HEALTH
[6] Why Is Health Good for You?
Look for my presentation of this research at the Eastern Division of the 2024 APA.
This paper tackles the question of why health is good for you. I begin by laying out desiderata for a good answer, which I hope provide a clear and ecumenical framework for tackling the question—a framework currently lacking in the literature. I then critically evaluate specific versions of three general answers from the literature: first, that health is instrumentally good; second, that it’s only contingently good; and third, that it’s good by definition. In the course of this critical discussion, I consider in some detail recent work on analyzing health. I argue that each general view fails in light of one or another of the desiderata I laid out. I close by sketching an original, alternative answer and a corresponding approach to analyzing health. My proposal is to understand health to consist in those functional states at those levels of functional efficiency such as constitute the core elements of human agency. On my view, then, health is good for you because agency is.
[5] Health, Harm, and Dispositions
Philosophers continue to debate the appropriate analysis of health befitting therapeutic medicine. One approach construes health as the absence of disease and defines a biological process as a disease if it disposes its bearer to incur harm. Insufficient attention has yet been paid to how we are precisely to understand that dispositional property. This paper aims, first, to address that shortcoming by drawing on recent work on dispositions. On my elaborated view, a subject is diseased iff she is intrinsically disposed by virtue of her biological process to incur harm, and that disposition can be ascribed to her, in turn, iff such harm would occur in a suitable proportion of relevant stimulus cases. My second aim is to assess this elaborated view. I argue that it faces two significant problems: first, it is too broad, and, second, it is indeterminate.
Value theory
[4] The Value of Growth
Look for my presentation of this research at the Central Division of the 2024 APA.
I argue that growth, or increasing in motivation and ability with respect to an endeavor you otherwise care about, is good for you. Despite an increase of philosophical attention in recent years on temporally extended constituents of a life well lived (e.g. meaning, achievement, loving relationships), growth has largely been left out of consideration. In this paper, I argue that the value of growth explains better than alternatives patterns in our concern that become conspicuous in hobbies and gameplay. I begin with an extended thought-experiment intended both to clarify and motivate the view that growth is good for you. I then argue that the value of growth explains our otherwise puzzling attitudes toward hobbies. Next I consider a related puzzle concerning why we play games. I argue that Nguyen’s (2020) celebrated, Suits-inspired account of why we play games and sports is conspicuously incomplete, and that growth provides a solution. Finally, I reflect on the concrete case of the Barkley Marathons in order to bear out some of my evaluative and psychological claims.
[3] Can an action be difficult beyond compare?
In this paper I review three accounts of what makes an action difficult stemming from recent literature on the value of achievements, defending one over the others. I, first, object to the view that actions are difficult insofar as their success involves effort because, among other objections, this view treats a single causal hindrance to success (exertion) as a measure of the total difficulty of success. A second view offers a more general measure by defining difficulty as probability of failure. But this view problematically divorces difficulty from ability. I argue, by contrast, that difficulty bears on one’s ability. I refine and endorse the view that an action is difficult insofar as the ratio of comparable agents able to do likewise is low. This view resolves the puzzles raised in a surprising way. I close by defending it against the accusation that it makes difficulty problematically relative.
19TH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
[2] Nietzschean Eudaimonism
I propose a new reading of Nietzsche’s ethical arguments modeled on ancient eudaimonism. My reading draws on recent value theorists who distinguish eudaimonism from agent-centered virtue theory in ethics. The central theses in my reading are: that Nietzsche holds health and growth to be constituent elements of the good life; that while it’s universally good to be healthy and to grow, what it means to be healthy and grow is relative to the individual (i.e. her motivations, abilities, and circumstance); and that Nietzsche’s goal is not to convince others to pursue health and growth but rather to enact social change that cultivates ways of thinking and acting more conducive to health and growth. I begin by elucidating these positions, distinguishing them both from alternative positions in Nietzsche scholarship and from aspects of ancient eudaimonism Nietzsche rejected. Then I present interpretive arguments for the central theses. Finally, I raise and respond to an objection: that Nietzsche rejects the prudentialism essential to any eudaimonism. In response to the latter, I offer an extended reading of BGE V-VII.
[1] Monograph: Nietzsche on Health, Growth, and the Good Life
This book largely picks up where the Element leaves off: having settled on an answer as to what Nietzsche means by health, in this book I tackle the question of how health functions in Nietzsche’s critical and positive normative arguments. This includes addressing the value of health, its relation to Nietzsche’s most famous value, “power,” and his overall strategy of building a normative ethic.
I argue that Nietzsche understood a state of good health to constitute one aspect of living well. What he calls “an increase in will to power, the feeling of power, power itself” constitutes another (Antrichris 2). I argue that an increase in power (or “growth”) consists in an increase over time in one’s ability and motivational disposition to accomplish an action-type: my life goes better, Nietzsche thinks, insofar as it includes episodes where I grow, for example, in my ability to write clearly and insightfully about philosophy. I argue that this is a plausible contributor to wellbeing. The bodily and mental conditions in which a state of good health and a state of increasing power respectively consist are mutually overlapping (including those responsible for the ability to write well, for instance), but to increase in power (become a better and more ambitious writer) is not identical to being (optimally) healthy (being able to realize one’s current writing aims). Rather I argue that these are two privileged, related aspects of the good life as Nietzsche plausibly conceives it.
The last question I tackle in the book is how the good life is supposed, on Nietzsche’s view, to inform normative ethics. I argue that he endorses a broad sort of eudaimonism according to which (i) considerations of overall wellbeing on the individual agent provide that agent with overriding reason to act and (ii) a full-fledged ethical system of the sort he envisions (a “healthy morality”) would craft determinate programs of moral education designed to develop traits within agents disposing her to realize health and growth given her determinate biological, psychological, and social circumstances.