This week's lesson in Pigliucci and Lopez is about objects of desire, specifically substituting objects of desire within your control for objects of desire that are not in your control. The example they give is acquisition of a new job. If your desire is a new job, whether you get it or not is outside of your control. The decision to hire you or not to hire you is the purview of the hiring committee (or hiring manager). But what is under your control is making yourself the best possible candidate for the job that you can be. If your desire is to take the steps that are needful to make yourself the best possible candidate, then you will improve your odds of being hired and also have the satisfaction of reaching your goal whether you're hired or not.

This reminds me to no small extent of the prayer of St. Francis. Rather than desiring to be loved, the object of our desire should be to make ourselves into the best possible lover.

O Divine Master, grant that I may
Not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it's in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it's in dying that we are born to Eternal Life

The fit is not exact. If we follow the example laid out by Pigliucci and Lopez, the goal would not to be the best possible lover. Rather the goal would be to make oneself the best possible candidate for being loved.

I have doubts about both.

I do think it an important part of human development to become the best possible lover to those whom you love. I also think it's an, albeit lesser, important part of human development to become someone who is easy to be loved by others. But at the end of the day it seems to me that there are certain virtues and needs of the human person that should be desired that our outside of our control. Being loved, justice, quality, virtue are some of the things that are ultimately outside of our control.

Take Aristotle's assessment of courage in The Ethics. One can school and train oneself to have the fullness of potential for courage but if one never happens to encounter a chain of events where courage is required then one never actually exhibits the virtue of courage. Would this mean that in the Stoic system acquisition of virtue is not something we should desire? Rather we should only desire the potential to be virtuous? That seems like it doesn't fit Stoic ethics to me.

The upshot is that I'm not sold on the idea that it is fully conducive to only desire that which we have full control over.

Nevertheless, I think it clear that in some cases - probably most cases - it's clear that we should focs on desiring that which is in our control. Even if there is a class of objects of desire (justice, virtue, etc.) that is outside of our control, that doesn't mean that for most objects of desire, it is far more fitting for us to desire that which is inside of our control.

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