Andres' 5th Comment

Reflecting upon our presentation, I feel it went well. I think our aims of investigating whether idleness is a virtue, as introduced by Katarina, were reasonably well met. We offered arguments for concepts of idleness that we may indeed find virtuous, and extracted these from versions that we may find much more difficult to value, e.g. laziness (Helen and Emma). We offered arguments centring on the ways in which the vice of idleness may be captured in terms of its conceived effects upon both individual and societal advancement (Oliver). And finally, we delved to a more fundamental level, to take a look at what the prerequisites might be for the very possibility of holding idleness as a virtue (myself - Andres).

At the end of the presentation, I think we defended well against the attack made that the conclusion, from myself, contradicted the prior arguments for and against idleness as a virtue: the sense of our being free to choose to value or not value idleness is an illusion; an illusion that is only revealed as such through prolonged contemplation. But, whenever we step back out of that artificial mode - the philosopher's ivory tower - and into the reality, as it were, of our lived moral experience, it becomes just that - reality. And at the level of our moral reality, forged as it is by a plurality of moral traditions, we find ourselves compelled to articulate reasons for holding the values we do.