This is a wonderful talk/essay. It is clear, concise, and insightful. I found it inspiring. I especially like the four-parts of a practicing life: attention, practice, memory, and orientation. You said, “orientation means a person’s basic attitude, beliefs, and commitments.” Would you expand on this? Is it the same as “rightly ordered?” This is a concern for me because I seem to see people who have a life-practice with these four parts that is oriented toward values and goals that I think are disordered. For example, those who practice greed or those who consider empathy and compassion as vices. How do we know when we are oriented rightly? Thank you.
Yes, I think "rightly ordered" works here, though as you say sorting out what this is can itself be a source of difficulty and confusion. I think somewhere in between orientation and attention there is something like a moral intuition—a practice of self-examination, in the individual—but also an acceptance of guidance from teachers and traditions that can help us along the way of this type of clarification. (And philosophy, of course, should leave no stone unturned in its dialectical examination of both intuitions in traditions.)
Adam,
This is a wonderful talk/essay. It is clear, concise, and insightful. I found it inspiring. I especially like the four-parts of a practicing life: attention, practice, memory, and orientation. You said, “orientation means a person’s basic attitude, beliefs, and commitments.” Would you expand on this? Is it the same as “rightly ordered?” This is a concern for me because I seem to see people who have a life-practice with these four parts that is oriented toward values and goals that I think are disordered. For example, those who practice greed or those who consider empathy and compassion as vices. How do we know when we are oriented rightly? Thank you.
Yes, I think "rightly ordered" works here, though as you say sorting out what this is can itself be a source of difficulty and confusion. I think somewhere in between orientation and attention there is something like a moral intuition—a practice of self-examination, in the individual—but also an acceptance of guidance from teachers and traditions that can help us along the way of this type of clarification. (And philosophy, of course, should leave no stone unturned in its dialectical examination of both intuitions in traditions.)
👍🙂