Dependent Independents

Last week, people all over the United States celebrated Independence Day, also known as the 4th of July, the latter being the less meaningful name but practically helpful in ensuring that we all celebrate on the same date. Growing up in an Anabaptist tradition that emphasized citizenship in God's kingdom above allegiance to any earthly power, my family primarily celebrated what most Americans celebrate most joyfully on the 4th - that we all get a day off of work! We enjoyed the typical cookout at the park, some ultimate frisbee or soccer, and fireworks in the evening, with little or no mention of the anniversary of our nation's Declaration of Independence from Britain over 200 years prior.

I'm not suggesting that I ever had a problem with that approach, as anyone who knows me well would testify. I've struggled with the idea of patriotism in the life of a Christian almost as long as I can remember. To top it off with some good ole irony from God, I was born on Flag Day. But this 4th of July, in light of my recent reading of Alasdair MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals, my thoughts turned to the nature of independence, dependence, and the relationship between the two.

Thomas Jefferson understood that you can't have one without the other. In the Declaration of Independence, he asserts that "these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown". But he ends the document with these words, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." While Jefferson declared collective independence of the States from Britain, he also proclaimed mutual dependence on the individual level.

In Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre observes that much of Western philosophy has developed around the idea that a fully flourishing human being is one who has achieved the state of being an independent rational thinker. He does not dispute this view but shows that is an incomplete picture. Through brilliant observation and argument (I will only scratch the surface of it), he explains how we are constantly dependent on the people around us, most notably anyone in authority over us, to develop into flourishing independent rational thinkers.

What does it mean to be an independent rational thinker? MacIntyre says that the transformation involves the cultivation of three capabilities. First is the ability to evaluate our reasons for action. Second is the ability to distance ourselves from our present desires. And third is the ability to imagine alternative realistic futures. Interestingly enough, none of these abilities can be attained without deliberate intervention from outside sources (parents, teachers, pastors, coaches, etc.) during the course of our development.

MacIntyre provides insightful descriptions of what the failure to train these capabilities looks like an adult. "One danger is that those who have failed to become sufficiently detached from their own immediate desires, for whom desire for their and the good has not become to a sufficient degree overriding, are unlikely to recognize this fact about themselves. And so what they present to themselves as a desire for their own good and for the good may in fact be and often enough is some unacknowledged form of infantile desire, a type of desire that has been protected from evaluative criticism. Hence in deliberating they both reason from unsound premises and act from badly flawed motivation."

He also speaks in regard to the failure to train the ability to imagine alternative realistic futures. "Educational failure in this respect can be of two contrasting kinds. On the one hand, it can produce a constriction of the sense of possibility through the inculcation of false beliefs about how far our lives are determined by uncontrollable circumstances. On the other it can encourage a giving way to self-indulgent phantasy which blurs the difference between realistic expectation and wishful thinking. And either of these will render us defective practical reasoners."

Upon my initial readings of these descriptions, I immediately began to identify the people I know who fit into these categories. "Yes, what's her face always thinks that she is acting for the good of the whole when it is obvious to everyone else that she is blindingly selfish." Or "So and so has such an unrealistic view of himself and what he's capable of accomplishing." Of course, I sobered a bit when I realized that part of the curse of defective reasoning is lack of self-awareness, which means that there are likely defects in my own reasoning about myself of which I am currently unaware and need other people to bring to my attention.

In addition, many of the people whom I identified as defective practical reasoners are also people in whose lives I hold some measure of influence. In a coaching context, I have a select group of women who are entrusted to my care for a season. Part of my job is to teach them the game of volleyball but I am also responsible for assisting them in the transition from child to adult, the very transition that MacIntyre is discussing. The fact that some of them have not made the transition successfully is evidence of a collective failure, in which I play a part. As MacIntyre says, "The history of the self making this transition is of course not only a history of that particular self, but also a history of those particular others whose presence or absence, intervention or lack of intervention, are of crucial importance in determining how far the transition is successfully completed."

In order to continue on my journey of development as an independent rational thinker and to help others along the same path, I need a set of virtues. Specifically, I need, among others, "the risk-taking and patience of courage, justice in assigning tasks and praise, the temperateness required for discipline, the cheerful wit of an amiable will." In some ways as a coach, I am a less influential and less significant version of a parent, for whom MacIntyre has specific directions. "(Parents) have to make the object of their continuing care and their commitment this child, just because it is their child for whom and to whom they are uniquely responsible. Secondly, their initial commitment has to be in important respects unconditional. ... 'However things turn out, I will be there for you.' And thirdly, although it is the fact that it is their child that makes this child their responsibility, it is the needs of the child, and not their own needs in relationship to the child that have to be paramount. And all three aspects of the relationship involve a systematic refusal to treat the child in a way that is proportional to its qualities and aptitudes."

The challenge that I've received from MacIntyre's work is twofold. First, I must learn to view myself not merely as an independent rational thinker but as someone who is simultaneously dependent and independent. My ability to function and reason independently is the direct result of the investment and care of other people throughout my life, particularly but not limited to my most formative stages. As MacIntyre says, "There is no point in our development towards and in our exercise of independent practical reasoning at which we cease altogether to be dependent on particular others."

Secondly, I have a responsibility to tend to my own development of the virtues, so that my relationships with others will aid and not deter them in the process of becoming an independent reasoner. "To participate in this network of giving and receiving as the virtues require, I have to understand that what I am called upon to give may be quite disproportionate to what I have received and that those to whom I am called upon to give may well be those from whom I shall receive nothing." I must be able to recognize a need and give well out of the virtues of courage, justice, temperateness and cheerfulness.

This year as I celebrate my own independence and that of our country, I do it with an acknowledgement of our mutual dependence on each other, a sense of gratitude for everyone whose giving has allowed me to develop into some form of an independent rational thinker, and an awareness of my own participation and responsibility within the network of giving and receiving.

By Ruth