Mark D. White

As I look ahead to 2014—which begins with the program I put together for the Association of Social Economics at the ASSA meetings, including an opening plenary featuring Martha Nussbaum, who I am honored to be introducing—I can't help but look back on the past year. (Having a birthday close to the end of the year doesn't help!)

I'm sorry to report that my outlook has not improved since this time last year or two years ago, the latter linked post being the better statement thereof. My hopes to blog more regularly on 2013 were not realized, and while my writing and publication activity continues apace, I find no more satisfaction in it than I have in the last several years. I have received several positive reviews and compliments on my work recently, as well as some flattering (and surprising) citations, that help me see the value in what I have written, but they have not proven helpful in motivating me to write more. No news here, I'm afraid… but I will press on. (By the way, just before posting this I happened to read this week-old "The Stone" column by Todd May—very interesting.)

Anyhoo… what have I been doing over the past two months since my last post?

• A few weeks were spent reviewing page proofs and constructing the index for The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero, which is now scheduled for publication in early February (thanks to the snap editorial and production team at Wiley Blackwell). If you go all clicky on the link above you'll see the generous endorsements I received from two of my favorite Cap writers, Mark Waid and J.M. DeMatteis, as well as my good friend Bill Irwin of the Blackwell Philosophy and Popular Culture Series—I couldn't be happier about all three.
• Work continues (slowly) on my other book projects (discussed in previous posts), plus a new one, currently under review: an edited book on law and social economics drawn from the law-related sessions in the ASE program for the 2014 ASSA meetings mentioned above.
• I have signed to write an entry on the lex talionis ("an eye for an eye") for the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics for Springer (though the exact format and content has yet to be determined).
• I plan to write a paper on externalities for a special issue of the journal Oeconomia, based on my brief discussion of the topic in Kantian Ethics and Economics (pp. 126-130).
• I didn't manage to blog much, but I did post two new things at Psychology Today: "Are the Self-Loathing Also Self-Centered?" (November 26) and "Can a Little Jealousy Be Good for the Self-Loathing?" (December 27). (More about Psychology Today at the end of this post.)
• Finally, and most interesting, I spoke with the editor of a forthcoming academic volume on one of my favorite comics storylines about contributing a chapter. I have had no luck writing in a scholarly format about comics despite several sincere attempts—a frustration I hope to address in an upcoming post for The Comics Professor—but this editor and I arrived at an approach I think will work. (More on this as it comes to fruition.)
• It's not French GQ, but on December 8 I was mentioned in a New York Times article on nudges (based, I assume, on this spiked article). No, I'm neither of the handsome blokes on the front page, and my name is not mentioned until page 4 of the online version. But nonetheless, it was an appreciated nod.

Finally, in their December 2013 issue, Psychology Today was kind enough to print an edited version of a letter I sent editor (and friend) Hara Estroff Marano in response to their October 2013 cover article "When Virtue Becomes Vice" by Mary Loftus. The printed version appears to the right (curiously, with no mention that I blog for them), and the more complete version (excerpted from my original email) follows:

I just read the new cover story, and I must say I'm very disappointed. I find the usage of the terms "virtue" and "vice" to be profoundly misleading when discussing beneficial or nonbeneficial character traits with no moral context besides egoistic pursuits. I know PT is a psychology magazine and not a philosophy magazine, and I realize that psychologists have written a wealth of insightful material on character traits and personality, often using the words "virtues" to describe them. But to pair the terms virtue and vice, which together have a completely different connotation, not only in philosophy but also in common usage, is very troubling. 
 
To add insult to injury, many of the points in the article — which are portrayed as insights on the part of the author or the scholars cited therein — are basic elements from virtue ethics 101. For instance, the author repeatedly points out that virtues can be taken too far; in Aristotle, virtues are defined as the mean between two extremes (for instance, courage is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice). (The related claim that "every virtue contains its own vice," however, while quaint in a yin-yang sort of way, is wildly inaccurate.) The author also emphasizes that not every virtue has the same effect in different circumstances; likewise, Aristotle emphasized the importance of context in practicing virtues, which requires phronesis (practical wisdom or judgment). In the effect, the author is appropriating the language of virtue ethics and then restating its basic tenets as if they were new discoveries rather than the ancient wisdom they truly are.