Sorry, but I absolutely love this "More to Hate" essay. THANK YOU. I've detested the word "aspiration" ever since a Dartmouth dean started using it 15-20 years ago. (Faculty were exhorted to be more "aspirational." She argued against someone's promotion to Full Professor (who fully deserved it) because the candidate's file was not sufficiently "aspirational.") And THANK YOU for articulating, so clearly and persuasively, yet another thing that rankles me about that New Yorker profile.
> It’s not to say that at least some of these practices can’t be valuable; but they’re valuable precisely when you *already* value classical music (say), and then want to participate in it or understand it deeply—*not* when you don’t actually value it, but seek to make yourself into a Bach buff.
well, that's why it's value acquisition, right? If you see people making a big fuss about wine, but when you taste it, it's all kind of samey to you, you can still think: "surely there's *something* here. they can't *all* be wrong". Or perhaps you just think: "this seems like a good crowd to get in with", for extrinsic reasons. So you take some wine appreciation classes, not because you value wine, and in the course of doing so, you learn things about it and come to value things in it that you didn't before, and couldn't have before because you wot not of them. Even if you were trying to acquire a value for the sake of it, the point of the talk of value acquisition (er, I assume, I haven't read Callard on this, I'm just going by the thought that there's probably a vaguely Aristotelian story here) is that when you've acquired it, your value set has changed; now you value the wine, or Bach, or whatever, not valuing wine/Bach/whatever. Some people (me!) decided to learn to like the taste of coffee, during which intermediate phase what they/we do is maybe of at best intermediate value, but then at some point it happens, and we're inside.
Callard's examples may be offputting but the same dynamic could go for any kind of self-standing practice that's acquired like a taste.
I've found aspiration to be really similar to addictive drugs. Once I got a small taste of it by changing myself a little bit towards what I aspired, I just wanted more and more.
Unrelated, but its refreshing to read a philosopher who talks in normal sentences, unlike Agnes Callard in that article you linked.
Thanks for this. I remember wondering when people had last written about classical music as being Improving in that way...1950s I think, and even then it was retrograde (and class-marked).
Someone probably already made this connection but the critique of ambition reminds me of Adam Phillips' Unforbidden Pleasures! He has a great line about whether we're able to imagine a life without any significant ambition (than, say, to have a coffee with one's breakfast). The implication being we absolutely should and the world would benefit from such a redefinition of the good life. For him, it's related to living a life in which we're less internally violent with ourselves and, therefore, others.
After reading the New Yorker piece I found myself bored by the details of Callard’s marriages but completely nosy about the dynamics in the U. of Chicago philosophy department. Yikes
It’s interesting how much of her argument slips into a kind of tech/business jargon: She’s not simply experimenting with polyamory. She’s “unbundling” marriage.
I know this is something of a side point of the article's main thrust, but you say: "It used to be that you couldn’t realistically do much about your body shape and size, since dieting famously doesn’t work."
Isn't that a non-sequitur, since diet isn't the only way to (try to) affect your body shape and size. And, indeed, the study you link to is explicit about that. It says: "Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss. Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss."
So......for all that that study says, there's plenty we can do about our body shape (dieting just doesn't happen to be one such way). Are there other studies you have in mind, contra the one you link to, that supports the much stronger conclusion that via neither diet nor exercise (nor anything else) can one affect one's body shape and size?
Your last point reminds me of an excellent recent essay by Jessica Blankenship in which she makes the point that unless you grew up in comfort and do not have a sense of precarity built into you - even STABILITY can be wildly addictive. I'm realizing this about myself. I think of myself as wanting some level of comfort but aspiring to not much more than "enough". And yet, I'm not sure I'll ever have ENOUGH "enough", even if I'm not engaged in that much consumption. Thank you for this; I feel like I'm finally starting to get language for what has been gnawing at my insides for years.
The old sociology literature on status attainment (usually conceived of as educational attainment or occupational attainment) made what I think is a useful distinction between aspirations and expectations: aspirations are what you dream of being or becoming, expectations are dreams tempered by reality.
Contemporary discussions of aspirations far too often neglect that for many people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, there is a chasm between aspirations and what they expect, given their social context and the resources - pecuniary and non-pecuniary - they have available to navigate that context. That chasm can be harmful for individuals and collectives.
Sorry, but I absolutely love this "More to Hate" essay. THANK YOU. I've detested the word "aspiration" ever since a Dartmouth dean started using it 15-20 years ago. (Faculty were exhorted to be more "aspirational." She argued against someone's promotion to Full Professor (who fully deserved it) because the candidate's file was not sufficiently "aspirational.") And THANK YOU for articulating, so clearly and persuasively, yet another thing that rankles me about that New Yorker profile.
> It’s not to say that at least some of these practices can’t be valuable; but they’re valuable precisely when you *already* value classical music (say), and then want to participate in it or understand it deeply—*not* when you don’t actually value it, but seek to make yourself into a Bach buff.
well, that's why it's value acquisition, right? If you see people making a big fuss about wine, but when you taste it, it's all kind of samey to you, you can still think: "surely there's *something* here. they can't *all* be wrong". Or perhaps you just think: "this seems like a good crowd to get in with", for extrinsic reasons. So you take some wine appreciation classes, not because you value wine, and in the course of doing so, you learn things about it and come to value things in it that you didn't before, and couldn't have before because you wot not of them. Even if you were trying to acquire a value for the sake of it, the point of the talk of value acquisition (er, I assume, I haven't read Callard on this, I'm just going by the thought that there's probably a vaguely Aristotelian story here) is that when you've acquired it, your value set has changed; now you value the wine, or Bach, or whatever, not valuing wine/Bach/whatever. Some people (me!) decided to learn to like the taste of coffee, during which intermediate phase what they/we do is maybe of at best intermediate value, but then at some point it happens, and we're inside.
Callard's examples may be offputting but the same dynamic could go for any kind of self-standing practice that's acquired like a taste.
I've found aspiration to be really similar to addictive drugs. Once I got a small taste of it by changing myself a little bit towards what I aspired, I just wanted more and more.
Unrelated, but its refreshing to read a philosopher who talks in normal sentences, unlike Agnes Callard in that article you linked.
Thanks for this. I remember wondering when people had last written about classical music as being Improving in that way...1950s I think, and even then it was retrograde (and class-marked).
Someone probably already made this connection but the critique of ambition reminds me of Adam Phillips' Unforbidden Pleasures! He has a great line about whether we're able to imagine a life without any significant ambition (than, say, to have a coffee with one's breakfast). The implication being we absolutely should and the world would benefit from such a redefinition of the good life. For him, it's related to living a life in which we're less internally violent with ourselves and, therefore, others.
After reading the New Yorker piece I found myself bored by the details of Callard’s marriages but completely nosy about the dynamics in the U. of Chicago philosophy department. Yikes
How would you compare ambition to vanity? Or are they synonyms in your view?
It’s interesting how much of her argument slips into a kind of tech/business jargon: She’s not simply experimenting with polyamory. She’s “unbundling” marriage.
beautiful.
But would a philosopher whose outlook is irredeemably middle class have her polyamorous relationship profiled in *the new yorker*??
I know this is something of a side point of the article's main thrust, but you say: "It used to be that you couldn’t realistically do much about your body shape and size, since dieting famously doesn’t work."
Isn't that a non-sequitur, since diet isn't the only way to (try to) affect your body shape and size. And, indeed, the study you link to is explicit about that. It says: "Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss. Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss."
So......for all that that study says, there's plenty we can do about our body shape (dieting just doesn't happen to be one such way). Are there other studies you have in mind, contra the one you link to, that supports the much stronger conclusion that via neither diet nor exercise (nor anything else) can one affect one's body shape and size?
Your last point reminds me of an excellent recent essay by Jessica Blankenship in which she makes the point that unless you grew up in comfort and do not have a sense of precarity built into you - even STABILITY can be wildly addictive. I'm realizing this about myself. I think of myself as wanting some level of comfort but aspiring to not much more than "enough". And yet, I'm not sure I'll ever have ENOUGH "enough", even if I'm not engaged in that much consumption. Thank you for this; I feel like I'm finally starting to get language for what has been gnawing at my insides for years.
https://ranthrough.substack.com/p/the-fleishman-moms-know-exactly-why
Such a great piece, thank you.
This is excellent
The old sociology literature on status attainment (usually conceived of as educational attainment or occupational attainment) made what I think is a useful distinction between aspirations and expectations: aspirations are what you dream of being or becoming, expectations are dreams tempered by reality.
Contemporary discussions of aspirations far too often neglect that for many people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, there is a chasm between aspirations and what they expect, given their social context and the resources - pecuniary and non-pecuniary - they have available to navigate that context. That chasm can be harmful for individuals and collectives.
Great post. Thanks.