Teaching Responsibility

0

Ischomachus’ wife: “My mother told me that my job was to be responsible.”
Ischomachus: “Yes, my dear, of course, my father gave me the same advice.”
Xenophon, The Estate Manager, VII

Her parents told her to be responsible. And his told him. We can presume the parents did more to teach responsibility than just give advice. Forming children to be responsible is a, if not the, central task in parenting. ‘Being responsible’ here means taking ownership and being careful to do one’s part, for the sake of the common good. To learn to be responsible one must be given responsibility. In pre-industrial-revolution households many things needed for human life were produced. …

Read more of this Wednesday Quote with commentary at Bacon from Acorns

Previous articleVisit Michigan
Next articleThe Gates of Hell
John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is baconfromacorns.com.

Exit mobile version