The loneliest practices
I suppose Mishawaka could have another deep-freeze, what with it’s being April, but I’ve begun cutting the grass again. A week after the first mowing, the lawn has regrown so quickly that it looks like a jungle. Mowing is much easier this year, now that (a) I know better what I’m doing, and (b) I’m in better physical condition.
As my mower chews up the cud, I can’t help but to ruminate over After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. His theory of the virtues depends, in part, on the notion of a practice, which he defines as
I wonder if J.M. Coetzee is having a little fun with this statement when, in Summertime, he writes of himself –
I take it that if laying brick isn’t a practice but architecture is, then mowing the lawn isn’t a practice but lawnscaping is. (Surely, what Hank Hill and his neighbors do is a practice.) So, perhaps I’m engaged in a practice when (a) mowing “begins to take on its own pleasure” – when I derive satisfaction from going in straight lines, not damaging the grass, etc. – and (b), what arguably is more important for MacIntyre, I ask friends for advice about how to cut the grass.
More likely, though, for MacIntyre, what I’m doing is not a practice. This is because, for the most part, it’s only incidentally cooperative. I very well could mow my lawn (lay brick, etc.) – mindful of “goods internal to that form of activity” – in drastic isolation. To a considerable extent, because of COVID and because of who I am and the society in which I live, I have no other option than to realize these goods in isolation.
This is what Coetzee does when he lays concrete; this is what Coetzee’s Michael K does when he gardens clandestinely – at night, on an abandoned farm in the countryside (where “there is time for everything”). This, mostly, is what I do when I mow the lawn or study philosophy or the Bible. This is what my life has come to – where it was headed all along.
As my mower chews up the cud, I can’t help but to ruminate over After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. His theory of the virtues depends, in part, on the notion of a practice, which he defines as
any coherent and complex form of socially established 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, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.By way of illustration, MacIntyre says – notoriously – that “bricklaying is not a practice; architecture is.”
I wonder if J.M. Coetzee is having a little fun with this statement when, in Summertime, he writes of himself –
week after week, using a shovel and a wheelbarrow, he mixes sand, stone, cement and water; block after block he pours liquid concrete and levels it. His back hurts, his arms and wrists are so stiff that he can barely hold a pen. Above all the labour bores him. Yet he is not unhappy. … In fact, once he forgets about the time he is giving up, the work begins to take on its own pleasure. There is such a thing as a well-laid slab whose well-laidness is plain for all to see– and when, a little later in the book, he attempts to situate his own slab-laying within a cultural history.
I take it that if laying brick isn’t a practice but architecture is, then mowing the lawn isn’t a practice but lawnscaping is. (Surely, what Hank Hill and his neighbors do is a practice.) So, perhaps I’m engaged in a practice when (a) mowing “begins to take on its own pleasure” – when I derive satisfaction from going in straight lines, not damaging the grass, etc. – and (b), what arguably is more important for MacIntyre, I ask friends for advice about how to cut the grass.
More likely, though, for MacIntyre, what I’m doing is not a practice. This is because, for the most part, it’s only incidentally cooperative. I very well could mow my lawn (lay brick, etc.) – mindful of “goods internal to that form of activity” – in drastic isolation. To a considerable extent, because of COVID and because of who I am and the society in which I live, I have no other option than to realize these goods in isolation.
This is what Coetzee does when he lays concrete; this is what Coetzee’s Michael K does when he gardens clandestinely – at night, on an abandoned farm in the countryside (where “there is time for everything”). This, mostly, is what I do when I mow the lawn or study philosophy or the Bible. This is what my life has come to – where it was headed all along.