse to cooperate. Secondly, MacIntyre contends, we have both a common good as human beings and a good of our own, qua human being. In order to achieve this good within a community of giving and receiving, we need to adhere to rules and principles dictated by natural law which simplify and direct our relationships and interactions with one another. This does not mean that we never question these norms, principles, or rules: but nonetheless some guidelines for living will be necessary so that nonrational, as well as rational, human beings can flourish. I do think MacIntyre’s (1999) virtue of gratitude is invaluable as a virtue to cultivate, regardless of whatever else is said about vulnerability and dependence. Being grateful would serve an independent practical reasoner well, even if, albeit highly unlikely, she never experienced dependence in the way MacIntyre conceives of it. That said, I contend that several of the virtues of acknowledged dependence are actually problematic dispositions to cultivate given our nature as vulnerable and often dependent beings, rational or otherwise. For instance, forbearance is an unreasonable demand in any relationship in which an independent practical reasoner is assisting a dependent individual. However, it seems like a particularly problematic

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response when the “dependent” is also practically wise—i.e. when, as is the case with most people with disabilities, she is an independent dependent. Consider a scenario in which an attendant is acting condescendingly toward the person in her care (who very likely is also the attendant’s employer. A woman with quadriplegia, Anna, is being helped into bed by her assistant. She realizes that the assistant forgot to take off her shoes before putting her to bed. When Anna asks if the attendant can remove her shoes, the attendant responds that she will if Anna (an adult) says please. I submit that while the attendant is failing to be helpful, Anna can choose to respond to the situation with practical wisdom. She could act fairly, compassionately, honestly, count to ten while balancing her appropriate anger with patience, or demonstrate self-care by asserting her equality and right to respectful treatment in this relationship. However, I submit that under no circumstance like this should any person be encouraged to remain grateful despite her assistant’s condescension and poor treatment, accept this help as the best the assistant can give, or forbear the treatment. If Anna were to choose to respond to this situation with one or more of MacIntyre’s (1999) virtues of receiving, her attendant is likely to come away convinced that Anna is consenting to such treatment and it is okay to treat her this way again in the future. It does not serve those who are vulnerable to cultivate gratitude if it is meant to replace healthy boundaries. In some relationships, unconditional gratitude is of course warranted, largely because both individuals have earned each other’s trust. In other circumstances, gratitude toward the natural world for instance, placing conditions on being grateful hardly seems needed. But, under most circumstances, a healthy person will feel grateful to others only when those others’ actions or motivations are genuine, or when the other’s generosity is not muddled by condescension, anger, fear, or pity. Anna, for instance, has no reason to feel grateful that her

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attendant took off her shoes, when the assistance came at the price of being treated with disrespect. Again, in some cases, many involving our relations with others, discernment is necessary. Such discernment is necessary even in an ideal world where everyone possesses the virtues: it is needed in order to evaluate and respond adequately to situations right from the start. Of course, in our current world, critical discernment is highly important if we are to know whether we are being treated appropriately, whether others are or are not respecting our boundaries and our feelings and whether we ourselves have misjudged or gone out of bounds with another. Perhaps most importantly, it seems that MacIntyre’s (1999) understanding of acceptance contains an element of passivity. It is unclear that MacIntyre takes acceptance to be the recognition and naming of what is happening now. Rather, his understanding of acceptance seems to fall more along the lines of allowing without argument, assessment, or reflection. Any sort of passive attitude, such as that picked out by MacIntyre’s definition of acceptance, constitutes resignation and in extreme cases, this can amount to submission. Coupled with forbearance, such acceptance could be unwise at best, dangerous at worst. Genuine acceptance, in fact, is not passive at all but is an active choice. If Anna makes the decision to accept the fact that her assistant was just condescending toward her, it does not follow that she then “accepts” or permits the treatment as valid. In fact, acknowledging her attendant’s behavior for what it is can allow Anna to change the situation: she might assert her right to respect, report the incident, or fire the attendant if this kind of treatment is ongoing and escalating. Often, acceptance is misunderstood to involve passivity when in the context of dependency. The fact that a person must depend on another for her physical needs, for example, is of course something a person needs to accept, understood as choosing to recognize herself as

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the way she is. But because dependence is often thought of as a state of passivity, it is then assumed that a dependent person must be passive and acceptance is misunderstood as a passive attitude. The equating of dependency with passivity as just alluded to is a particularly insidious mindset that hurts everyone, independent practical reasoners and others alike. It perpetuates the stigma surrounding dependency, the shame many feel in asking for help, and the myth that being vulnerable is a weakness when, in fact, allowing ourselves to show our vulnerability is one of the most courageous choices we can make. Of course there will be some conditions such as Sesha’s, having dementia, or being an infant when a person will be completely reliant on others. However, being utterly dependent is not the same as choosing to be utterly passive and Sesha can hardly be said to be primarily passive. Furthermore, anyone as dependent as Sesha will lack the ability to exercise any virtue, whether of giving or receiving, so my points above regarding issues with the virtues of receiving simply do not apply in her case, or in any like hers. Upon consideration, the group of people capable of exercising virtues of receiving is independent dependents, a group of people who are capable of acquiring both the virtues of practical reason and the virtues of acknowledged dependence. To assume that passivity on the part of an independent dependent is virtuous is to argue for the cultivation of dispositions that in fact further exacerbate preconceived and detrimental notions about disability and dependency. One of the most important points to come back to in relation to the issue of passivity is Annas’ (2011) pivotal distinction between the circumstances of a life and the living of that life. Though there is a sense in which circumstances happen to us and we are patients to some extent with respect to circumstances, the eudaimon life for which the cultivation of the virtues is essential depends on our active participation in and responses to what happens, not on the nature of what happens itself. Anyone who is generous with everyone even when treated poorly,

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forbear’s discrimination and prejudice and well-meaning ignorance indiscriminately and fails to constructively criticize someone she relies on for not following through on their responsibility and commitment is by definition not only dependent but passive in the most disempowering of ways. Even children who do not fully possess the virtues need empowering and affirming experiences in living in order to develop full virtue and, given the choice, they rarely choose passivity over action. Character traits such as unconditional (uncritical) gratitude, forbearance and tolerance of unhelpful and possibly hurtful treatment greatly and negatively impact a person’s flourishing and cannot be legitimately called virtues. Perhaps MacIntyre (1999) never meant to be driven by negative biases and connotations of dependency to put forward virtues of receiving that merely furthered the stereotypes which people with disabilities, in particular, have spent a great deal of time advocating against. Beyond the problematic nature of MacIntyre’s virtues of receiving, I wish to raise one more concern. It is this: that the virtues of acknowledged dependence fail more generally to appropriately or accurately acknowledge and speak to dependence as a universal human experience. First, it is deceptive and even divisive to divide human beings into unnecessary categories. In this case, the categories are the independent practical reasoners and their dependents. There is no reason to think that such a category exists. If I am right to say that vulnerability is required for the healthy expression of independence and dependence alike and that independence and interdependence are usually inseparable components of the same form of activity, it would seem that classifying practical reasoners as independent, as if they could not possess degrees of independence and dependence simultaneously, is inaccurate at best. Such practical reasoners, especially once they acquire full virtue, are in fact interdependent, which means they have as much reason to depend on others with excellence as does anyone whom

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MacIntyre (1999) might classify as a “dependent.” and There is no genuine distinction in kind between dependence on others by practical reasoners and dependence on others by those lacking in reason. The difference is only one of degree. Second, MacIntyre’s (1999) choices about which distinctions not to make between types of dependence also seem problematic. In his discussion of virtues of giving such as misericordia and just generosity, MacIntyre uses examples of independent practical reasoners who are needy, homeless, hungry, or temporarily physically hurt. The practical reasoners receiving the assistance presumably have all the virtues, those of acknowledged dependence and practical reason alike. However, infants, young children and those with severe cognitive impairments do not exercise any of the virtues, including the virtues of acknowledged dependence. Without the use of the category independent dependent, MacIntyre’s intermittent conflation between dependent practical reasoners and dependents who lack reason is problematic and does not faithfully and accurately capture an important point about dependency. There are significant differences between infants, people like Sesha, a person with Down syndrome and a person with a visual impairment. The difference obviously seems to be that those with cognitive impairments or children cannot exercise any virtues and are dependent, period. The person with a visual impairment can certainly acquire the virtues and is usually being independent in some ways while depending on others in different ways. Much of her so-called dependence is done to ultimately serve her independence, such as when she depends on a guide dog or a sighted assistant. Charity and pity without derision are probably not the responses she would regularly appreciate from others when her dependence on others is in fact part of her independent and selfdirected use of resources and connections to meet her own needs. However, such charity and

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pity without derision may well be highly appropriate when responding to someone like Sesha or to children in need. I contend that, more than any partial acknowledgement of dependence with its inevitable pitfalls outlined here, it is an acknowledgement of human interdependence that is needed. By turning the discussion away from a, sometimes misleading, dichotomy between independence and dependence to focus instead on the fact of our human interdependence, we might finally be able to properly acknowledge the centrality of interconnectedness in human life. Perhaps, too, we can even discover what excellent interrelations with one another would entail. I begin to do just this task in the next chapter.

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CULTIVATING COMMUNITY: THE VIRTUE OF PROPER INTERCONNECTION In her article, “Environmental Virtue Ethics,” Hursthouse (2007) articulates what environmental literature often refers to as the green belief. This belief holds that in order to excellently live, act and feel toward, interact with and end our exploitation of nature, we must radically change our lifestyles, attitudes, perspectives and habits. She considers and decides against the efficacy of reconfiguring or recasting the familiar virtues as a response to such widely needed change. Ultimately, she argues instead that we are required to radically alter our feelings, thoughts and relationships with nature by inculcating within ourselves a new virtue. New virtues are discovered when it is clear that there is a hitherto unspecified excellence of character found within a particular realm of activity, which renders its possessor good (Hursthouse, 1999). As a virtue, such an excellence of character is not simply a trait or particular way of acting; it is a complex disposition to think, act, feel, evaluate, react, believe, approve or disapprove, in a way that is right or appropriate to the circumstances at hand. In what follows, I focus on the activity and realm of human interdependence rather than environmentalism. Nevertheless, I find parallels between Hursthouse’s (2007) discovery of a new virtue of right orientation to nature while investigating the subject of environmentalism and my own discovery when investigating the subject of interdependence and the interconnectedness of human relationships. There ought to be a way of relating to ourselves, family, friends and colleagues, the person bagging your food at the grocery store and your elderly parent who will be permanently moving into your guest bedroom, that captures our awareness of, thoughts and emotions regarding and need to participate in, these interconnections within which we make sense of ourselves and our lives.

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I argue that there is, in fact, a virtue that specifically pertains and speaks to the excellence found in interdependent relationships. I call this virtue Proper Interconnection. Though I claim to have discovered a virtue and put a name to it, I do not claim to have invented the virtue of Proper Interconnection. A virtue is a way of thinking, feeling and acting toward a specific kind of activity and set of practices. It seems right, therefore, that the virtue of Proper Interconnection should be as old as our species’ ability to form relationships in the first place. In these final two chapters of my dissertation, I seek to define and establish the virtue of Proper Interconnection as a legitimate character disposition vital to human flourishing and to the theory of virtue ethics as a whole. To this end, I test my conception of Proper Interconnection against two sets of criteria or standards on which to determine whether a particular disposition or trait qualifies as a virtue. The current chapter focuses on Hursthouse’s (2007) three necessary conditions that a trait must meet to be considered a virtue. I reserve until the final chapter a discussion of MacIntyre’s (2007) three standards, which serve as sufficient conditions for a trait is being a virtue, articulated in his book, After Virtue. According to Hursthouse (2007), a trait counts as a virtue if: 1. The trait specifies a character disposition which has a corresponding way of naming people with such a trait, as well as picking out which actions exemplify the exercise of it. 2. The trait picks out a character disposition found in human nature, which is psychologically plausible for people to attain. 3. The character trait has a natural analogue when not fully developed (for instance, in children,) which children can fully learn to acquire over time.

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I take up, in order, each of these criteria and demonstrate sequentially in each section below that Proper Interconnection does indeed meet all three. The Virtue of Proper Interconnection Let me begin this section with a brief summary of the claims I have established so far. I have established that: 1. Vulnerability in relationships impacts the exercise and acquisition of virtue in a way that the standard set of virtues cannot account for or cover. 2. We are by nature interdependent beings: that is, we engage in relationships defined by mutual vulnerability. 3. We can engage in these relationships either well or badly dependent, in part, on our willingness to be vulnerable with others. It would be right, then, to call the way we engage in such relationships with excellence a virtue and the way we engage in them poorly, a vice. In this section, I argue that Proper Interconnection meets Hursthouse’s (2007) first criterion for a trait to qualify as a virtue. To reiterate, Hursthouse’s criteria are these: According to Hursthouse, a trait counts as a virtue if: 1. The trait specifies a character disposition which has a corresponding way of naming people with such a trait, as well as picking out which actions exemplify the exercise of it. 2. The trait picks out a character disposition found in human nature, which is psychologically plausible for people to attain. 3. The character trait has a natural analogue when not fully developed (for instance, in children,) which children can fully learn to acquire over time.

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I intend to make clear as part of my argument what the emotional and cognitive components of Proper Interconnection are and what traits relative to these components constitute its corresponding vices. Defining the realm of interdependent human activity as vital to the understanding and commendable participation in our everyday interactions and explicating the kind of character needed to engage in these relationships with excellence, is crucial to our flourishing as human beings. As I will show, in absence of Proper Interconnection, we cannot live fully eudaimon lives. In our ever increasingly interdependent world, our flourishing depends on cultivating Proper Interconnection, so that we learn to relate and respond to the needs of others and ourselves appropriately and commendably. In the first subsection, I explicate what Proper Interconnection is, what it means to have and exercise the virtue, how it relates and interacts with other virtues and how it is necessary for practical wisdom. In the second subsection, I describe and provide examples of the two vices of Proper Interconnection: disconnection and destructive connection. What Is the Virtue of Proper Interconnection? The virtue of Proper Interconnection is a disposition which rightly orients us toward our human interrelatedness and the vulnerability we inevitably encounter when engaging in this realm of human activity, first reflexively within ourselves and then mutually in interactions with others. Proper Interconnection enables its possessor to have the wisdom to know how, when and why to connect in one way for one situation and another way for another situation. Like any virtue, Proper Interconnection is a deep-seated character disposition that is acquired through learning—both experience in living and by observing role models. Its possession and exercise is necessary for acquiring practical wisdom and living a flourishing life. The intellectual and emotional qualities possessed by those with the virtue of Proper Interconnection are as old as our

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species in origin and are developed through recognition and reciprocity. It is important to say from the outset that I am using these terms—recognition and reciprocity--in a way that differs slightly from their typical expression. I define and discuss each in turn below. Recognition, as I understand it, is the reflective capacity and openness needed to relate to and “see” yourself and others as authentically as possible. Roughly speaking, openness to selfreflection and engagement in the vulnerability it requires, allows you to relate to yourself with compassion and acceptance (more on these below). When it comes to right relationship with others, recognition involves a willingness to be receptive to what those others show you about who they really are—so you do not end up perceiving them as you assume, wish, or fear them to be. Vulnerability is necessarily part of this experience, both for the person who is recognized and the person recognizing her. It takes a certain degree of willingness to be vulnerable in order to allow another to really see you for who you are, as well as be willing to see others for who they are. Such vulnerability fosters empathy, which is in part an emotional response. We first learn to recognize ourselves for who we are and from there begin to learn to see ourselves in others. Out of this beginning to empathize comes the possibility not just to intellectually understand, but emotionally feel, interconnected with others. Recognizing a person for who she is and identifying and relating to the ways in which she is similar to you breaks down distinctions of self and other that stand in the way of genuine relationship. At the same time, we cannot fully recognize a person for who she is simply by drawing on our similarities. In fact, authentic recognition includes, yet goes beyond, acknowledgment of what we have in common, enabling us to appreciate and begin to accept and acknowledge our differences. After all, though we are all interdependent, we are also all unique individuals.

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Recognition allows for openness between people, which can foster the communication necessary for breaking down preconceptions, prejudices, ignorance and fear that can emerge when relating to people who are different from us. This is the other side of empathy—being able to support another person through her situation and witness her feelings, even if they differ from our own. It is important to point out that a person can engage in recognition of herself and others well without others’ cooperation or willingness to relate in return. Someone who exercises the virtue of Proper Interconnection will be able to authentically relate to herself and to others who reciprocate in the relationship through a mutual willingness to be vulnerable. But not everyone whom a virtuous person will encounter will be virtuous themselves. Some people make an art out of not showing others who they are, so that no one can ever truly connect or relate to them. People who choose or are raised to not connect authentically with others often hide behind a constructed social mask, act like a chameleon and engage in antisocial behavior which ultimately has an alienating effect. Proper Interconnection with people who refuse to let themselves be seen, as is the case in many situations involving unhealthy relationships, often requires the virtuous person engaged in the relationship to set healthy boundaries, limit contact, or end the relationship altogether. Not every relationship is worth participating in. First, a person in right relationship with herself would not continue an unhealthy relationship, particularly when no resolution can be found. Secondly, part of recognizing people for who they truly are involves making an honest assessment about whether a potential relationship can be forged in mutual vulnerability or not. People who are properly interconnected with those who are not can and should discern whether to pursue the activity of continuing that relationship. After all, Proper Interconnection is not about maintaining any kind of interdependent relationship, but about connecting with others

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well. Sometimes the best way to connect with a person who is truly unhealthy to be around is to not physically be around them. Besides recognition, I take Proper Interconnection to consist in reciprocity. I understand reciprocity to be an activity that can only fully occur when a person is able to both allow herself to be seen and to recognize others for who they are. Reciprocity is acquired through the cultivation of three related emotional and cognitive characteristics: active compassion, acceptance and shared responsibility. All three components of reciprocity as I am defining it require a mutual willingness to be vulnerable and, as with recognition, begin in the relationships we have with ourselves. A person who is properly interconnected must first start to cultivate compassion, acceptance and personal accountability in regard to herself before she fully learns how to have acceptance and compassion, as well as a sense of shared responsibility, for and with others. Compassion involves decision and action as well as feeling. It arises ultimately from the recognition that human beings are, in the widest circle, part of the same family. It is a quality not sufficient in and of itself to constitute Proper Interconnection, but is necessary for and arises out of the larger disposition of which it is part. I take compassion toward situations and people as well as acceptance of what is, to require recognition if either is to occur at all. Compassion, acknowledging and empathizing with a person who is suffering, is genuine when you can relate to the person you have compassion for authentically and see her for who she is. Both recognition and compassion come about through and allow for acceptance, the ability to mentally hold space for and be present to, what is happening in the moment. For example, by accepting and holding space for a person needing your compassion, you do not judge him or her and this lack of judgment gives you, who might have otherwise been struggling

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with the situation, room to respond in whatever way practical wisdom requires. Acceptance, in the form of recognizing people’s differences without judgment, is also part and parcel of the virtue of Proper Interconnection. People with unusual embodiments are often trained to not accept their bodies or impairment, so that before they ever begin the task of relating to others, they are not even in right relationship with themselves. Some people are ridiculed for their appearance so often that they start to believe what they’ve been told—for instance, that they are ugly and possibly worthless. Such beliefs foster self-rejection and shame, which prevents such people from having healthy relationships with others as well as with themselves. On the other hand, some people are so afraid of others’ disabilities that they refuse to get to know anyone who is not able-bodied, since otherwise they would have to confront such fears within themselves. But no one can be mutually vulnerable or recognized for who they are if the fear of or prejudice concerning differences in cultural background, gender preference, disability, appearance, race, or socioeconomic circumstance is getting in the way. Too often, people different from ourselves are written off as unacceptable, or actively feared or despised. Through acquiring Proper Interconnection, people come to question their fears and assumptions, recognize as much as possible others for who they are (for example, realize there is no need to be afraid of a person who happens to be blind) and then have enough compassion and sense of shared responsibility to engage in the dialogue necessary for the acknowledgement, understanding and resolution of these differences. Some such differences might need to be eradicated. Others might need to be honored. Either change of approach to our interdependent relationships requires, first, that we accept what is actually the case to the best of our ability. Having said this, however, I now need to make a distinction between acceptance and tolerance. Acceptance is part of what is needed to be true to yourself and transparent with

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others. Acceptance always leads to greater insight about a current circumstance and sometimes to the realization that things are happening just as you wish them to. When that happens, it is wonderful. In that case, you are most likely feeling good about yourself and are getting along with most, if not all, the important people in your life. But, just as often, acceptance leads to the realization that there must be a change, either to a relationship, situation, personal habit, or pattern of action. Acceptance allows a person to recognize, to the best of her ability, what is true of her, another person, or a situation. Without such recognition, genuine change could not occur. Proper Interconnection is not about us all getting along, though that would be nice. To be properly interconnected, we do not need to tolerate each other, nor should we. In fact, some people are rightly intolerable due to their choices of action. When a woman’s husband beats her, she must come to accept that he really is the kind of person who is abusive, that she is in a situation that will most likely worsen if she does not leave and that she married him with or without knowing just what kind of man he really was. Once she has accepted what is happening and whom she is dealing with, she can make her decisions about what to do. In no way must she tolerate her husband or her situation. Tolerance fosters vices of disconnection and unhealthy connection, discussed in the next section. It can create states of inertia such as apathy, complacency and submission, both within systems and among people. It can lead people to refuse to question the status quo or the systems and beliefs they are familiar with, instead of allow them to choose to accept what is and then respond out of compassion and a sense of shared responsibility for self and others. Tolerance can also justify codependent behavior, as well as provide a rough and ready excuse to avoid doing the hard work of uncovering things about yourself and others you wish you would not have to acknowledge. So, while acceptance is necessary for acquiring and exercising Proper Interconnection, tolerance is right out.

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Of course, Proper Interconnection is not just concerned with getting feelings toward others correct. It also requires the rational discernment and sensitivity to how, when and where your reliability is needed. This is most evident among nested dependencies, for such relationships vividly embody the concept and practice of shared responsibility. There are children to raise, elders to look after; there is need to deliver food to millions of families; need to provide people with items and resources they want and require; there are houses to build: it goes on and on. There are always countless people depending on us wherever we fit within such nested dependencies and so being the kind of person others can rely on consistently and dependably is paramount. Specifically it is important to develop an awareness of how your actions impact others and a willingness to contribute your abilities and skills when needed. Ultimately, everyone can contribute something of themselves, either large or small, to our interdependent relationships and in that sense, everyone is needed. This is in part because everyone fits within a set of nested dependencies, though where someone fits into that set can change over days or even a lifetime. Kittay (1998) has made it clear that dependency workers fulfill a role that is invaluable to the human community, but so do those who help dependency workers through sharing resources and support. Further on, there are those who assist those who directly care for people who cannot care for themselves. Rarely is there anyone who does not participate, at one time or another, in securing an adequate life for infants and those who are temporarily or permanently dependent, young children, elders, or someone who is ill. Knowing how much energy and time you can give to caring for others is essential to being able to properly connect with them. On the other hand, everyone who is not directly or somewhat directly involved in caring for those who care for those who cannot care for themselves is participating in some sort of activity that has at least some impact on others. Such

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people affect those around them and are therefore still indirectly part of relationships of nested dependencies. Conversely, during the times when you yourself need more assistance than usual and are still autonomous, it is important to understand what it means to be an independent dependent. This concept was introduced in Chapter III. To reiterate, an independent dependent is someone who might not be able to execute certain tasks on her own, but is able to make her own decisions about her needs, directing the way in which she wishes to receive help, determining when she needs it and deciding who she will ask for assistance. People with physical disabilities are the most vivid examples of independent dependents. However, there are many able-bodied people who find that they are independently dependent at some time or another and to some degree. For example, people are independently dependent when and they need others help in order to pursue their projects which, by our own lights, add structure to life and give meaning to its overall trajectory. This requires the practical wisdom to ask for help in the right way, for the right reasons and at the right time. In acquiring Proper Interconnection, people who are independently dependent learn the balance of both taking responsibility for themselves and receiving assistance from responsible others. Again, a willingness to be vulnerable relative to the kind of relationship in question is necessary if a person is to engage in relationships excellently. Like most virtues, Proper Interconnection is applicable in a variety of contexts that may appear disparate in character. It is part of what it is to be practically wise to be able to assess what circumstances require the exercise of which virtue or virtues and it is no exception with Proper Interconnection. Furthermore, it is important to point out that Proper Interconnection has the same relationship to practical wisdom as do the other virtues. That is, the development of Proper Interconnection is necessary, along with the other virtues, in order to possess an

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integrated character and be practically wise. A fully virtuous person finds she cannot be just without being honest, or be honest without courage. In just the same way, without Proper Interconnection, justice would be limited, honesty not fully developed, generosity potentially misguided and courage not fully realized. Likewise, a person who possesses all the virtues will exercise Proper Interconnection more fully. Honesty is necessary for recognition and acceptance, justice for providing direction to shared responsibility and courage needed in order to be vulnerable at all. In contrast, a person who is not properly interconnected might not be honest with herself, fail to challenge the assumptions that cause the best of her intentions to end up being unjust, or live her life according to the false belief that vulnerability is a form of weakness. For these reasons, Proper Interconnection is integral to the very concept of practical wisdom and necessary to acquire if a person is to flourish. Destructive Connection and Disconnection For every virtue, there is at least one vice associated with it. For justice, the vice is injustice, for courage, both cowardice and brashness. Likewise, there are at least two ways to act viciously with respect to the virtue of Proper Interconnection: disconnection and destructive connection. While disconnection generally takes one form, it is possible to viciously engage in connection in a myriad of ways. I will begin with an explication of disconnection and give three examples of the most common forms of unhealthy connection: narcissism, codependency and what I call the Borg Effect. I end the section with an example of a person who simultaneously exemplifies the vices of disconnection and destructive connection. Disconnection from others is perhaps most often encountered in contexts such as depressive disorder, dissociation during childhood trauma and the devastating effects of shame and isolation. While these psychosocial conditions do complicate a person’s flourishing greatly,

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they do so in the way a physical illness might hinder a person’s flourishing. Importantly, if physical or mental illness is causing a person to be disconnected, then that disconnection is not itself a vice. Such disconnection only becomes vicious when a person fails to take any responsibility for her condition, continues to hurt herself or others despite others encouraging her to seek help, or actively chooses to disconnect further. Therapy and treatment are required to help a person reconnect with herself and reintegrate into the world when trauma, abuse, grief, or other life factors are the cause. The form of disconnection, which I argue ought to rightly be considered vicious, involves a person’s active or decisive disengagement from relating to themselves or to others. Apathy, complacency, self-neglect, refusal to take responsibility, callousness and emotional coldness to others’ joys and sorrows are manifestations of such vicious disconnection. People who disconnect from life in this way often neglect their relationships, including their children. Other examples include doing nothing while someone robs the house next door, or continuing to do things that harm people and other species, perhaps even through ignorance, without the desire to educate oneself or reflect on one’s actions. Such behavior differs from, say, actively abusing your children or engaging in cruel or overtly negative behavior. The vice of disconnection is a vice of absence. It is the lack of both compassion and cruelty, the refusal to either recognize others for who they are or fail to accept them at all. For such a disconnected person, other people are neither subjects nor objects, but are rather invisible. Such an attitude toward others certainly effects how a disconnected person relates to herself. Disconnection of this kind can leave a person feeling isolated, adrift, alienated, lost or displaced. She might fail to find meaning in her life, or in the goings-on of life in general, perhaps having a sense that life is fragmented and lacks cohesion. As I will argue in the next

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chapter, MacIntyre (2007) identifies this disconnection as a product of a modern tendency to abstract our sense of self away from our emotions, actions, social roles and historical context. He calls the result “disappearance” and as will become clear soon, such disconnectedness could have quite possibly resulted in death, particularly for our and early human ancestors (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 26). If MacIntyre is correct, then interconnection appears to be absolutely essential both to our psychological well-being and our very survival. Opposite the vice of disconnection is destructive connection. I now turn to discussing one particularly vicious form of improper connection: narcissistic personality disorder. In their paper, “Unraveling the Paradoxes of Narcissism: A Dynamic Self-Regulatory Processing Model,” Morf and Rhodewalt (2001b) provide data and analysis corroborating an innovative theoretical approach to understanding narcissism and the complex interplay between narcissists’ outward grandiosity and counterproductive social tendencies and their internal fragile and vulnerable construction of self. Though it would take me too far afield in this chapter to indicate all the nuances and debates pertaining to this theory, I take Morf and Rhodewalt’s research to be pertinent to my project insofar as it indicates that narcissists, for all their seeming lack of connection, desperately depend on others for constant self-affirmation, yet continue to live with intense feelings of shame and vulnerability. It is this incessant need for others’ affirmation and attention, along with a vulnerability of self that is never satiated, which leads me to categorize narcissism as a vice of connection rather than as a vice of disconnection. The authors note that a great deal of research on narcissism shows that narcissists care little about the make-up of their audience, fitting in, or approval. They prefer admiration or infamy to acceptance or being liked, which explains, for instance, why they are so concerned with self-image while simultaneously engaging in ways that socially alienate them from others

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(Morf and Rhodewalt, 2001b). People with narcissistic personality disorder generally overly depend on others for admiration and self-affirmation. They tend to present a constructed grandiose self to the world and view other people as having value only as a means to upholding that self-image. People are not valuable in and of themselves for narcissists, which makes true intimacy impossible and leads in part to narcissists’ characteristic lack of empathy (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001b). Such a lack of empathy ultimately leads many to reject the narcissist, which the narcissist then takes to indicate proof of his underlying worthlessness, as well as reason to intensify the behaviors that led to such interpersonal rejection in the first place. Morf and Rhodewalt (2001b) found that while these behaviors are counterproductive, narcissists engage in them in order to try to shore up their ever-threatened self-image. For example, faced with negative feedback, narcissists often resort to denigrating or devaluing the person giving the feedback, denying the behavior in question ever occurred, or modifying the story of events to fit a more favorable reality (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001b). As another example, narcissists will often handicap themselves before engaging in a venture or task in which their confidence is not assured. They engage in such behavior so that, if they do fail, they can easily fault outside circumstances, rather than themselves, with any setbacks (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001b). These behaviors lead narcissists to fail to take personal responsibility for their feelings, actions, life plans, or goals, above and beyond their inability to acknowledge their shortcomings and mistakes. Such a lack of personal responsibility, coupled with apathy toward others, renders them psychologically incapable of engaging in or valuing shared responsibility. Perhaps more unfortunate still is that narcissists are not typically convinced by their own grandiose claims and admiration from others only provides temporary relief from their underlying sense of shame, inadequacy and emptiness. Their senses of self-worth and self-

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esteem, when positive, are entirely driven externally by preceding responses and reactions from others. Their outward intense mood swings, emotional extremes and heightened capacity for aggression are in part all results of such a fragile sense of self which can never be securely established through external means (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001b). In short, they are looking for being enough in all the wrong places. As long as they look outside themselves for themselves, they will never find the self-compassion, acceptance, or sense of worth which might finally bring them peace. However invincible narcissists make themselves out to be to others, then, they are ultimately very needy vulnerable individuals whose inner life is characterized by unstable and fluctuating extremes of positive external affirmation and deeply negative internal suffering. They simultaneously forge an inaccurate and destructive preoccupied connection to self while both experiencing others as part of that self and devaluing those others. They cannot engage in recognition, as they are unable to let themselves be seen and all too often project their rejected self-perceived qualities onto others as a mirror. Consequently, their vulnerability, though very internally present, cannot be shared. They are therefore never able, let alone willing, to engage in the mutual vulnerability needed for Proper Interconnection. A second way in which the vice of unhealthy connection manifests is the psychological condition of codependency. Unhealthy dependence, or co-dependence, is an excessive reliance on others for approval, acceptance, self-worth, self-esteem and validation. Co-dependent people are unable to evaluate themselves accurately and often form relationships fundamentally out of fear rather than openness and love. They are often excessively needy either because they must feel needed to feel good about themselves or because their fears of abandonment and rejection

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propel them to cling to others, often to the point that they inevitably drive others away in a selffulfilling prophecy. I illustrate how such a strategy for connection proves destructive to self and others through a hypothetical example of a woman, again named Anna, who uses a wheelchair and her mother, Kelly. Anna needs assistance with bathing and dressing, but would not need assistance pushing her wheelchair if her mother would help her invest in an electric one. Her mother refuses on the grounds that such a chair would be too expensive, but in reality she secretly enjoys the company in the morning. She tells Anna that helping her get around gives the two of them mother-daughter time, which is harder to come by now that her daughter is in college. Anna would like to get to school as well as do many other things on her own, but fears hurting her mother’s feelings by admitting that she resents her mother’s overprotectiveness. Whenever Anna has tried to assert her independence in the past, Kelly has accused her of being ungrateful and proceeds to remind her daughter of the many sacrifices she has made in order to raise a special needs child as well as she has. To further complicate matters, Anna lacks the financial resources to independently hire a personal assistant. True to form, her smothering mother is joyfully taking on the added responsibility in part so that she doesn’t feel lonely or have to face her fears around living her own life. Anna’s codependent mother does have the capability to see herself for who she really is, if she wants to. But her fears of disapproval and rejection usually get in the way of this. Whereas narcissists seek attention both positive and negative, admiration or infamy, codependent people seek approval and social acceptance and the belonging attained through fitting in. Consequently, they possess empathy, sometimes at a heightened level, as they are highly sensitive to the needs, feelings and concerns of others, but often fail to see those others for who

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they are, letting their fears get in the way of their compassion. When codependent people fail to respond to others with acceptance or compassion (when that is needed) it is because they haven’t learned to cultivate self-compassion. The resulting destructive connection with themselves and others is what leads them to engage in manipulation, engulfment and clingy behavior. Like narcissists, codependents seek solutions to their self-destructive approaches to intimacy and connection outside of themselves. Such a drive to seek emotional balance and practical wisdom outside of oneself, rather than cultivate it from within, along with the frustration and futility that results is evident in the relationship dynamic between Anna and her mother. Anna’s mother needs companionship and a sense of purpose in life and is using her daughter to fulfill this need, rather than learn to validate herself independently of what others are or are not doing. This only serves to hold Anna back from making a life for herself. Importantly, seeking what she is lacking in herself from her daughter does not actually satisfy her mother’s need for connection. In part this is because her behavior, for instance refusing to strategize with her daughter about how to obtain an electric wheelchair, is indicative of the mother’s inability to genuinely recognize her daughter for the complete and authentic individual she is. What is more, both Anna and her mother, in classic codependent fashion, confuse intimacy with neediness and psychological caretaking. True intimacy requires shared responsibility which is done well only when each person in the relationship first learns to take personal responsibility for herself. In different ways, Anna and her mother refuse to take personal responsibility, either for their feelings or their need for acceptance, belonging and selfworth. Thus they both perpetuate an unhealthy codependent pattern in their relationship. Generally, then, co-dependent people lack an ability to set boundaries, afraid of making

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choices––about how they spend their time, what is important to them, or what kind of treatment they will accept from others. In extreme cases, co-dependents sometimes do not know where they end and others begin. They lose any sense that their embodiment in the world does have limits. They will continually strive to find their identity, self-esteem, emotional balance, and sometimes even values outside of themselves, to no avail. They are so hungry for belonging in the form of external validation from others that they begin to forget that practical wisdom can only be cultivated within themselves. They may be honest, courageous and just, even empathic in many ways (unlike narcissists) but still be incapable of developing and exercising Proper Interconnection. The third way in which unhealthy connection can most often occur is, I think, vividly depicted in what I will call the Borg Effect. The Borg is a fictional species in Star Trek for whom interdependence takes precedence over all else-other values: originality, diversity, and even personality. The Borg conquer other species by "assimilating" them, turning them into identical looking and acting drones who answer uncritically to the singularly dictated groupthink of their entire community. Not surprisingly, then, the Borg Effect occurs when a person takes interconnection to an extreme, living as though the group’s needs, projects and goals take precedence over all other values and facets of her character. Consequently, she fails to maintain or cultivate a healthy sense of individuation and distinct identity. It is possible for people to act somewhat Borg-like. Fundamentalist religious cults and Nazi Germany are extreme examples of this vice, but so are teenage cliques, gangs and organizations that do not tolerate disagreement and productive dialogue for change. Even if, or when, the group in question is unequivocally doing wonderful things in the name of the greater good, it is psychologically and emotionally damaging for any of the group members to start losing their sense of themselves as unique,

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creative, autonomous and valuable individuals. This is interdependence done badly. Too much of a good thing might not be terrible in some circumstances, but when it comes to the inculcation and exercise of virtues, balance is key. A courageous person who feels no fear at all is rash, reckless and heedless of practical wisdom in this respect. A person who is so honest that she floodlights people with oversharing or fails to display any sense of tact is not at all living in emotional balance. A generous person who gives until she impoverishes herself and ends up begging on the street viciously puts the value of others’ well-being too high above her own. Likewise, a person caught in the Borg Effect takes Proper Interconnection to its vicious extreme, placing group identity above authentic recognition of self and exchanging reflective acceptance for uncritical tolerance and even complacency. Furthermore, a person caught in the Borg Effect will be unable to be compassionate toward herself and often will fail to be compassionate toward others, even when she believes she is doing otherwise. For example, if another group member is acting somewhat outside the group norm, the Borg-like person might perceive this as a form of suffering, the remedy of which could be to assist that person in conforming once again with the group. Such a misguided sense of active compassion leads such a person to project her own total identification with the group onto the nonconforming member. Whether or not the nonconforming member experiences her choices as a problem, it is inappropriate for someone else to impose their values on another, particularly when doing so is guised in terms of assuming responsibility to see to their well-being in the name of compassion. The Borg-like person in the group, due to her misplaced selfidentification, has confused fitting in with belonging. In doing so, it is quite likely that her attempts at empathizing or holding a compassionate space for the nonconformist will turn out to be manipulation geared toward the outcome of a return to conformity regardless of the other’s

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feelings or reasons for action. Trading authenticity for group belonging can and does break people down and destroy lives. If interconnection is lived to its ultimate extreme without any balance from other values, dispositions, beliefs, or life plans, it will eventually bring about disconnection. This is why, as is true of all virtues, balance and moderation, emotional stability and practical wisdom, are absolutely necessary for living a flourishing life. I now end the section with a final example of a person who exhibits the vices of imbalanced connection and disconnection simultaneously. My purpose in ending with such an example is to make clear that it is possible for a single person to exhibit more than one vice related to Proper Interconnection at one time. Imagine a person who is wealthy and exceedingly generous in his actions. This person is magnanimous, with the resources to endow large public goods such as theater and the arts. On the face of things, such a person seems to be highly well connected in the sense of being adequately networked with important people and institutions within the community. Furthermore, his actions hardly suggest complacency or apathy. However, the above description only completes half the picture. Although he is more than willing to interrelate with others through elaborate giving, this person experiences great shame at having to ever admit to needing help himself. Furthermore, this person prides himself on not asking for anything, believing that being above want makes a person more honorable and strong. Contrary to his beliefs, this person is failing to be virtuous in part because he lacks Proper Interconnection. My reasoning is two-fold. On the one hand, disconnection and disengagement occur as a result of not allowing yourself to be seen. Giving to others without allowing anyone to give to you is a failure to acknowledge your own vulnerability. This failure, in turn, creates unnecessary inequality in a relationship, compromising the ability for those in the relationship to connect. When a person refuses to be vulnerable with others at all, relationship is absent.

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Shame, self-deception and censorship of important facets of human expression such as participation in mutual relatedness ultimately cultivate vicious disconnection. In part, this is because such psychologically detrimental attitudes toward oneself, when unchecked, prevent a person from having a solid sense of self. This disconnection from self can lead to feeling superior toward or belittling others, which in turn affects many areas in life where a person is still engaged in some kind of connection. In the case of the current example, the person is both incredibly generous and yet has contempt for the people he provides for since they, presumably unlike himself, are obviously in need. Despite his service to others, his way of relating is destructive. First, he is deficient in self-acceptance as well as self-compassion. The persona of invincible superiority which he projects belies an unwillingness to accept his own humanity and this is further compounded by his inability to see the value in taking care of himself. A refusal to ask for help when needed can also be personally irresponsible. It is hard to see how a person who struggles with acceptance, compassion and responsibility for self could ever genuinely or appropriately respond to others with the emotional and cognitive intelligence that Proper Interconnection requires. The person in this example relates to vulnerability in the same way that a brash person relates to fear. Just as courage requires the cultivation of an appropriate relationship with fear, so too does Proper Interconnection require the cultivation of an appropriate relationship with human vulnerability. Neither virtue can exist where such a relationship is absent, denied, or minimized. Without compassion, acceptance and responsible accountability toward oneself, particularly in times of vulnerability, Proper Interconnection remains absent. We become strong and live authentically when we embrace, rather than reject, the vulnerability which is always with us and so integral to the human experience. Proper Interconnection is often and most noticeably

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exercised in our relations with others, but it does not originate in external relationships at the outset. Rather, the cultivation of Proper Interconnection always begins with growing into wise emotional balance with our own vulnerability: that threshold of belonging through which we step to relate to ourselves with authenticity and integrity. Proper Interconnection and the Cooperative Nature of Human Beings I have now given an account of the virtue of Proper Interconnection, what intellectual and emotional qualities are most salient in the disposition and what vices are associated with it. However, when putting forward a new virtue, it is crucial not only to articulate what the virtue consists in and what domain of human life it pertains to. It is also important to show that the virtue is rooted in human nature and is plausibly humanly achievable. It must not under- or overdescribe what we as human beings are capable of. It must be a trait psychologically attainable for us. This is Hursthouse’s (2007) second criterion of what makes for a virtue and I now turn to arguing that Proper Interconnection does in fact meet this criterion. In Love’s Labor, Kittay (1998) seeks, in part, to define dependency relations, especially dependency work, as an inherently social project. One of her central claims is that an ethical theory can only be adequate if it recognizes dependency as an unavoidable and central, perhaps we can say necessary, aspect of human life. Kittay writes, “Our dependency is not only an exceptional circumstance. To view it as such reflects an outlook that dismisses the importance of human interconnectedness, not only for purposes of survival but for the development of culture itself” (p. 29). Clearly philosophers such as Fine and Glendinning (2005), Kittay, Ruddick (2002) and others are conceiving of reliance on one another as characteristic of being human and not just as a contingent fact about some people with disabilities and their assistants, or parents and children.

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New advancements in evolutionary anthropology tend to agree. In their article “Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis,” Tomasello et al. (2012) hypothesize and argue for a theory of human evolution on which cooperation among persons is due to greater survival among those individuals who engage in mutual collaboration. Using data depicting differences in cooperation among humans versus other primate species, as well as research on human social organization, the authors plausibly demonstrate the likelihood that interdependence is in fact an integral part of our human nature. For example, they cite a study by Henrich at al. (2006) comparing cooperative behavior among chimpanzees versus human children. The study found that human beings frequently take the needs and interests of others into account in economic and other situations involving the sharing of resources, whereas chimpanzees do not. Even children as young as age two are more generous than are members of other primate species. Chimpanzees, for example, were not more likely to take food for themselves if it meant others could have some. Yet a study conducted by Brownell, Svetlova and Nichols (2009) shows that two-year-olds are more willing to take food for themselves if that also means others will be able to share it with them (Tomasello et al., 2012). Likewise, in Tomasello’s (2011) study, three-year-olds were found to share resources more fairly when the resources were obtained through collaboration with others, whereas such cooperative effort had no effect on chimpanzee behavior. These and many other findings cited in Tomasello et al.’s (2012) article point to the high probability that humans have evolved by selecting for cooperative group members and that this tendency toward collaboration is present even before human beings are old enough to adopt or learn social norms. Based on their data, the authors hypothesize that early on in the evolution of our species; individuals began foraging for food interdependently. Such collaboration was mutualistic,

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guarded against free riders and resulted not only in greater gains of resources but also in greater care for the well-being of others. As humans continued to evolve to form large-scale tribes, the groups found themselves in competition for resources (Tomasello et al., 2012). Mutualistic collaboration therefore became necessary, not just for individuals within the group, but also at the level of the group as a whole. Eventually this need for “group-mindedness” led to the establishment of culture, social norms and institutions (Tomasello et al., 2012). These norms and cultural conventions grew to distinguish individuals as members of these respective groups who identified themselves as a member and shared in forming and maintaining the group’s intentions and ways of life. The more interdependent individuals became, relying on one another in these foraging groups and selecting against those who violated this interdependence and were a threat to group collaboration, the more cooperative and altruistic our species became. Early examples include small hunter-gatherer groups for whom successful foraging of food required the cooperation of every group member. The understanding that each individual had that he or she was needed encouraged further cooperation and selected against free riders (Tomasello et al., 2012). These evolving ways of life built on cooperation led individuals to avoid uncooperative procreative partners. Cooperation and interdependence made the difference for our ancestors between perishing and survival. Interdependence therefore became necessary to human existence and is now firmly established as belonging to our human nature. To back up their Interdependence Hypothesis, Tomasello et al. (2012) also cite modern examples of such interdependence at work. For example, Gräfenhain, Behne, Carpenter and Tomasello (2009) demonstrate that children find collaboration intrinsically rewarding and extremely rarely do they free ride. Studies show that human adult individuals internalize social

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norms and often sanction themselves before it is necessary for others to punish them. Humans seem to naturally want to conform to social and cultural norms and we are very good at imitating each other—something great apes fail to do successfully. We have evolved feelings such as guilt to self-regulate our cooperative behavior by way of demonstrating to others that we will not make the mistake again and are still trustworthy collaborators (Tomasello et al., 2012). Such self-regulatory group-minded emotional responses evolved to maintain group rapport and solicit empathy from others after committing a transgression against social norms, so as to not put someone out of the running for cooperation. The punishment of shunning often could mean death, as the individual could not survive alone and we still act on this belief within our current societies today. Several other evolutionary anthropologists have commented on and extended Tomasello et al.’s (2012) Interdependence Hypothesis, adding further support to their overall argument. Hawkes (2012) cites a proposal put forward by Hrdy (2009), that, at some point in the evolution of our species, human mothers were able to bear a second child before the first could feed on her own. The environments created within which mothers had enough help from others that they could have children born so close together led to greater evolved prosocial behavior in infants. Hawkes notes that this proposal and the Interdependence Hypothesis both support the evidence, cited in Tomasello et al.’s article, which demonstrates that infants much too young to collaborate in foraging situations nevertheless exhibit distinctly human mutualistic and prosocial engagement in shared activity. Sterelny (2007), in agreement with Tomasello et al.’s (2012) general findings, further emphasizes the benefits that cooperation and mutualism have on collective teamwork and preparedness for uncertainty. As group-mindedness evolved, humans found it more effective to

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disperse into small teams to find food, rather than hunt as a single group, but this could only work well if the members of the smaller teams retained sufficient continued identification with the group as a whole (Tomasello et al., 2012). Division of labor and hedging against risk through collaboration, Hawkes (2012) argues, were as important in our evolution as interdependent beings as the other cooperative mechanisms central to Tomasello et al.’s conclusions. Philosophers and anthropologists are not the only ones recognizing our interdependence, either. There is an Interdependence Movement on the Internet, at www.i-movement.org. Its purpose is defined as follows: “The Interdependence Movement is a network of citizens without borders, who recognize the interdependent nature of our world and advocate for new forms of constructive civic interdependence to solve the multiple cross-border challenges … that confront us.” Clearly in many disciplines and walks of life, it is becoming increasingly common as well as necessary to acknowledge our interdependence in a wide variety of contexts. Such evidence suggests that we do in fact appropriately place value on and enjoy a sense of camaraderie when cooperating and experience anxiety during and prefer to avoid the instability of, separation and social exclusion. Many aspiring virtuous people eschew apathy in favor of empathy, voluntarily help others and care deeply for their children. Given the precedence for and our ability to reliably depend on and interact with each other excellently, Proper Interconnection is at once an ideal and an ideal that is achievable for human beings. Interdependence was not only once vital to the development of our species’ characteristic cognitive, communicative and social structures and processes, but continues to be vital for sustaining us currently and into the future. In light of the evidence, Proper Interconnection is a virtue very much grounded in our nature as human beings.

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148 Inculcating Proper Interconnection in Children

In this final section of the chapter, I argue that Proper Interconnection meets Hursthouse’s (2007) third criterion that a disposition must meet in order to qualify as a virtue. To restate the criterion: the character trait has a natural analogue when not fully developed (for instance, in children) which children can fully learn to acquire over time. My argument relies both on personal experience and general observation, as well as focuses around two recent anthropological studies regarding the teaching of sociocentric values and interdependence in two middle-class American preschools and one kindergarten. Though these findings do not constitute conclusive evidence in support of the claim that such values are wide-spread across cultures and economic standing, they do provide strong corroborating evidence that children do possess a natural analogue of Proper Interconnection which parents and teachers can help them develop into a robust virtue. First and foremost, the inculcation of virtue begins within the family. Very young children who grow up being well looked after and cared for, held and loved, develop a sense of security and safety around immediate family members, particularly parents. Through the very early experience of connection to her mother and father, even a toddler has a rudimentary understanding and emotional response to love and belonging on the one hand, isolation and neglect on the other. More than is the case in adulthood, in fact, children can be highly sensitive to being alone. The more that healthy connection is modeled for them, the more they come to reliably trust and feel secure in that connection. When such a secure child is old enough to reason, then, it will be easier for her to conceptualize the idea that we are not alone or ultimately separate and that her actions and feelings really do affect those around her, just as others’ actions and feelings affect her.

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As Proper Interconnection is a virtue of excellent interdependent living, it is important that children be socialized to encounter many kinds of people, as well as a variety of situations. Learning to interact well with those who are physically, culturally, economically, or otherwise different from you is essential to navigating an interconnected world with practical wisdom and emotional balance. Furthermore, young children are more likely to develop Proper Interconnection when they can grow up consistently visiting or surrounded by role models and family of every generation. As they get older, children will come to realize that they really are being raised by a village—that is, by parents, teachers, extended family, friends of the parents and neighbors. Experiences with peers greatly impact their development as well. Such a wide range of ages and types of people to interact with can help expose a child to a myriad of different situations and circumstances in which properly interconnecting with others through shared responsibility, compassion, acceptance and recognition is required. As children grow up, they can be encouraged more and more to ask questions about where things come from—the food at the cafeteria, the bus they’re riding, the water and in the tap––and start to understand the extent to which a vast number of people work together to create and distribute their everyday resources. Gradually, they will come to appreciate that we benefit each other and rely on one another for all the things we value having in our communities. Participating in 4H clubs, singing at nursing homes, volunteering in charity organizations, finding ways for them to share their voices and talents with the world and teaching them how and when to be there for their friends are all great opportunities in which children can learn and develop the virtue of Proper Interconnection. Giving children tasks within the community from an early age that directly benefit everyone, will start to give them real-world varied experiences in which Proper Interconnection is required, but where the particular actions needed to exercise

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the virtue will change with the circumstances. They will then begin to develop the practical wisdom of discerning what a properly interconnected person would do within a multiplicity of contexts. Besides the family and wider community, children do most of their intellectual and emotional learning at school. Recently, anthropologists have begun studying the prevalence of prosocial and interdependent behaviors and values in young children, particularly during the preschool and kindergarten years. I focus here on two articles, “Individuals in Relation to Others: Independence and Interdependence in a Kindergarten Classroom,” by Raeff (2006) and “The Myth of American Selfhood and Emotion: Raising a Sociocentric Child among MiddleClass Americans,” by Ahn (2010). Both Ahn and Raeff found that children in the respective kindergarten and preschool classrooms studied, learned and demonstrated interdependent and cooperative behavior and that instructors actively encouraged prosocial expression of feelings and the development of attitudes, values and actions that fostered empathy and belonging. Such qualities were emphasized as much as and sometimes over and above, other more individualistic ways of being and interacting. In the analysis that follows, I compare Ahn’s (2010) and Raeff’s (2006) findings along the following six dimensions: Recognition, active compassion, consideration for others, acceptance, shared responsibility/introduction to social functions and kinship/relatedness. The acquisition of a character disposition along some of these lines – compassion, acceptance, recognition and shared responsibility, just is the development of the virtue of Proper Interconnection outright. I include the other dimensions of character development such as learning about social roles, developing a sense of kin relatedness and consideration for others because these are

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important and immediate contexts in which children can frame and make sense of the sociocentric evaluative structure of cooperative effort and human interdependence more generally. A child cannot come to engage well in shared responsibility, for instance, without also valuing consideration for others. Likewise, a sense of camaraderie among children encourages them to be compassionate and accepting toward one another. With such a framework solidly established, older children and adults will find it easier to exercise Proper Interconnection in situations where others’ needs or feelings are being ignored and the environment is hostile rather than friendly (arguably situations in which a general absence of Proper Interconnection makes its exercise all the more necessary). Friendship and companionship and a strong sense of relatedness and belonging were evident as a central priority of both the kindergarten and the Orange Room preschool which Ahn (2010) and Raeff (2006) studied. The kindergarten teacher taught students a song on the very first day of the school year in which everyone (including the researcher and teacher herself) was named. The song continued by expressing how glad everyone was that each person was present. If a child was absent, the lyrics changed to reflect that everyone missed him or her (Raeff, 2006). Ahn notes that in the preschool she studied, the teacher did not speak of “the sky room” or “children,” but instead referred to the class as “Sky Room friends,” or just friends. To solidify this concept, the Sky Room teacher organized a friendship quilt activity. While each child designed his or her own quilt square, the squares were ultimately sewn with the others into a tapestry to hang on the wall. Ahn points out that the friendship quilt is a prime example and tangible symbol for interdependence. The quilt symbolized how children learned to conduct themselves within the context of the group as a whole, while having room within those constraints to be their unique authentic selves.

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While the three- and four-year-olds whom Ahn (2010) studied did not have the cognitive and emotional capacity required to recognize others for who they are and allow themselves to be seen, the age group which Raeff (2006) observed did seem to possess the prerequisites of recognition. For example, a boy in the class volunteered to write down the number of sunny days so far in kindergarten. After giving his answer, the teacher exclaimed, “Wow. Is he right? Let’s count them together” (Raeff, 2006, p. 538). Raeff interprets this interaction as an instance of recognition, noting that the teacher both praised the boy’s contribution thereby indicating the importance of acknowledging his effort, while also turning his individual answer into a reason for a group activity. The children learned not only that they could be recognized as individuals for their ideas, but also had an opportunity to engage with the one child’s idea as a group, which helped them practice recognizing one another while being recognized themselves. In fact, Raeff’s (2006) study showed that perspective taking and turn taking were commonly emphasized in the kindergarten. For example, when the teacher had to tell a child to be quiet, she would either ask the interrupting child how he would feel were he interrupted, or emphasize the need for turn taking and the importance of listening to what the other child had to say (Raeff, 2006). In the Sky Room, children acquired consideration for others by engaging in empathy training and community building activities (Ahn, 2010). For example, the Sky Room teacher led a special group time activity called Friendship in which and children thought of and shared nice things about their friends. Ahn also notes that the teacher often emphasized the importance and need to make the good of the group as a whole a priority over individual desires, particularly when those desires would conflict with group values (e.g. would not be empathic or considerate of others) (Ahn, 2010).

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Such emphasis on friendship, turn taking and consideration of others helps children develop active compassion. For example, at Raeff’s (2006) kindergarten, when a child struggled with a task, the teacher asked the class for someone to help him. Through role modeling, the teacher conveyed to the children that helping another student was kind and even expected. In the Sky Room, active compassion was taught through role modeling and experience in living through incidents such as the following (Ahn, 2010). A three-year-old refused to share his blocks with a four-year-old. The teacher encouraged each child in the conflict to imagine what the other might be feeling in order to find a resolution through perspective taking. Although friendship and relatedness were repeatedly reinforced in the Sky Room, the teacher did not appeal to this relatedness to help the boys learn to share but asked them to draw on their active compassion and develop empathy instead. In fact, the teacher made clear on several occasions that the fact that they are all friends does not ensure that the children will always be nice to each other (Ahn, 2010). Empathy also serves as a foundation for an understanding of the importance of social roles, as well as the inculcation of a sense of personal and shared responsibility. For example, every time a child hurt another child on accident while having fun, the Sky Room teacher made sure the child who caused the accident brought an ice pack to the one who was hurt, regardless of whether or not it was needed. The point of doing so was to enforce the notion of responsibility, by emphasizing the connection between cause and consequence. Children were also encouraged to use their words in order to learn how to manage conflict responsibly within the boundaries which social norms placed on the appropriate regulation and expression of their emotions (Ahn, 2010).

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In Raeff’s (2006) kindergarten classroom, children learned shared responsibility through successfully pursuing common goals, such as filling in the class calendar. In addition, the teacher devised two designated social functions: the meteorologist who checked the weather and the role of writing the number of days so far in kindergarten. Children were randomly chosen to fulfill these roles every day so that each position retained an element of shared equality. The child chosen was given the relevant social role and responsibility and while she carried out the task alone, she did so for or on behalf of the group. Such experience allowed children to begin to participate in and understand that actions designated for one individual can be integral to community life and start developing a sense that, when fulfilling a social role, one becomes personally accountable for the group as a whole in that particular capacity. Finally, children participated in activities meant to teach them and help them acquire acceptance. For example, some class decisions about which common goal to pursue in Raeff’s (2006) kindergarten classroom were determined by voting, which helped children accept participation in shared activities chosen by the majority. At the front of the Sky Room, the “Let’s Get Along,” poster depicted children of diverse backgrounds and encouraged students to “Use kind words, Be quick to forgive, Listen, Share, Encourage others, Take turns, Think before acting, Talk it over” (Ahn, 2010, p. 383). These were not just lofty ideals for children to aspire to but practiced within the classroom on a daily basis. The Sky Room teachers modeled these behaviors and provided experiential opportunities in which children could learn and develop these abilities and traits in themselves. The examples given in the studies discussed above illustrate how, through experience in living and role modeling from adults, even very young children can start to learn the right way,

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right time and right reasons for taking responsibility and depending upon others. The data demonstrates character development in action. Proper Interconnection is not only a disposition of character that humans can attain; it is a disposition of character we are already learning and developing in our children. Children can and do develop the character disposition of Proper Interconnection and do so by the same means as they would acquire any other virtue. Proper Interconnection therefore satisfies Hursthouse’s (2007) third condition which a trait or disposition must meet to qualify as a virtue.

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LIVING INTERCONNECTED LIVES: SELF-NARRATIVES, PRACTICES AND TRADITIONS In the previous chapter, I defined and described Proper Interconnection; a virtue that I argued arises within the domain of our natural human interdependence. I sought to show, both empirically and theoretically, how Proper Interconnection is grounded in our human nature, has cognitive and emotional components that are unique to it and can be inculcated in children. These are the necessary conditions for a trait to meet in order to qualify as a virtue. If a trait were to fail to meet any of these criteria, it would not count as a virtue at all. MacIntyre (2007) specifies three further sufficient conditions beyond those already expressed in Hursthouse’s (2007) article that must be met for a disposition to fully satisfy the definition of a virtue. In his book, After Virtue, MacIntyre (2007) argues that a trait meets the sufficient conditions on which to qualify as a virtue if: 1. The trait is a character disposition that allows a person who possesses and exercises it to achieve internal, rather than external goods of a practice. 2. The trait contributes to sustaining the overall narrative of a person’s life. 3. The trait can be shown to belong to, or fall within, an existing ethical tradition. In the three sections that follow, I explicate how Proper Interconnection meets all three of MacIntyre’s criteria. In service to the above end, this final chapter seeks to answer the following questions: are there ever clear instances of Proper Interconnection being exercised in ordinary day to day life?; are there practices, institutions and social traditions which clearly foster an environment

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conducive to the living of this virtue, or that embody the virtue themselves?; can Proper Interconnection exist in cultures that privilege, or highly value, an ethic of self-sufficiency and individualism, such as the United States?; and if so, how does this virtue contribute to or make possible the narrative unity that MacIntyre contends is so intricately bound up with whether or not we, and our organizations and social structures, flourish? By the end of the chapter, I hope to make clear that the virtue of Proper Interconnection is a robust and powerful disposition of character in both theory and practice. Many past and current social milieus already make the virtue central to their functioning, even though the virtue is not explicitly specified and is described in a myriad of ways depending on the context. If the examples I take from anthropology provide evidence for traditions and institutions that consistently practice the virtue of Proper Interconnection, such evidence is, admittedly, neither statistically sampled nor exhaustive. Yet even a very small sampling of data is sufficient to satisfy the present purposes as I here need only provide several examples of Proper Interconnection in action to adequately demonstrate that it meets MacIntyre’s (2007) philosophical criteria. Further theoretical and empirical work must, of course, be undertaken in order to establish any stronger claim about the role of Proper Interconnection in enriching and informing our lives and societies. Proper Interconnection within Practices MacIntyre (2007) defines a practice as “any coherent and complex form of socially cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to and partially definitive of, that form of activity (p. 232-233). Examples of practices include physics, harp playing, soccer and medicine. Practices have standards of excellence, which a person can

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only learn and fully benefit from if she is willing to adopt the values, rules and norms which justify and legitimize such standards as her own values and norms (MacIntyre, 2007). Internal goods are those, the acquisition of which, benefit everyone in the community engaged in the practice. They are acquired by competition through merit, on which the aspiration to achieve excellence within the practice is equally available to all (MacIntyre, 2007). The good perceived upon the achievement of such excellence can be accessed by anyone. They include goods such as the pleasure of being an excellent soccer player, the awe of the natural world described by one’s equations, the satisfaction of doing one’s best by one’s patients, greater strength of character and endurance, knowledge and awareness of self and others and the satisfaction of fulfilling one’s goals. In contrast, external goods are achieved by competition through scarcity, such that if someone has more of such goods, others will have fewer. They include goods such as money, prestige, promotion, physical resources and honors. External goods are only contingently attained within practices, whereas internal goods are intrinsic to practices. As a result, pursuing the particular aims of a practice according to its principles, standards and values only guarantees the achievement of internal goods. Proper Interconnection can be found at the center of many practices as defined by MacIntyre (2007). In this section I briefly discuss two examples of such practices: parenting and dependency work. I then turn to an in-depth explication of a third, particularly illustrative example of a practice: that of hospitality. As part of the discussion of this practice, I distinguish hospitality from charity and demonstrate how the former, much more often than the latter, fosters a space within which the mutual willingness to be vulnerable is possible and Proper Interconnection can occur.

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Parenting is an example of a practice in which Proper Interconnection is crucial. Parents assume the social role of child-raiser and protector, which carries with it culturally and often and ethically, sanctioned rules and responsibilities. Parenting can therefore be done well or badly in ways that can be objectively recognized and agreed upon. The practice is less rigorously defined than, say, the highly regulated sport of football. What constitutes a penalty in football is specifically defined, whereas, unless a parent is abusing or neglecting a child, the practice of parenthood lends itself to a much more varied interpretation. However, just as in the case in football, where the players are rewarded when they achieve a goal, there are many internal goods to be had for those who wish to be parents. Raising children can be intrinsically rewarding. For example, a parent can learn much about himself and improve many different kinds of relationships by facing the challenge of raising a child well. In exercising good parenting he will become more willing to engage in selfassessment, growth and change. Furthermore, the joy and love parents have for their children cannot be found elsewhere. In order to acquire these internal goods, parents need the virtues. In particular, they need the virtue of Proper Interconnection. Raising children well in a fulfilling and loving way requires compassion and acceptance toward yourself and your child, social awareness and the ability to recognize and appreciate your child for who she is. Yet another and related instance in which Proper Interconnection is central to a practice is “dependency work.” For “dependency workers” to flourish, they need to rely on others for support while they care for their charges. Often, people who care for elderly parents or people with disabilities struggle to find the resources, funding and respect needed to adequately provide for others in healthy and mutually rewarding ways. When dependency workers are supported and valued within society, given the resources needed to adequately care for their charges and

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not marginalized by a culture which deems such work to be nonproductive or expendable, they are far more able to acquire and exercise Proper Interconnection within their relationships with their charges and others. Ideally, dependency work allows for a mutual willingness to be vulnerable, as well as for the cultivation of active compassion, acceptance of both boundaries and assistance and a strong sense of shared responsibility. Depending on the impairments or age of the charge, the dependent person may only be able to contribute a willingness to be vulnerable and remain responsive to the relationship with the person caring for her. In that case, responsibility is still shared among the dependency worker and the others around her, who mutually support one another in making the care of the dependent charge possible. Obviously, if the charge can act and think for herself in one or many areas, she’ll be able also to acquire Proper Interconnection as well as the other virtues and be directly involved in her care and the living of her life. . When Proper Interconnection is practiced collectively within a system of nested dependencies characterized by dependency work, everyone flourishes in a way they could not do otherwise. I now turn to a more detailed account of a practice in MacIntyre’s (2007) sense, which takes the exercise of Proper Interconnection to be central to it—as opposed to simply important. This is the practice of hospitality. In giving in hospitality, an individual or community engages in a shared cooperative human activity with goods that are attainable only within the practice itself, such as the joy of seeing others well through your actions and the satisfaction of doing what is needed. In “The Acquisition of Virtue,” James (1986) describes hospitality as active, social compassion. It is based on, but exceeds, the activity of friendship. A person exercising Proper Interconnection will provide hospitality to others to the extent that her resources allow, even if those resources are few. Importantly, she will provide for others in this way without

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resentment or a sense of burden, as easily as she finds it to eat or breathe. It would be so a part of her way of life that she would not consciously engage in it in order to do the right thing, but like an honest person who does not deceive, it would simply be part of who she is. Assisting the poor, helping an elderly woman cross the street, bringing food to a depressed friend, contributing toward making your community accessible to people of all abilities, offering time and energy toward ensuring children in your community can have an adequate education and hosting your family’s New Year’s party at your home are all instances of hospitality. But, to better understand how hospitality is more than just an act of kindness or generosity, I turn to James’ (1986) paragon example of hospitality in the people of the French Protestant village of Le Chambon. The villagers of Le Chambon saved 6,000 people, mostly Jewish children, between 1940 and 1945 under a regime that was intent on cooperating with the Nazis. They sheltered the children in their own homes or in houses they built for them. When a new refugee arrived, a wreath with the French word for “welcome” was anonymously placed on the doorstep by the townspeople. When asked, the villagers insisted that they were not somehow exceptionally good people. They could not turn the children and families away. Sheltering them was necessary. They had done what was needed. James (1986) also notes that the villagers, though a tight-knit community, did not fall prey to clannishness or treat strangers as if they were inferior. When later asked about their experiences in the village, several refugees made a point to comment on how readily the villagers shared what they could even if it was not much and welcomed them openly. In contrast, the refugees found that once they arrived in Switzerland, though they had their freedom, they were met with resentment (James, 1986). Clearly, hospitality is more than the act of sheltering others out of harm’s way. Sheltering someone from harm can mean keeping

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one from brutal SS and French police forces, bitter cold, or hunger, but hospitality is more than that. If the right sorts of feelings are not present, then hospitality doesn’t occur. The villagers of Le Chambon met their guests with social compassion, acceptance and welcoming joy. They were no strangers to the full possession of Proper Interconnection. Within a community in which many people exercised Proper Interconnection, hospitality, rather than charity, would be the norm. For within our communities, made up of people in nested relationships with varying degrees of dependency, it is essential to respond to the need to share with others at the right time, for the right reason and in the right way. Though there are examples of charitable organizations that operate on the principles found in hospitality-- active social compassion and a commitment to shared responsibility-- the act of giving in charity itself need not be done with any sense of reciprocity about it. Most of us allot various sums of money to give the poor every year, or tally off hours in the soup kitchen. We take time out of our lives to give to people in need. Charity, like work life, family life, self-development and so on has become, in many ways, just another compartmentalization of our lives. As I will elaborate on in the next section, such compartmentalization thwarts our ever having a sense of the unity of our lives as a whole. Consequently, we usually do not approach giving in charity in a holistic way. Instead, we the fortunate ones give to them, the unfortunate ones without realizing that we and they, are equally vulnerable to the same hardships. In order to acknowledge and proceed in light of our equal humanity, it is essential that we be willing to be vulnerable, as well as see those we are giving to as a second self. On the other hand, the practice of hospitality is wholly integrated into a person’s day-today life. Furthermore, people engaged in the practice of hospitality take turns providing for each other. As MacIntyre (2007) writes, there are no private goods. Instead, my good is insuring the

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good of my community and your good is also ensuring the good of the community. We are both reliable and dependent and as such, we fulfill equally the roles of the provider of hospitality and the recipient of care, concern, assistance, or just good old-fashioned celebration. Charity implies a kind of giving that need not be done with, or out of, a deep sense of our belonging. When giving in hospitality, there are no outsiders—even people who are strangers to you are well met in hospitality. To put it somewhat simply, in the practice of hospitality, only one category of people is recognized—us—and we are equal, even if I am giving to you and you are receiving from me. In the practice of giving in charity, in contrast, there is an “us” and a “them.” and Charity is a reaction to competition through scarcity and the need to redistribute external goods. Hospitality is a reflection of the excellence we strive for in ourselves to realize internal goods, when we find that such goods cannot be had until and unless we give others all we can out of a sense of shared humanity. Finally, hospitality, unlike charity, has no room in it for pity and everyone within a community is understood to possess some means of providing hospitality to others regardless of ability or economic standing. In those ancient societies where hospitality was held in high esteem to be a cornerstone of community life, every member of society could and needed to find something to contribute. It was said for instance that the only person who should be considered unproductive is a dead one (Myers, 2008). It was more often assumed that a person could make herself useful with whatever abilities she possessed. People of all abilities would be expected to provide hospitality in turn to others in the way they were able. With fewer resources than we have now, people who were poor or who had a disability had a place within the community to provide something significant to its survival, whether large or small.

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Among charities for people with disabilities today, the presumed inequality is great. As Wendell (1989) observes in her article “Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability,” providing charity to people with disabilities is often perceived as supererogatory because people with disabilities are understood to be inferior and unable to contribute equally to society. She points out that in our society, people with disabilities lack resources and are often unemployed or underemployed and the two problems are mutually reinforcing. Furthermore, many of the resources they do receive merely serve as bandages on a social system that devalues and does not take seriously facts of our human condition such as vulnerability, chance, life cycles and aging. Charities that do exist also tend to throw money at institutions for the disabled rather than finance ways for such people to live independent lives. She writes: If the able-bodied saw the disabled as potentially themselves or as their future selves, they would be more inclined to feel that society should be organized to provide the resources that would make disabled people fully integrated and contributing members. They would feel that "charity" is as inappropriate a way of thinking about resources for disabled people as it is about emergency medical care or education. (p. 109) and On her view, then, charity, particularly as it is practiced toward people with disabilities, rests on vices such as unwarranted superiority, social dominance and control, paternalism and stereotyping. Arguably this kind of charity gravely misses its mark with respect to the need to prevent or at least minimize the effects of cruelty. Instead, it promotes the false belief that people with disabilities (and we can add the poor and aging to this list as well) are helpless and cannot live with honor and regard.

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I’ve been using examples of issues with disability to demonstrate how charity perpetuates exclusionary norms and uncharitable conceptions of human beings, while arguing that hospitality does not. But I am not suggesting that hospitality is the answer to all, or even many of the issues facing people with disabilities, only that it is one of the key practices within which Proper Interconnection occurs with important practical implications for people with disabilities, among many others. For in the exercise of Proper Interconnection, we would come to recognize that all people, including those of every minority, are part of our family and that projects that help promote their good also help promote our own. It would therefore be the responsibility of the entire community, not individuals or immediate families alone, to work together to enable everyone to participate in bringing about the flourishing of all. This is what shared responsibility is all about and a person with Proper Interconnection would appropriately feel joy and camaraderie at this and anger toward those who are obviously not cooperating. Such a person would accept and act upon the understanding that there is no them, there is only us. Proper Interconnection and the Narrative Structure of Life In Chapter 16 of After Virtue, MacIntyre (2007) argues that the lives of human beings form and are informed by narrative. Our lives have a beginning in infancy and move in a trajectory toward old age and death, the ultimate ending. Not only this, but our very actions, conversations, relationships, projects, community practices, and institutions also take on narrative form. He contends that, without such a narrative form, our lives would be unintelligible. In Subsection I, I put forward MacIntyre’s argument from this narrative structure of human life to his claim that a flourishing life is one in which the virtues sustain a cohesion or unity of that narrative. In Subsection II, I argue that the virtue of Proper Interconnection does in fact help sustain the narrative unity of a person’s life. Recognition, shared responsibility,

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compassion and acceptance help to both directly sustain the narrative of each of our individual lives and are necessary for coherently embedding and intertwining our narratives with those interrelated with us. The Authors of Our Lives MacIntyre (2007) begins his argument at the level of action. He contends that it is not action in and of itself, but intelligible action that serves as the fundamental building block of conversation and human interaction generally. Intelligible human actions rely on a narrative history of past actions and intentions. For example, whether you describe your current action to me as getting into the car, preventing another family member from driving, or trying to get away, depends on which narrative of intention is actually true of you. These intelligible actions occur in settings with their own history and such a history is itself a wider narrative within which events play out. We discuss history in terms of plots and subplots, the rising and falling of nations, the nested and intersecting nature of human lives and the accounts and consequences of certain people at certain events at particular times which change the course of the future in large and small ways. Just as we can give an account or story of the history of the United States or of philosophy or baseball, we can give an account of the history of our family and friends and of our lives. The place and circumstances into which we are born, the roles in which we find ourselves and the stories of the traditions and human endeavors that have shaped the world we come into upon our birth are what they are because of the actions, organizations, traditions and individuals preceding them.

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Take marriage as an example. A marriage is a setting for human interaction that can be characterized by the narrative history of the institution of marriage, the histories of the two families from which each member of a couple come from, the trajectory of the lives of the couple and the story of how they met. Their act of marriage makes sense within the wider context of their intentions, goals, projects and values and further within the context of the history and evolving practice of marriage itself. When we come into the world, we arrive in a particular time and place not of our choosing. We find ourselves with parents, with or without siblings, living in a particular town and nation, having a particular name and gender and number of senses and being handed a set of norms, responsibilities, expectations and family history. Our first encounter with the narrative of our lives, then, is to realize we are shaped by many stories that existed before we ever did. Whether we accept or reject any of the content of this narrative––whether, for example, we rebel against or embrace the norms of our culture or accept or walk away from our family––our actions are intelligible due to the central importance of culture or family as part of the story of who we are. There are, therefore, chosen and unchosen aspects of our life narrative. Yet at some point, we recognize that we can actively decide how to respond to what happens to us, even to the circumstances into which we were born. Within the complexity of contexts in which we live out our lives, we learn to own our stories. We are, then, the authors of our lives. Authorship implies accountability and in fact people can and do account for, tell the story of, their lives, as well as expect others to account for their stories (actions, intentions, conversations, projects) as well.

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Accounts are stories and the more a person can provide a unified account of her life, the clearer it will be to her and to others and the more cohesive it will become in general. Selfnarrative provides meaning to life, as I, being a single subject of an ongoing history, live a unique and self-authored story that is all my own. For MacIntyre (2007), it is possible to determine how unified a person’s character is by evaluating how well she can give an intelligible account – that is, coherent narrative – of her life. A person of sound character, then, not only is the author of her life but has also achieved excellent unity among her lived experiences. A good, unified life story indicates that the author is practically wise. However, sound character is not the only factor informing a narrative conception of self. Our functional roles are also essential to the definition of who we are. What we do, think, feel and believe serves as the context in which we are made intelligible to ourselves. These are the roles we either are born into—such as sibling, first-born child, citizen of such and such a nation, inheritor of a farm—and those we choose for ourselves—father, philosopher, teacher, member of this club/group. These functional roles provide the context in which we conceive of the good, order our priorities and learn to relate to one another. Living as a daughter, a sister and a philosopher gives me a perspective on the world that differs substantially from someone who is a son, a brother and a farmer. Some of these functional roles are relational, while others are professional, but all are defined and understood within a variety of social structures and with respect to many different practices which themselves have their own narrative history. Although a person is not exclusively defined by her functional roles, MacIntyre (2007) contends that she will not be able to form a conception of self that abstracts away from those roles even if she actively rejects them or rebels against them. Her acts of walking away from

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certain functional roles are only intelligible when we account for her intentions through the narrative history of her life, alongside the history of the roles themselves. These functional roles can help a person orient herself in the time and place where she was born or lives now and provide a relatively stable and normative structure to how she participates in projects, relationships and social life. In modern times, we have rejected, rightly, many restricting social functions, or else have redefined them. For example, American culture no longer supports arranged marriage as a legitimate way of taking on the functional role of husband or wife. We have also condemned, if not eradicated, the social role of the slave. At the same time, our society has collectively created insidious social roles such as member of a minority race or ethnicity, gendered roles for women that are derogatory or sexist and the role of having a disability. Though we might not want to admit it, many exclusionary norms and the kind of discrimination and segregation they promote are reflective of entrenched social practices and devaluing roles we give to anyone with the status––for example, “disabled.” and So if we as modern people are phobic of social functions creeping into our sense of identity, let alone our theories of ethics, it is not without good reason. However, MacIntyre (2007) argues and I agree, that we should not throw the functional role baby out with the terrible discriminatory bathwater. This is because alienation and disconnection occur whenever people conceive of themselves as having an identity apart from social roles, chosen or otherwise. Such feelings and perceptions of displacement and being from an address from nowhere also increase when people believe they are separate from their feelings and actions (for instance, I did x but doing x is irrelevant to who I am as a person.) and In fact, MacIntyre concludes that to conceive of yourself in this way—as a being whose identity consists in something beyond or other than your roles, actions, feelings, beliefs, motivations, or

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intentions-- is to will yourself to disappear. What is there apart from a person’s roles, words, emotions, thoughts and deeds to make her who she is and intelligible to herself, let alone others? MacIntyre’s answer is – there is nothing else. People cannot abstract away what they do, how they behave, how they feel and think and what they believe from their conception of self. Rather, a person’s identity is understood in terms of her social functions, character, values, emotions, thoughts and actions. She is judged likewise on the truth or falsity of her words and how often others can rely on her words and actions to coincide. The concept of a human being is a functional concept—a concept that cannot be divorced from the roles that a person has in life. These are rarely roles in which we passively participate, but rather roles that we aspire to fulfill with excellence. We author the story of our lives, even in settings or circumstances created by others. In fact, we never develop an identity that has not, in part, been informed or shaped by others’ life narratives (MacIntyre, 2007). For my life story would make no sense at all without reference to other people, their roles within the narrative of my life and the role I play in their lives. Other people can hold me accountable for events and actions within my narrative of which I am the author. But likewise, I can do the same with them. Such mutual giving of accountability grounds a sense of shared responsibility. The narrative structure of history and action is such that our identity as persons is shaped by our imbedded narratives and the way we account for what we and others do. For MacIntyre (2007), then, the integrated coherence of a human life consists in the unity of the narrative that each human being lives and embodies, with the awareness of the vast network of narrative into which that cohesive life is inexorably woven. The best good for me,

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then, is that which allows me to have the greatest likelihood of living a life with a unified narrative, from start to finish. The answer to the question what is good for us all is: whatever the answers to our individual questions about our personal good possess in common. Our good as a species, then, is to pursue the good for our species, as this is really the only thing all our individual goods have in common. To live a life that answers to the measure of both these questions in word and deed is to live a unified life, one whose narrative provides you with meaning, whose actions and structure you can give an account of and account for, which places you as the subject and author of your own experiences and holds your life together with integrity. MacIntyre (2007) concludes from his account of history and narrative identity that a unified life is also one that, like most stories, fits a particular genre. This genre, he contends, is that of the quest. A quest is a journey with a said purpose or end (telos), which is usually gained for the betterment of the person or persons who undergo the journey. It begins within the context of a conception of the good, a conception that might be challenged or changed, confirmed or countered, as time goes on. Such a conception of the good helps the quester organize priorities, balance life goals and needs along the way and make wise choices concerning the next steps toward their ultimate aim. Importantly, our lives, as with quests, are not definitive. We no more begin a quest with a definite clear understanding of the end of the journey, exactly what we will find and where we will find it, than we begin our lives with a definite conception of our goals and projects and plans for our flourishing. Developing the virtues helps us to flourish, but it is only in the living of our lives, learning from mistakes, meeting and overcoming challenges and celebrating our successes, that we create a flourishing life. The quest for the good unfolds with a beginning, middle and end, but always at the center is uncertainty, the possibility for great change and a great

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indeterminacy surrounding the attainment of the end goal. The virtues, then, not only sustain practices within which we might attain internal goods, but also sustain and assist in unifying our lives around our central life quest or journey. This unity, in turn, allows us to live well as individuals and as a species. Narrative Unity and Proper Interconnection I wish to argue that Proper Interconnection contributes as much as other virtues to sustaining the narrative unity of a life. To do so, I show that narrative unity relies on the emotional and intellectual components of the virtue. I show that narrative unity is possible because shared responsibility, accountability in social functions, acceptance and recognition centrally contribute to that possibility. It is through encountering and participating in the stories of others’ lives, whether past or present, that helps us recognize others as second selves and appreciate just how interconnected we are. Mutual accountability, in which we each take the other to be answerable to what we do and why, is in part possible due to the narrative structure of our lives. This mutual accountability begins with engaging in intelligible action. When making our actions intelligible to each other, we already begin the necessary steps toward building a foundation for mutual accountability. From the point of view of the individual, my actions need to first and foremost be intelligible to me. If they are not, I fail to be able to unify my life narrative. If this unintelligibility is widespread throughout all areas of my life—say I have a mental illness such as schizophrenia— then I will struggle to sustain the practical wisdom needed to both exercise the virtues and coherently integrate episodes of mental illness with times in my life when I possess the

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autonomy needed for self-authorship.16 But systematic failure to take responsibility for yourself can also produce actions that can seem unintelligible to you as well as to others in more lucid moments, as when you wonder why you have, for instance, done things that sabotage your own projects or hurt your relationships. A sense of shared responsibility necessary for Proper Interconnection, therefore, begins with a firm sense of responsibility for self. MacIntyre’s (2007) argument from the narrative unity of my own life to the pursuit of the good as a collectivity can be used to argue from personal responsibility to shared responsibility. The stories of our lives are imbedded within others’ stories and are intertwined in the stories of our practices, families, nations and history. My conception of myself as living a life defined by a narrative, which achieves its unity through, in part, the exercise of the virtues, is an intelligible life only when conceived of in a wider human context. Within this wider context, the living of such a cohesive life contains within it a pursuit of my own good, which I as a virtuous person would take responsibility for. Since I understand that I will achieve my own good in part through participating in a quest for the good for human beings generally, I will likewise understand the responsibility I feel toward ensuring my own good to include, in part, a sense of shared responsibility for the good of the whole. This responsibility is part of what it is to live with integrity and one way to understand integrity is through the context of wholeness, of one unified life. It is important to point out that, having such a sense of shared responsibility doesn’t imply or entail that you have to solve huge problems such as global warming on your own: human interdependence is even more important in the resolution of such global crises. Sharing

16

See Mackenzie (2010), “Narrative Integration, Fragmented Selves.”

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responsibility could mean caring for an elderly parent, feeding an infant, comforting a friend, recycling, or saying hello to a homeless person in order to acknowledge their presence. What matters for connecting properly with others is not the size of responsibility, but the inculcation of it in the first place. Here, then, is one way that the virtue of Proper Interconnection sustains the narrative unity of a life. The narrative self also implicitly speaks to our interdependence, insofar as it fosters cooperation, empathy and belonging. It is our sense of belonging, coupled with living as the authors of our lives, which guards against our ever experiencing the type of severe disconnection and alienation that MacIntyre (2007) describes as disappearance. This does not mean that a person must necessarily physically live in a community rather than choose to live alone, become a hermit, or cherish and seek solitude. A hermit, while physically living apart from human beings, is still fulfilling a definable social role which is recognized in the society she has left, and thus her isolation is only intelligible with reference to its embeddedness in a wider narrative of community. Whether we live apart or together, in solitude or with others, we are participating in various ways in interdependent relationships. The virtue of Proper Interconnection enables its possessor to be aware of and responsive to the impact she has on many stories, those of others and her own. It enables us to make that impact meaningful, authentic and constructive. Fragile embodiment impacts those with a narrative conception of self, so does aging, uncertainty and bad luck. Acceptance, rather than mere tolerance of what is, as well as active compassion toward others and oneself opens the way for us to interact with and listen to one another as we pursue our quest for the good, even when our ideas, physical abilities, world views, languages, or upbringings differ.

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If identity is formed through the narrative structure of life and made intelligible with reference to the interconnections among stories and our functional roles, then interdependence will be necessarily a crucial part of that identity. You will know me and I will be intelligible to myself, by my actions and by my relationships. I am known by my place in the cycle of life and by how well I contribute to sustaining the community in which you also live. Adopting a narrative conception of self necessitates that I see my good as coming about, in part, only if others realize their good. My good, therefore, becomes inextricably linked to the flourishing of others. Through this awareness, acceptance and empathy, we learn that everyone has a story, (even those with profound dependencies) and ignoring our impact on such people’s lives diminishes us. Through cooperation and empathy, we discover the good and live it together, not separately. Finally, the virtue of Proper Interconnection helps people navigate relationships well, within the functional roles they occupy. A person who possesses Proper Interconnection has the wisdom needed to discern when to heed or leave any particular role and determine whether a functional role is, or is becoming, destructive. The existence of functional roles is, in fact, part of a reasonable response to the need for a cohesive life narrative. Society is full of these roles, but too often the connection is not made between our participation in these roles and the very expression of who we are. Lack of conscious awareness of what roles exist and why and how we participate in them every day leads to the perpetuation of unhealthy membership categories such as “the disabled” or “the lower class.” and Functional roles are integral to life, but it is essential to choose what roles we adopt wisely. Such roles should not serve to further divide individuals and create separation by legitimizing social spaces in which to perpetuate stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and fear. Since functional roles will not and should not go away anytime soon, it

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would behoove us to create and participate in them consciously through the exercise of the virtue of Proper Interconnection. MacIntyre (2007) argues for yet another reason not to see ourselves as disconnected from each other. One of the consequences of a society or community, whose members do not possess a narrative conception of self, is that it fosters a culture of strangers within which people feel isolated and alienated from one another. People in such a society live more and more separately together (e.g., in large apartment complexes where people never meet their neighbors, or in cities, in which violent crimes are witnessed but the witnesses merely look on at what happens). Such a culture of separation encourages, or at least does nothing to counter, the vices of disconnection and destructive connection that I discussed in the previous chapter, such as apathy, complacency, or narcissism. A culture of separation also contributes to the compartmentalization of our lives, presenting countless challenges to anyone seeking to live with integrity and authenticity. We tend to separate out childhood and old age from adulthood such that, to many, the idea of life cycles within a single life narrative can feel foreign (MacIntyre, 2007). Work life is separate from private life; family life is separated from social life with friends. We play when we are not working and rest when we are not doing either. But there is no reason why work cannot contain elements of play, or why childhood cannot be simply one stage in the development of a single life. I wish to suggest that, in order to truly live a life so as to bring about its narrative unity, a person needs to consciously live in interconnection with others, rather than make the mistake of living a disconnected life. When a person acquires and exercises Proper Interconnection, she

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makes the shift in self-conception from the view of herself as isolable and disconnected, to the view of herself as the author of a life that is at once inextricably bound up with the stories of others around her and yet wholly her own. Unifying your life requires, at least in part, recognizing that compartmentalizing various aspects of life directly contributes to the disunity of a life narrative. It involves beginning to notice, feel and understand that life is one lived journey within which relationships, projects, activities and developmental stages overlap and inform one another and cannot be easily segregated without forfeiting much of their value. Proper Interconnection, then, contributes uniquely to the kind of character needed if anyone is to live a unified cohesive life with personal integrity. It is grounded in our need as narrative selves to give mutual accounts of and for each other and it helps orient us rightly to a productive and cooperative, as well as empathic and compassionate, quest for the good which is, in the end, a significant source of our life’s flourishing. It therefore meets MacIntyre’s (2007) second criterion for a disposition to be considered a virtue. Finding Proper Interconnection Within Social Tradition As I have mentioned previously, both human lives and practices have narrative histories. These practices, such as physics, farming, philosophy and the like, span many generations. How we conceive of them evolves over time. We pass down to philosophy students, for instance, the history of our discipline, the methods by which we pursue knowledge, what constitutes a good versus bad argument and so on. Now, the virtues are required to sustain relationships among people within practices as well as sustain the practice itself. Such practices not only come down to us from the past, but also persist into the future. We then find ourselves surrounded by and involved in a myriad of practices that have historical origins and which, usually, we wish to continue. We also find that the virtues are necessary for this.

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Furthermore, our practices are embedded in larger social contexts. Quite often, these social contexts are ongoing and dynamic traditions with a definable narrative history of their own and which often, but not always, find their embodiment in institutions and ordered systems. In situations where institutions arise around a tradition, MacIntyre (2007) argues for a clear distinction between the two. In MacIntyre’s view, traditions are long standing evolutions of thought which span generations and can grow and survive through new invention, disagreement, reasoned criticism and change. To that end, traditions encourage ongoing arguments concerning which internal goods are intrinsic to, necessary for and characteristic of such traditions and why this is so. Traditions also continually seek to define and redefine themselves, as well as foster ongoing debate over how their particular internal and external goods are acquired, according to the principles and values of that tradition. For this reason, traditions can persist even while the institutions surrounding them come and go and their practices continue to change and evolve. Most human beings seek their good and engage in meaningful practices within one or more social, ethical, or philosophical tradition. As an example, take MacIntyre’s (2007) account of the ongoing tradition of virtue ethics. MacIntyre characterizes this tradition as being greater than strict Aristotelian Ethics and smaller than the whole of virtue ethics past and present. It has a complex history that includes both the history of the evolution of philosophical thought in question, and the history of the people and countries for whom such thought systems are meaningful. Clearly, what constituted a virtue and why, as well as how virtue ethics should be taught and how it was generally perceived, has varied tremendously from the sixth century BCE through the twelfth century CE of the high middle ages and beyond and the institutions supporting this tradition have also been numerous and varied. However, the tradition itself has

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remained despite such wide-impact change and is wholly recognizable even in the twenty-first century. As a virtue ethicist, my quest for the good takes the shape of how I answer questions such as “how ought I to live?” and “What does it mean to live well?” and I strive to acquire the virtues for such a life, first consciously and then less so. A Kantian, on the other hand, might organize her life choices around whether they would meet the requirements of the Categorical Imperative, in its many manifestations. She and I might both be seeking our different conceptions of the good within different but equally robust traditions of ethical theory, while both belonging to the same tradition of analytic philosophy embodied in an institution of higher learning. Traditions that can sustain themselves over centuries and generations do so, as demonstrated in the example above, by continuing to develop, evolve, raise constructive critical questions regarding their internal structure, resolve concerns and adapt to ever changing times and places. MacIntyre (2007) argues that for a tradition to sustain itself in such a healthy manner as this, it must welcome, rather than reject internal conflict and encourage social and philosophical debate and critical thought (MacIntyre, 2007). Invention and argument, as well as serious disagreement, move traditions along, enforcing a much-needed check on institutional corruption and malpractice. Conflict also keeps such traditions vibrant and dynamic, reinterpreting and repositioning themselves with respect to the past, while providing opportunities for a new and exciting future. Healthy traditions, therefore, embrace meeting constructive challenges in order to ensure their continued existence, and of course, the virtues are those dispositions and qualities, the exercise of which allow traditions and the people within them to flourish. Generally speaking, then, human beings seek their good, both the internal goods of practices and the good of living a unified narrative in life, within the tradition(s) of which they

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are a part. There is therefore a nested way in which the virtues contribute to human flourishing: by sustaining practices, narrative unity of the self and the traditions surrounding these. I now turn to the question of whether Proper Interconnection belongs to the tradition of virtue ethics that MacIntyre (2007) describes. I answer this question by looking at social traditions and systems and asking a second and related question: Are there practices and institutions within which Proper Interconnection already plays a crucial role and does the exercise of Proper Interconnection contribute to the flourishing of those people engaged in these institutions and practices? To answer this question, I turn to an anthropological study of an evolving tradition of Japanese-American kinship relations. My aim in including this data is to empirically establish, to the extent that ethnography makes this possible, the claim that Proper Interconnection already contributes to sustaining at least one and tradition’s institutions and practices. Being able to point out instances within a documented tradition of the cultivation and exercise of Proper Interconnection will make it easier to demonstrate how it directly contributes to the flourishing of that tradition. In her article “Interdependence, Reciprocity and Indebtedness: An Analysis of Japanese American Kinship Relations,” Johnson (1977) compares 61 second-generation (Nisei) and 43 third-generation (sansei) Japanese Americans living in Honolulu. The paper, reporting on a study done in the 1960s, follows 104 families who met the following three conditions: parents were Japanese, some children lived at home and there were no documented psychological illnesses. Johnson’s field research, which included extensive questionnaires and interviews with family members individually and collectively, identifies four resulting values most relevant to the character and behavior of both second and third generation groups. These include:

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obligations to parents and socially superior kin, social embeddedness within the family, reciprocity and dependence. Interdependence is highly noticeable within the Japanese-American kinship relationships between parents and children. Second generation children were expected to both emotionally and financially support their parents into old age. This usually meant that the eldest son, who inherited the parents’ property, would also take in his aging parents to continue to live with him. At the same time, parents often provided for the education of the youngest siblings, expecting the eldest to work in order to contribute income to the younger sibling’s cause with the expectation that this sibling would support him in the future. While parents and siblings are clearly dependent on one another, the Japanese-American kinship system recognized and fostered interdependence. In third-generation households, where parents received social security and all siblings, rather than just the eldest son, assumed care of the aging parents, social and emotional support replaced monetary support. Third generation households also no longer favored younger siblings’ over older siblings’ education. As the families were integrated into America’s economic system, kinship solidarity actually increased, instead of remaining obligatory or becoming diffuse with optional participation (Johnson, 1977). Though both second and third generation families exhibited interdependence, it is arguably the third generation that began exercising Proper Interconnection. Here, the tradition of Japanese kinship relations, in adapting to norms outside their original culture, let go of the arbitrary emphasis on birth inheritance which allowed the individuals in the family a greater sense of equality and willingness to engage in shared responsibility compassionately and without resentment. Such adaptations to their new environment allowed families both greater economic freedom and greater opportunities for cooperation and mutual assistance. Often this pattern of

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mutual assistance, though obligatory within the tradition, stemmed from a genuine desire to reciprocate, as opposed to a sense of begrudging inevitability. Part of the reason for the increase, rather than decline, of mutual support and assistance in third-generation households, Johnson (1977) observes, has to do with the Japanese-Americans’ continued valuing of dependence. To these families, dependence was not something to avoid, but rather, something to encourage in specific social ways. Children were brought up to value interdependence through the development of a sense of shared responsibility, mutual support and respect. It was expected that at least one child remain in Hawaii to take care of the parents even if, as sometimes happened, that meant a child must forego a career on the mainland. The reasoning was as follows: since the parents had to struggle and sacrifice to raise the children (who were dependent on them and benefited from their emotional and monetary efforts), it was right for the children to care for their parents similarly when the parents were no longer able to care for themselves. Such mutual dependence between parents and children builds the foundation for multi-generational family gatherings, decreases the number of neglected elders or elders placed in nursing homes and solidifies ties between the young and the old. Even though third-generation participants enjoyed greater social mobility in the larger society and adopted more American customs than their parents, they had greater contact with those of their kin and were more sociable besides. The families’ multi-generational gatherings played a large role in shaping and reinforcing such values. Such an arrangement seeks to place members of the family within nested relationships through which they are made more aware of each other’s lives, and as a consequence, they are more exposed to the dependence often exhibited by the young and the old. Such people are arguably much more sensitive to the needs

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of the various stages of life and view reliance on others as normal and ordinary. In fact, Johnson’s (1977) study shows that: In open-ended responses to questions on the desired behavior of children, the majority of the mothers (65 percent) chose those behaviors related to concern for others, humility and compassion, while only 15 percent chose egocentric behaviors… the pervasive theme in the interviews was the need for careful consideration in maneuvering in the primary group and the need for suppression of ‘selfish’ interests. (p. 355) Dependence, then, was far from stigmatized in this kinship system. Instead, the JapaneseAmerican children learned to expect it and grow up to be comfortable around the old and very young alike – an opportunity to understand and appreciate the cycle of life from a perspective often rare for other American children to experience. They grew up aware of how their actions always impact one another and so thought about those others when making decisions, as well as developed empathy and attentive regard to those others. Arguably, much of what the majority of the second-generation mothers were teaching their children––or at least valuing about them––was their ability to practice living well within a system of interdependence. What they valued were qualities crucial to acquiring Proper Interconnection: compassion, concern for others and shared responsibility. The majority of third-generation family members grew up mindful of the needs of the group, having acquired a keen awareness of how they could contribute to meeting those needs. They often acted out of a sense of their social roles as well as relied on material resources and the content of their character. Their dependence on one another, then, was active rather than passive. It embodied in

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a kinship system created through blood ties the kind of relationships that the exercise of Proper Interconnection can create regardless of blood kin. The third value that Johnson’s (1977) study identified, reciprocal giving, stems from the emphasis that the Japanese-American families place on mutual assistance, and it is central to maintaining the tradition of their kinship relations as a whole. This is not a quid pro quo reciprocity based on the expectation that a specific amount of money or other gift must be received in some given length of time for a person to repay a debt to another. Instead, this reciprocity is nebulous and largely unspecified, with an expectation that assistance will be repaid somehow in the future. It need not be repaid to the one doing the assisting. Furthermore, while someone is returning a favor for another, that person may have already done more for the first, so that it is never clear who still owes whom and whether a person is ever absolved of his or her indebtedness to other family members. For example, a working mother needing someone to babysit her daughter after school repaid her sister in a myriad of ways for the countless hours the sister put in watching the child, but neither the mother nor the sister considered money an appropriate way to pay for the sister’s help. The sisters came from the third-generation and so acceptable repayment had to come in a form other than money. If the working mother cleaned her sister’s house and brought dinner over, her sister meanwhile would continue watching the children so that there was never any certainty that any debts to each other were adequately resolved. Such a system perpetuates mutual indebtedness along with mutual dependency and ongoing assistance. Each person in the relationship strives to help the other and vice versa, caught in an exchange of giving and receiving designed to purposefully never have an endpoint. Monetary gifts are, however, proper means to repay less intimate individuals whose assistance is sought and specific amounts of

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money and time to repay are well established in Japan and in immigrant families. Even strangers and those a person hardly knows are still considered part of a system of mutual reciprocity in which interdependence is valued so highly. In the case of intimate families, reasons for engaging in this reciprocity and the seemingly never-ending sets of obligations to give back when they have received range from grudging acceptance to a sense of gratitude. Many simply enjoy giving in return for the sake of helping their family, but presumably, the presence of obligations and the socially instilled guilt of not meeting them are designed for those lacking in character. What such people are lacking is the virtue of Proper Interconnection. Before I end this chapter, there is one more point to make about the relationship between Proper Interconnection and interdependence, which this particular example of JapaneseAmerican kinship excellently illustrates. Like most social systems, this system promotes many virtues even while succumbing to some of their vices. In particular, I refer to the passage I quoted above in which Johnson mentions the “selfish interests” that the majority of JapaneseAmerican parents sought to suppress in their children, while emphasizing dispositions that would allow their children to become more interdependent. Just like it is possible to exhibit unhealthy dependency and self-destructive self-reliance, it is possible to be too interconnected. In Chapter IV, I argued for how such a vice could occur and called it the Borg Effect. It is possible and dangerous, to completely lose yourself within a collectivity, to always put a group’s interests above and in front of your own and to completely shut out so called “selfish interests.” The reasoning is two-fold.

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First, a person can only fully possess the virtue of Proper Interconnection if she has a healthy and sound relationship with herself. As interdependent beings by nature, how we treat others affects us as much as how we treat ourselves. If living interdependently is causing a person to feel alienated from herself, to martyr herself, to suppress her individuality beyond what is necessary for human cooperation, or causes her ongoing pain and suffering, then she is living an extreme and vicious form of interdependence. In exercising Proper Interconnection, a person treats herself and her relationships with others as equally important. Thus, she will be as empathic, compassionate, accountable, accepting and aware of others as she is to herself. Our very interconnectedness requires this. You, yourself, have to show up in a relationship with others, so it is paramount that you do not leave yourself out of the picture, attempting to acquire Proper Interconnection while insisting on self-sacrifice or self-denial. Secondly, as noted earlier in Chapter II, a person’s identity cannot be divided strictly along lines of independence and interdependence. In most activities, it is impossible to completely separate interdependent and independent components of action. Recall the example of turn taking discussed in that chapter, which should suffice to illustrate the case in point. Independence and interdependence are, therefore, not mutually exclusive, nor do they usually exist independently of one another. Most often, they are interrelated. It appears that the majority of the Japanese-American mothers interviewed in Johnson’s (1977) study adhered with conviction to the belief that interdependence and independence are mutually exclusive values and the expression of the one would preclude the expression of the other. For example, one selfish behavior which came up frequently in interviews with these mothers was that of personal freedom. Arguably, however, there is no reason for Proper Interconnection, when exercised fully, to exclude expressing one’s personal freedom, as long as

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those assertions do not exploit, hurt, betray, damage, dominate, ignore, or disrespect others. In light of the kinship system under study, one might conclude that personal freedom is a very negative quality to have, especially within a closely knit, tightly embedded, interdependent family structure. I wish to suggest, however, that rather than such “selfish” qualities themselves needing discouragement, it is in fact how someone goes about their independence and freedom that matters as to whether that person has acted well or badly. A person who is properly connected to and belonging with others can effectively balance the needs of self and others, rather than be forced to exclude consideration of one or the other. Arguably, a person who forgets to have compassion for herself is so intertwined with others that she cannot extricate herself from an abusive relationship, or overly burdens and overtaxes herself while trying to be everything to everyone and make everyone happy, is not exercising Proper Interconnection. She is not doing so precisely because she lacks a healthy sense of independence and personal freedom. While the emphasis among kinship relations on group solidarity and cohesion is essential to shared responsibility, active compassion and social awareness, it fails to be constructive if practiced to the exclusion of other balancing values and traits. Group solidarity is often much more powerful and effective if everyone has a solid sense of themselves as an individual and is given room for original and creative participation within the group as a whole. Fostering a balance of independence and dependence, critical thinking and collective thinking, freedom and responsibility, compassion and healthy boundaries, actually provides ideal circumstances in which a person can learn and develop the virtue of Proper Interconnection. In learning to exercise Proper Interconnection, a person learns in what way, at what time and in what manner to be interdependently engaged with the world. Aristotle says of us that we are social animals. Yet, for many of us, solitude is an important part of social life. Likewise, we are

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interdependent beings, but personal freedom, individuality and independence are, for most of us, central to our interconnected lives. When it comes to the broader scope of our flourishing, there is no dichotomy or hierarchy of significance between interconnection and personal expression. It is only when one dominates the other in our activities and relationships that problems arise. I conclude, then, that while the Japanese-American kinship system under consideration provides many exemplary ways in which a tradition might center on the virtue of Proper Interconnection, it also succumbs to some of the extremes to which interdependence can be taken and so is also an example of what Proper Interconnection is not. This does not, I think, discredit the example. Rather, this example clarifies important features about the virtue of Proper Interconnection itself, while also demonstrating that the kinship system under study might have the potential to further evolve into embracing Proper Interconnection more explicitly. In fact, the changes noted between second and third-generation households indicate that the JapaneseAmerican kinship system is already following this trajectory. Johnson’s (1977) study suggests that, as families adapted to new customs, so did the kinship tradition they brought with them, resulting in new ways of relating which preserved enough of the tradition’s core features and values that it remained recognizable. Such data demonstrates the capacity for this tradition to continue to develop as a living, dynamic system embedded as it is within a rapidly changing world. The Japanese-American kinship system is, then, an evolving tradition in which Proper Interconnection is central. The continued cultivation of Proper Interconnection will not only allow the individuals within this tradition to flourish, but will continue to enable the evolution and sustainability of the tradition itself. This example therefore demonstrates that Proper Interconnection meets MacIntyre’s (2007) third condition that a trait must meet to be considered a virtue.

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In this chapter, I have argued and demonstrated how Proper Interconnection meets MacIntyre’s (2007) criteria for a virtue. As I have now given an account of this virtue, defined the domain and terms with which it is described and shown that it satisfies both MacIntyre’s and Hursthouse’s (2007) standards on which to evaluate potential virtues, I conclude that Proper Interconnection is, in fact, a robust virtue in its own right: one that specifies part of an integrated character which is essential to the acquisition of practical wisdom and enables us to fully flourish as we live by and for and with each other.

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At the beginning of Chapter I, I posed the rhetorical question: are you happy? It is a question whose answer is as indeterminate and vague as the pursuit of happiness itself. Yet, as I discussed in my recounting of Annas’ (2011) position in that chapter, we can begin to form an answer by asking after the kind of people we wish to be in the world, about our values and character and how we respond to the circumstances of our lives. It is our reflection on how our lives are going—the structure and goals of our lives, the values we hold—that prompt many philosophers and non-philosophers alike to ask themselves whether or not life is going well. At the point that we ask such questions about our lives and our character, we have already been living for a while. We have also developed or partly acquired some virtues and many vices and have formed relationships and set goals in the past and for the future. We find that we are already authors of many of the important and trivial segments of our life narratives, have learned to occupy as well as adopt functional roles and carry on living a story that is imbedded in and inextricably woven into the cultural and historical contexts of our time and the narratives of others around us. In other words, we come to realize that we live in an interdependent world. We find that, whether we have physical impairments that require us to ask for assistance from others, frequent the grocery store, or get water from a tap we all rely on one another. Furthermore, the life cycle of a human being contains periods of dependency, sometimes profound dependency, and most people at some time in life will experience ability and impairment, illness and health. These nested dependencies are a constant in our lives, though the degree to which we find we are relying on or being relied upon by others changes over time, as well as the particular people with whom we form such relationships. Nevertheless, such nested dependence informs who we are as much as provides us with many ways to conceive of

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ourselves and many indispensable forms of belonging. We belong so inextricably within this interdependent world that, MacIntyre (2007) observes, were we to try to separate the concept of who we are from our cultural and social contexts, functional roles, history, relationships, traditions and practices—we would be willing ourselves to disappear. Whatever else the eudaimon life consists in, therefore, it will certainly involve the aspiration to cultivate excellence of character with respect to our human connectedness, attending closely to the ways in which we live beside and among and with others. In this dissertation, I have sought to fully and thoroughly account for such human connection within a eudaimonist framework of virtue ethics. In doing so, I have articulated and defended the addition of a new virtue to the standard list of virtues most commonly recognized in eudaimonist literature. I call this virtue Proper Interconnection. A great deal of groundwork needed to be done before arriving at the discovery and articulation of such a virtue, however. First, it was important to define my terms—independence, dependence, interdependence and vulnerability. Second, I sought to show that eudaimonist virtue ethics has a need for such a new virtue, by illustrating how a person who acquired any of the more familiar sets of virtues would still find some important cognitive and emotional components of character lacking when trying to relate to others with excellence. In Chapter II, I took up defining the terms independence, dependence and interdependence, as well as articulated how I would be making use of the term vulnerability throughout the project. I had many reasons for making these definitions normative. Primarily, I was motivated by the extent to which terms such as independence and dependence are already used with reference to people in an evaluative way and not all such evaluations are inclusive, constructive, or even accurate. The conception of independence opposed by the disability

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movement, on which a person is independent to the degree that she is able to directly accomplish activities under her own power is the most vivid case in point. With definitions such as these to counter, it was imperative not only to thoughtfully define independence, but to do so inclusively. To that end, I combined an inclusive definition on which independence is based on a person’s ability to direct her own decision making regarding her activities and any assistance she might need, with Young’s (1980) concept of autonomy. To recall, Young understands autonomy to not only require straightforwardly salient conditions such as freedom from restraint and the capacity for decision making. He also holds that an autonomous person must be able to lead an integrated life, something that requires authenticity in order to occur. The degree to which a person is independent at any given time is, then, describable in terms of either a state or an activity. Independence can describe the state a person is in when she is self-directed, authentic and autonomous. But it also describes a component of action when a person acts autonomously and authentically, making her decisions her own. Healthy dependence, too, can refer to either the state or active participation in reliance upon others. As with independence, dependence is not an all or nothing concept, but occurs in degree. Furthermore, as mentioned above, it shares with the term independence the need to be defined normatively and for similar reasons. Many disability theorists, for example challenge the idea that dependency has to do with helplessness, victimhood or misfortune, or indicates a deficient character. Using Fine and Glendinning’s (2005) discussion of kinds of dependency as a starting point, I argued that dependence itself does not point to helplessness or defects in character per se. It is the motivation and reasons for that dependence which determines whether or not it is healthy. For example, co-dependence is a problematic form of dependence on something or someone because it indicates a person’s lack of boundaries and inability to depend

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on herself for her own self-worth and validation. Unjust dependency created by discriminatory systems also indicates corruption, though in that case the flaws lie with the society or culture in question, not the person thus rendered dependent. All other types of dependence are forms of reliance on others and are healthy and sound (dare I say, normal). Finally, vulnerability (and as it turns out, interdependence as well) can refer to both the state a person is in relative to the uncertainty of life or any particular situation, as well as the act of being vulnerable with others. It is this active engagement in being vulnerable which is so necessary to making and sustaining authentic Connection. When two or more people allow themselves to be vulnerable, they foster a connection which goes beyond that of a mere interaction, where each is able, to the extent to which it is epistemically possible, to take the other to be a second self. Interdependence is possible because it is possible for us to be mutually vulnerable with one another. It is possible not only for rational adults, but also for children and people with profound cognitive impairments such as Kittay’s (1998) daughter, Sesha. I showed that Sesha can participate in interdependent relationships due to her capacity to be vulnerable, whereas (for example) a psychopath is barred from interdependent relationships precisely because he or she lacks any capacity for vulnerability. From these points, then, follows my definition of interdependence: a relationship between at least two people characterized by mutual vulnerability. In Chapter III, I raised the question of how such interdependent relationships can fit into a eudaimonist account of living and acting with excellence. There are two possible ways to answer such a question. Either the familiar virtues will sufficiently cover the kind of character needed to respond with excellence in our interdependent relationships, or else we must discover a new virtue, which articulates the cognitive and emotional responses needed to engage in our

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interdependent relationships well. I argued that the acquisition of the familiar virtues does not, on its own, allow a person to respond to people in her interdependent relationships in the right kinds of emotional and cognitive ways that we intuit would be needed for such relationships to be healthy and genuine. My argument relied on two overarching steps. First, I demonstrated that independence, dependence and interdependence constitute together a particular realm of human activity that could then be mapped onto an already-existing set of virtues to test whether or not such virtues were sufficient to account for excellence within that activity. We exercise the virtues within specific life circumstances or when engaged in particular activities. When the standard virtues are enough on their own to describe excellent engagement in an activity, then the acquisition and exercise of those virtues will exhaust the dispositions needed to engage in it well. A person engaged in an interdependent relationship will experience varying degrees of both independence and dependence at different times. Raeff’s (2006) work on the dynamic interaction between independent and interdependent components of action and Kittay’s (1998) observations concerning dependency work and the creation of nested dependencies, strongly suggests that there is a single realm of activity within which it would be possible to exercise the virtues. I then proceeded to show, with respect to Annas’ (2011) and MacIntyre’s (1999) accounts that the virtues they discuss do not exhaust the cognitive and emotional responses we need in the realm of our interdependent relationships. As Annas makes clear in Intelligent Virtue, we learn to be virtuous within a myriad of social and cultural contexts, through role models and experiences in living, in an analogous manner to which we might learn a skill. Virtues are acquired deep-seated character dispositions. We aspire to become virtuous in the same way that we aspire to learn to play basketball, or the harp. Both skills and virtues are acquired through a

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process called habituation—a combination of role modeling, experience in living and opportunity for practice. With respect to virtue, habituation involves both shifts in a person's character and an ever more attuned responsiveness to situations in that person's environment. That environment can be more or less conducive or hostile to the cultivation of virtue and Annas (2011) points out that it is impossible to fully cultivate the virtues in an oppressive environment (such as our current society). I used Thomson’s (2002) discussion of the disability system to vividly exemplify just how this kind of oppression, othering and discrimination limits the virtuous development of both able-bodied individuals and people with disabilities alike. Systems such as the disability system, racism, or poverty not only disrupt a person’s aspirations to become just, honest, or generous. The perpetuation in such systems of shame, distorted perceptions of personal embodiment and the alienation, fear, ignorance and misunderstandings which arise through the creation of an in-group and an out-group all has a direct impact on how, when, why and where a person will be able to relate authentically to others and even herself. The standard virtues alone are not adequate to account for, make sense of, or describe the particular kind of destructiveness and viciousness that such disconnection, defensiveness and shame causes in our relationships with one another. I next turned to a discussion of a very ideal world in which such oppression does not exist. In such a world, vulnerability to uncertainty, fragile embodiment and the cycles of life would still exist. Exercising practical wisdom in such a world would demand a high willingness to be vulnerable, with the result that people would routinely take one another to be second selves, whether within their Aristotelian friendships or more broadly in their less intimate relationships. In order to connect with others as second selves in such a world, it would be very important that you develop the emotional and cognitive capacity to hold space for a person who is suffering, or stay open and attentive to someone very

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different from you. It would require the discernment to set boundaries, be sensitive to your own needs as well as those of others and know when you might be sharing too much. Such examples, I contended, pointed to the need to develop aspects of character that could not be acquired through the cultivation of the familiar virtues. Next, I turned to MacIntyre (1999) whose account of the virtues directly addresses the role and effect of human dependency, vulnerability and life cycles. As mentioned previously, his approach situates human beings within communities of giving and receiving and he sets forth two sets of virtues: the virtues of practical rationality such as courage, honesty and generosity and the virtues of acknowledged dependence including just-generosity, unconditional gratitude, forbearance, acceptance and pity without derision. I proceeded with two objections to MacIntyre’s account. I raised the first objection in regard to MacIntyre’s virtues of acknowledged dependence, particularly against the addition of forbearance, unconditional gratitude and a rather passive conception of acceptance. Such character traits negatively impact a person’s flourishing in many ways and I do not think they should be at all considered virtues. My second objection rested on a disagreement with MacIntyre’s distinction between independent and dependent practical reasoners on the one hand and failure to distinguish cognitively able independent dependents (most notably people with purely physical disabilities) from people with cognitive impairments on the other. When such distinctions are amended or made, as the case may be, it becomes clear that it is not our dependence, but our interdependence, which deserves our acknowledgement, at the very minimum. But we would be amiss to simply acknowledge our interdependence. The nature of relationships is that they must be lived. If we are to engage in our interdependent relationships with excellence, we need to cultivate the disposition of character to do so. This character

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disposition is, of course, the virtue of Proper Interconnection. In order to establish Proper Interconnection as a virtue, it was imperative, among other points, to demonstrate that it meets the necessary and sufficient conditions for a virtue as set forth in Hursthouse’s (1999) and MacIntyre’s (2007) works (Chapters IV and V respectively). I will restate the conditions here for easy reference. They are as follows: According to Hursthouse (2007), a trait counts as a virtue if: 1. The trait specifies a character disposition which has a corresponding way of naming people with such a trait, as well as picking out which actions exemplify the exercise of it. 2. The trait picks out a character disposition found in human nature, which is psychologically plausible for people to attain. 3. The character trait has a natural analogue when not fully developed (for instance, in children,) which children can fully learn to acquire over time. MacIntyre (2007) argues that a trait qualifies as a virtue if: 1. The trait is a character disposition that allows a person who possesses and exercises it to achieve internal, rather than external goods of a practice. 2. The trait contributes to sustaining the overall narrative of a person’s life. 3. The trait can be shown to belong to, or fall within, an existing ethical tradition. First, I turned in Chapter IV to the task of demonstrating that Proper Interconnection is a deepseated character disposition robust enough to meet Hursthouse’s first criterion for a virtue. Proper Interconnection is a disposition that rightly orients us toward our human interdependence by cultivating within us acceptance, active compassion, a sense of shared responsibility and the

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capacity to recognize one another for who we are. These cognitive and emotional components of Proper Interconnection are mutually acquired. For example, recognition––seeing another for who they truly are—can only fully occur with the cultivation of compassion and through the acceptance of what is. Likewise, a sense of shared responsibility develops along with acceptance, compassion and recognition. It is in the exercise of Proper Interconnection that we can interact with another as a second self. Proper Interconnection enables its possessor to have the wisdom to know in what way and degree, at what time and for what reasons reliance and reliability are needed in our interactions with the elderly, with children, with those needing assistance, with colleagues, with family and with friends. Necessary for the exercise of this virtue is our willingness to be vulnerable: to have the integrity of character to let ourselves be seen particularly when, inevitably, circumstances make us more dependent on others or we are faced with the uncertainties of life itself. Inculcating the virtue of Proper Interconnection can inform and guide our actions and attitudes toward ourselves and toward one another. Through the exercise of Proper Interconnection we can interact with and listen to one another when, as MacIntyre (2007) puts it, we pursue our quest for the good, even when our ideas, physical abilities, worldviews, languages, or upbringings differ. I also made it clear that the exercise of Proper Interconnection isn’t about trying to form interdependent relationships with everyone. Rather, it disposes a person to relate to others excellently and wisely. There are situations in which the practically wise thing to do would be to not relate at all. First, discernment is necessary for self-compassion, personal responsibility, and shared responsibility. Without the development of compassion, recognition, acceptance and responsibility for oneself, Proper Interconnection could not be possible. Secondly, there are many ways in which we rely on one another which result in the vices of disconnection and

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destructive connection. I discussed these vices in detail in Chapter IV where I demonstrated the problems which can arise from disconnection—apathy, complacency, dissociation, numbness, alienation and displacement—as well as the dangers of destructive connection—including narcissism, co-dependency and the harmful identification with a collective which I called the Borg Effect. I further showed how a person might exhibit both the vices of disconnection and destructive connection simultaneously. People who struggle with such vices usually form unhealthy, sometimes abusive relationships, or else find themselves incapable of being in an interdependent relationship altogether. When a person who possesses Proper Interconnection attempts to form a relationship with a person exhibiting one or more of these vices, she will quickly recognize the person for who he is, accept the truth of this and have the compassion for and accountability to herself to set boundaries, distance herself, or walk away. In order to show how Proper Interconnection met several of the other criteria for a virtue, I took a more interdisciplinary approach, combining philosophical argumentation with anthropological data. For instance, not only was I able to show that children have an analogue of and can learn to develop Proper Interconnection by pointing to common knowledge regarding children’s ability to share and consider the feelings of others, I demonstrated that, at least early on, children are willing to accept others who might be different from them without the enculturated biases and prejudices they usually learn later. I also drew on research conducted by Ahn (2010) and Raeff (2006) who systematically observed how children develop prosocial behavior and documented the elementary beginnings of the cultivation of shared responsibility, compassion, recognition and acceptance. Likewise, with respect to Proper Interconnection being a virtue which is plausibly part of our human nature, I turned to both Kittay’s (1998) concept of nested dependencies as well as

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Tomasello et al.’s (2012) Interdependence Hypothesis which postulates that cooperation and collaborative teamwork, rather than mere altruism, was evolutionarily favored in the development of our species. Such a hypothesis need not be absolutely proved correct in order to establish that Proper Interconnection is an ideal that is in the nature of humans to attain. The fact that such a hypothesis can explain a fair amount of data regarding the actions, behaviors and motivations of human beings is enough to establish plausibility. Furthermore, the studies cited in Tomasello et al.’s article, which focus on the development of modern infants, demonstrates in itself our innate capacity for mutual concern and interdependent relationships. When it came to demonstrating the place that Proper Interconnection has within MacIntyre (2007)-style practices and traditions, I found it useful and informative to rely on evidence of actual examples. In the case of Proper Interconnection within practices, my examples included parenting, dependency work and hospitality. The most vivid example of the practice of hospitality in action is the example of the villagers of Le Chambon, mentioned in Chapter V. This example demonstrated that active compassion, mutual giving and receiving, acknowledgment of equality, acceptance of others, and shared responsibility are all central to the provision of hospitality. The exercise of Proper Interconnection is therefore paramount to sustaining such a practice. Likewise, the Japanese-American kinship system I discussed toward the end of that chapter is a tradition largely sustained through the acquisition and exercise of Proper Interconnection. The data in this case demonstrates that dependence, intergenerational bonding, reciprocity, and compassion were all highly valued within this tradition. It also pointed to the capacity for the tradition to evolve in response to cultural and social changes in ways that in fact made people even more properly interconnected, as well as resulted in the strengthening of the tradition itself. For instance, as families redefined reciprocity in terms that promoted more

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equity and less stringency––for instance, moving from the paradigm in which the eldest son cares for the parents to the paradigm in which siblings care for parents equally—siblings were more likely to share responsibility for the care of their parents and to look out for one another, without feeling merely obliged to do so. With these changes, Proper Interconnection played an even greater role in the tradition’s continuation and sustainability. MacIntyre (2007) persuasively demonstrates that not only do our endeavors—actions, practices and traditions—take narrative form, but we also cannot form a self-conception without such narrative structure. Furthermore, the ways our lives unfold are not determined or wholly chosen within the context of a journey of one, but rather a quest of the many, in which the nested stories of our lives reflect the interdependence it is in our nature to share. When children are raised with prosocial values, developing compassion, accountability, acceptance, empathy and social awareness from an early age, they begin the process of developing their natural tendencies toward interdependence into the virtue of Proper Interconnection. It is the exercise of this virtue that orients a person toward both relating to others and conceiving of others in relation to themselves, in a way that is practically wise and emotionally balanced. Those who exercise Proper Interconnection acquire a character disposition to be compassionate and accepting toward themselves and others, conceive of others around them as second selves, taking personal and shared responsibility for their actions and attitudes when doing so is wise and warranted. A person’s character is essential in determining how a person is in the world and the kind of person she wishes to be. Insofar as Proper Interconnection has not, until now, been recognized to be a virtue, it is quite possible for someone to fail to inculcate it in herself, either in whole or in part, which diminishes a person’s flourishing and prevents them from being fully practically wise. Inculcating the virtue of Proper Interconnection allows a person to have the right sorts of

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emotions, responses, reasons and reactions toward herself and others required for healthy and authentic connection. Having such a right orientation toward our integral interconnectedness is an essential part of human flourishing, within our individual lives and, potentially, more generally as well. As evidenced by Ahn’s (2010) and Raeff’s (2006) studies of young children in classrooms, as well as the villagers in Le Chambon and the third-generation members of the Japanese-American kinship system in Honolulu, Proper Interconnection contributes to sustaining the narrative unity within each of our individual lives. When exercised on a larger scale among a population, it can help sustain and maintain the integrity of those traditions and practices that are so essential to the flourishing of our communities. A world in which interdependence is understood and valued and in which we learn and raise our children to have the virtue of Proper Interconnection, is a world in which there is greater peace, greater awareness and acceptance of human diversity and difference, greater empathy and compassion. We can always hope that we might one day live in such a world, in which we take every one in it to be a part of our human family. Future Research The addition of the virtue of Proper Interconnection to eudaimonist ethics and the concepts important to human connection which helped lead to its discovery, open up new lines of inquiry and innovative research opportunities, both theoretical and practical. In this section, I briefly discuss only a handful of the many possible directions such research might take. These lines of thought include: the impact of the development and exercise of the virtue of Proper Interconnection in personal and social contexts; a more in-depth understanding of what it is to be vulnerable; Studying the intersection between honesty, authenticity and Proper Interconnection; and exploring the relationship between interdependence, second selves and kinship. With the

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addition of Proper Interconnection, there is also much more potential of taking a virtue ethical approach to recommendations for and the possible resolution of, social issues of ethical concern that perpetuate the vices of disconnection and destructive connection—such as shame and systems of oppression. In Intelligent Virtue, Annas (2011) notes that further psychological research into the use of the skill model as appropriate to describing the acquisition of the virtues is much needed. I agree that this would be very beneficial in that, among other things, such research would provide virtue ethicists with a stronger foundation for the model (as evidence so far seems to corroborate it), as well as give us a more thorough understanding of how character dispositions form and provide insight into practical ways to inculcate the virtues through education and experience. Where this is crucial with respect to better understanding how we acquire known virtues such as honesty, generosity and courage, it is perhaps even more necessary when the virtue in question is newly discovered, as is the case for Proper Interconnection. With respect to Proper Interconnection in particular, it seems that further research in anthropology as well as in psychology would be beneficial toward our understanding of how the virtue is inculcated and learned, as well as how those developing and exercising the virtue change the dynamics and their perceptions of the social interactions around them. There is a need, then, for more research along the lines conducted by Ahn (2010) and Raeff (2006), observing young children in settings of learning, with a more direct focus on whether and how such children learn prosocial values, cultivate compassion and acceptance and engage in shared responsibility. Anthropology can only go so far in answering such questions, however and psychological research is also needed to address questions such as: how do people cultivate compassion?; what is empathy and how is it related to acceptance and shared responsibility?; and how do we develop the ability to see each

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other for who we really are and come to discern how vulnerable we are willing to be? Answers to these and many other worthwhile questions not listed here, would provide data that would both further our understanding of how Proper Interconnection is acquired, as well as assist the greater project of understanding one aspect of the psychology of connection. Perhaps more than any other virtue, the acquisition of Proper Interconnection depends heavily on an individual’s embodiment and what that means to her personally, as well as entails socially. For, as my research into oppressive systems such as the Disability System shows, the way in which each of us is literally embodied in the world, inhabits the world and sees herself in the world, greatly impacts a person’s self-conception, social function and standing and character development. If my arguments in Chapter III, Section I.1 are at all persuasive, it is possible to conclude that, while the development of any virtue is compromised when oppression is present, such marginalization and discrimination hurts our relationships and sense of self the most. The likelihood that developing the virtue of Proper Interconnection is more seriously limited in situations of oppression than is the acquisition of the other virtues seems plausible, but is ultimately an empirical question. An essential key to answering such a question, as I see it, is found in a thorough philosophical and psychological investigation into the epistemic, phenomenological and ethical implications of our embodiment in the world, particularly in contexts where—due to race, gender, or disability—one’s embodiment, at the very least, is considered unusual. In Disability Bioethics: Moral Bodies, Moral Difference, Scully (2008) already outlines directions such research might take, including drawing on and furthering the work of the French anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu (cited in Scully, 2008) who argued that much of our understanding of the world around us and the meaning we ascribe it comes about through living our day to day lives in a body. For that reason, how our bodies move, act, interact with

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other bodies and objects, are shaped and generally “fit” into the world around them, significantly determines how we understand ourselves and our world. Scully also extensively discusses the work of philosopher Merleau-Ponty (2008) who likewise was concerned to articulate the intersection between mind, body and world—both social and physical. Scully claims that some studies in neuroscience point to evidence that would corroborate some of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical positions. Clearly, the idea that the body each of us inhabits plays a crucial role in our understanding, moral and otherwise, of the world and our place in it in philosophy and empirical disciplines alike. Such embodiment, particularly embodiments which are currently thought to be unusual or atypical, surely then have an integral and perhaps inseparable, rather than peripheral, impact on the kind of people we want or believe we can become, as well as the messages, beliefs, feelings and physical modes of being which we adopt concerning ourselves and others. There is a need, therefore, for further philosophical and empirical inquiry into the moral, social and personal understandings of the world which embodiment creates, for how we learn to be virtuous (or not) would depend significantly on our embodiment and this is true especially when the virtue directly concerns itself with the connection we form with others and the way we relate to and conceive of ourselves. A third line of inquiry, which is only somewhat related, is to do with what it is to be vulnerable. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that interdependent relationships are just those relationships characterized by a mutual willingness to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable, I claimed, is an active response to refrain from putting up defenses or otherwise hiding from the universal uncertainty of life and any situation that provokes such uncertainty. When relating to other people, it is being vulnerable in this way that lets us be seen for who we are and allows us to accept what is and have compassion for ourselves and for others. I also argued that people

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with severe developmental disabilities, such as Sesha, can participate in interdependent relationships because they can be vulnerable with others (Annas, 2011). I believe this claim would be made even stronger with empirical support. There is quite a bit of psychological research on infants’ instinctual or noncognitive expressions of vulnerability around trusted adults and distress signals they give when they sense they are around someone untrustworthy, or are being threatened. An important project, then, would be to use this and other similar research to further our understanding of what it means to be vulnerable. This research on infants could both contribute further to the argument that young children or individuals with developmental disabilities can be vulnerable, as well as further our knowledge about the origin and psychology of being vulnerable and how it impacts and facilitates human connection. There might then be further ethical questions that a deeper understanding of being vulnerable and how we process our vulnerability, could help to answer. Finally, there are many important ways in which the virtue of Proper Interconnection can be applied to, or inform, social issues of ethical concern, thereby shedding light on how such situations might be ameliorated or resolved if we respond with excellence, constantly keeping our interdependence in mind. Potential research projects under this category might, among many possibilities, include the following: and Argue for ways in which the acquisition and exercise of Proper Interconnection would change current values to better reflect our human interdependence: for instance, reintegrate, protect and care for the elderly and young children; re-evaluate the low priority and devaluation we place on child care, child rearing and parenting (particularly mothering); and come to fully value, compensate and support dependency workers such as personal assistants, care givers, parents, child care providers, staff providing services to people with disabilities or who manage group homes and teachers. Initiate further exploration of the

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way in which acquiring and exercising Proper Interconnection helps people accept difference, avoid shame, question social assumptions, challenge prejudice and stand up to discrimination for self and others in society. Provide social and policy recommendations for reform or change with respect to long-standing issues facing people with disabilities, based on arguments for and reflection on, how the acquisition and exercise of Proper Interconnection would change our response. How would the development of Proper Interconnection change current thinking in bioethics regarding concerns about normalization and quality of life, for example? These are all viable and lucrative research questions that have philosophical and practical import. Answers to such questions will not only further the understanding within the field of philosophical ethics, but can inform and inspire policy makers, advocates and everyday people to change attitudes and perceptions, values and priorities, public and personal relations and relationships, ourselves and ultimately, our world.

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