Daniel Grasso

Christian communities are often discussed as communities of faith. In this article I consider how they are also communities of hope. Hope is highly relevant to communal flourishing as the theological virtue of hope aims at one’s ultimate postmortem well-being. Yet, authors such as Augustine and Aquinas have described the theological virtue of hope as being for one’s own eternal flourishing. Thus, theological hope can appear to be too solipsistic and otherworldly to contribute to communal flourishing in this world; however, I argue that theological hope can overcome these two difficulties. First, I show how theological hope is inherently interpersonal and social given its reliance on God. I then explain how hope contributes to the flourishing of Christians and Christian communities in this life. While much could be said about the benefits of hope, I only argue for two such benefits: 1). Hope helps us strike the balance of appropriate human agency in relation to God and others, avoiding prideful and slothful presumption and,2) hope encourages us to strive for greater flourishing through the virtue of magnanimity. In short, I argue that Christians and Christian communities go further in flourishing when they hope together.

The aim of this article is to trace a specific influence from Immanuel Kant to Fyodor Dostoevsky, through Friedrich Schiller. I do so by utilizing Anton Barba-Kay’s arguments about Schiller’s philosophical reactions to Kant’s moral and aesthetic philosophies. Barba-Kay argues that Kant’s moral maxim of duty raises a problem of “aesthetic visibility,” opening an epistemic gap between external action and internal intention. In response to this widening gap between the external and the internal, Schiller does what Kant refused to do and combines the moral with the aesthetic. In reaction to Kant, Schiller posits two moral/aesthetic types: “Grace” and “Dignity.” After showing the general influence Schiller had on Dostoevsky, I show how these two Schillerian moral/aesthetic types play central roles in The Brothers Karamazov. I close by showing one literary technique Dostoevsky uses to overcome the problem of aesthetic visibility which Barba-Kay fears.

This paper engages the ongoing debate around the possibility of virtue friendships in the Aristotelian sense through online mediation. However, I argue that since the current literature has remained overly focused on the mere possibility of virtual friendship, it has obscured the more common phenomena of using digital communication to sustain previous in-person friendships which are now at a distance. While I agree with those who argue that entirely virtual friendship is possible, I argue that the current rebuttals to the objections regarding embodiment are lacking. We can see this more clearly when we shift our consideration to more ordinary cases of virtual friendship. I discuss this problem of disembodiment by engaging with an interpretive issue of Aristotle’s “living together” which has played a key role in the current literature. I then turn to expand the current debate by examining how physical absence, disembodiment, and the technology we use to overcome such disembodiment, shapes and impacts friendships at a distance. In short, I explore the tendencies of technology of which virtual friends ought to be aware. I argue that even though virtual virtue friendships are possible via technology, the medium makes it harder and limits the possible experiences within friendships. Even if we overcome these tendencies, technologically mediated virtue friendships require more discipline for a diminished experience. While these limitations and extra disciplines in no way make virtual friendship unimportant, I argue that the fullest possible virtual friendship will be lesser than the fullest possible traditional friendship.