Jungsuk Lee is a Ph.D. student at UCLA, whose research focuses on ancient Greek philosophy and ethics. Especially, Aristotle’s and Neo-Aristotelian ethics. He is currently working on a dissertation that explores the relationship between the rational and the non-rational part of the soul in Aristotle.
What is your favorite thing that you’ve written?
Rather strangely, it is a paper that I wrote when I was an undergrad. The paper was about how certain contexts and ways in which music is listened to can affect its aesthetic norms. Of course, it is much clumsier than my more recent writings, is flawed at multiple levels, and doesn’t even make a particularly deep philosophical point. Still, I like it for its spirit. Not knowing anything about pragmatic considerations such as “industry standards”, what is trendy, what kind of paper is publishable, etc., I simply followed the lead of the question that intrigued me and tried to go as far as I could. So despite all its flaws, the authenticity I see in the paper makes me cherish it (as well as the person I was then). While I know that one cannot live simply by such naïveté alone as long as one has chosen to do philosophy as a full-time job, I think it is equally true that without it you can only go so far. So for me, the paper is a kind of personal reminder of an attitude that I sometimes have difficulty maintaining due to the pressure that comes from professionalism.
What are you working on right now?
I am working on several projects that might come under the heading of the relationship between the rational and the non-rational part of the soul in Aristotle, or the nature of the calculative part of the soul (to logistikon), attainment of whose excellences (e.g., technē and phronēsis) seem to require an interesting kind of refinement of the non-rational part and its harmony with the rational part.
More specifically, one paper/dissertation chapter I’m working on discusses in what sense Aristotelian recollection is a sort of reasoning despite its associative basis and why the recollective faculty is said to go naturally (phusei) with the deliberative one (the paper will be delivered at this coming APA Pacific Division Meeting, by the way). Another one attempts to show ways in which teaching for practical wisdom and habituation for character-virtues are supposed to be intertwined with each other in order to make sense of the unity of virtues thesis (part of this was presented at the last APA Central).
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
Two things come to my mind immediately just because they have to do with the projects I’ve been working on. (1) Aspects of rationality that cannot be adequately explained if we take (especially explicit and deductive) inference to be the paradigm case in terms of which to think about it: one example would be the process (e.g., habituation) through which our conception of something gets acquired or expanded. I don’t think every aspect of such a process can be captured in terms of inference. Reason’s role seems essential in acquiring and expanding concepts as well as in reasoning from thoughts constituted by them. (2) The place for past-directed activities in our understanding of practical rationality: If we think of practical reason primarily as a deliberative capacity in virtue of which to decide what to do, it is kind of natural to lose sight of ways in which we engage with the past as a rational agent whose existence is temporally extended. But I think simple considerations that there are indeed things that we can do about the past and that the assessment of action is impossible without reference to a wider temporal context in which it is located suffice to show the need to overcome such a tendency.
What is your favorite film of all time? Why? To whom would you recommend them?
Poetry, directed by Chang-Dong Lee. It is a film that so strongly resonates with me that I even ended up making an audacious attempt to discuss it in my term paper for a seminar on Kant’s third critique. I believe it addresses so many philosophically interesting topics in a particularly illuminating way: the role of aesthetic experience in ethical life, the relationship between love and understanding, and the kind of happiness that doesn’t compete with morality but rather requires it as its constitutive part, to name a few. It is simply an extraordinarily beautiful (but sad) film that I would recommend to anyone who appreciates the kind of films that make you think.
Which books have changed your life? In what ways?
Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, and Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. These are the books that I happened to run into in my senior year at high school thanks to a friend who wanted to show off his intellectual profundity. Of course, I understood almost nothing about what was said in them, not to mention that I wasn’t aware of the interesting combination of the analytic and the continental tradition (such combination has been recurring throughout my philosophical journey ever since then, for better or worse). Still, they deeply intrigued me (it was much more interesting than the painful drill for the Korean SAT that bugged, and is still bugging, most Korean high school seniors, at least), and made me decide to major in philosophy at college. In that sense, their influence on my life is indeed great.
When did you last sing to yourself, or to someone else?
Today! My car is my own private karaoke.
What time of day are you most productive and creative?
Productive: at night, when my daughters are asleep. Creative: when doing the dishes.
Which super power would you like to have?
The ability to read and write super fast. Or alternatively, the ability to endure without sleeping very much. (Yes, I’m a student and a parent…)
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
