Resomodernity Café v6: On Notice (The Fourth Ethos)
Sequel to Resomodernity Café v5: The Exposers’ Parlor
Where MacIntyre, Weil and Heidegger define and name the first three ethē, as well as a fourth built on noticing the unnoticeable.
ChatGPT Prompt
Cast
- Alasdair MacIntyre — the tradition-detective
- Simone Weil — the watcher of attention
- Martin Heidegger — the seer of disclosure
Setting
A quiet study. Three chairs in a rough triangle.
A blackboard dusted with old chalk.
Light shifts as if undecided what it wants to illuminate.
I. Naming What Already Is
MacIntyre (standing, chalk in hand)
Let us begin where all rational inquiry must: not with conclusions, but with what is noticed.
What we call disagreement is often merely trained blindness.
Weil (softly, already watching the room)
Then we must name the forms of attention that already govern us.
She writes the first word on the board:
Contemplation
A discipline of attention ordered toward depth.
Weil
This is the Greek–Socratic ethos: reality approached through patient regard.
Truth is not seized, but waited for.
What matters most is what remains when impatience falls away.
(A nod toward theoria and the long schooling of wonder.)
Heidegger (rising abruptly)
Yes—but let us not forget how reality shows itself.
He writes beneath it:
Disclosure
A mode of revealing that determines what can appear at all.
Heidegger
This is the Enlightenment–Scientific ethos.
Not merely a method, but a way beings come forth—as measurable, usable, optimizable.
What is real is what can be brought into standing reserve
(Gestell).
MacIntyre (finally steps forward)
And yet neither contemplation nor disclosure explains why we are answerable.
He writes the third word:
Responsiveness
A life shaped by answerability to goods not of one’s own making.
MacIntyre
This is the Biblical–Moral ethos.
Reality is not neutral; it addresses us.
Rationality here is learned through practice, tradition, and obligation
(tradition-constituted rationality).
II. The Problem Emerges
Weil
Each of these sees something true.
Heidegger
And each hides something essential.
MacIntyre
More precisely: each forgets what it has trained itself not to see.
A pause.
Weil
Contemplation forgets command.
Responsiveness forgets questioning.
Disclosure forgets meaning.
Heidegger
And when any one claims completeness, it becomes dangerous.
III. The Turn
MacIntyre
So the question is not which ethos is correct.
Weil
But how they might become visible to themselves.
Heidegger
And that can occur only through encounter.
A silence long enough to feel deliberate.
IV. The Fourth Ethos
Weil (almost whispering)
There is another discipline—rarer, harder.
Heidegger
Not a new method.
MacIntyre
But a posture toward the limits of posture.
They look at the empty space in the center of the board.
Together, they write:
Notice
The disciplined attention to what one’s own way of seeing cannot see.
V. Defining the Fourth
MacIntyre
This fourth ethos arises only among rivals.
It notices the background assumptions that each tradition treats as obvious.
Weil
It is attention turned sideways—toward absence, silence, marginalia.
Toward what is excluded by efficiency, certainty, or piety
(attention).
Heidegger
It is vigilance toward concealment itself.
A readiness for what resists enframing, even by the noble.
VI. Naming the Set
Weil
Then we have four:
- Contemplation — noticing depth
- Responsiveness — noticing address
- Disclosure — noticing pattern
- Notice — noticing what all the others overlook
MacIntyre
And the fourth is not optional.
Without it, the others harden into ideology.
Heidegger
With it, they remain ways—rather than prisons.
VII. Closing
Weil
We do not notice ourselves directly.
MacIntyre
We notice one another—
Heidegger
—in order to notice ourselves.
They step back from the board.
The chalk remains. No one erases it.
Epilogue
To live “on notice” is not to hover above all ethē, but to dwell humbly among them— awake to what each reveals, and to what each must learn to see.
Appendix: The Three Ethē
Write an Appendix with inline links explaining the first three – and how they invisibly shape how we may think.
ChatGPT Prompt
This appendix explicates the three established ethē named in On Notice, not as abstract philosophies, but as invisible disciplines of attention that quietly govern what feels obvious, rational, or even thinkable.
They do not merely influence what we think.
They shape how thinking itself shows up.
A. Contemplation
(The Greek–Socratic Ethos)
What It Trains Us to Notice
- Depth beneath appearances
- Coherence, form, and contradiction
- What endures when noise subsides
Rooted in classical Greek philosophy—from Socrates through Plato to Aristotle—this ethos treats reality as intelligible and truth as something that discloses itself through patient attention (theoria).
Key concept: Theoria
How It Invisibly Shapes Thinking
- Slowness feels virtuous; haste feels suspect
- Arguments matter more than outcomes
- Insight is prized over effectiveness
Under this ethos, what cannot be contemplated is quietly downgraded. Urgency, command, and brute necessity feel philosophically “impure.”
Its Blind Spot
- Moral interruption
- Historical urgency
- The demand to act before understanding is complete
Contemplation struggles to notice address—that reality might call us now, not after reflection.
B. Responsiveness
(The Biblical–Moral Ethos)
What It Trains Us to Notice
- Command, call, and obligation
- Good and evil as objective realities
- Faithfulness over cleverness
Formed through biblical religion and its moral traditions, this ethos understands reality as something that addresses us first. Meaning precedes explanation; obedience precedes mastery.
Key concepts:
How It Invisibly Shapes Thinking
- Some questions feel disobedient, not neutral
- Wisdom is measured by faithfulness, not originality
- Moral clarity outweighs epistemic doubt
Within this ethos, hesitation can feel like betrayal. The demand to respond crowds out prolonged uncertainty.
Its Blind Spot
- Internal contradiction
- Cultural accretion mistaken for revelation
- The need for critical self-examination
Responsiveness can fail to notice when tradition replaces encounter—a pathology named repeatedly by the biblical prophets themselves (e.g., Isaiah 1).
C. Disclosure
(The Enlightenment–Scientific Ethos)
What It Trains Us to Notice
- Patterns, regularities, and mechanisms
- What can be measured, modeled, or predicted
- Explanatory power and control
Emerging from early modern science and philosophy—especially Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton—this ethos treats knowledge as that which reveals how the world works.
Key concepts:
How It Invisibly Shapes Thinking
- What cannot be quantified feels subjective or secondary
- Efficiency substitutes for wisdom
- Success validates truth
Under this ethos, reality appears as resource. Even humans show up as systems to be optimized.
Its Blind Spot
- Meaning
- Value
- Personhood
As Martin Heidegger warned, disclosure becomes pathological when it forgets it is one way reality appears, not reality itself.
D. The Shared Invisibility
All three ethē:
- Feel obvious from within
- Treat their exclusions as trivial or unreal
- Become dangerous when mistaken for completeness
This is why they cannot fully correct themselves.
Each must be noticed by another ethos in order to notice its own limits.
E. Why the Fourth Ethos Is Necessary
The fourth ethos—Notice—does not replace the first three.
It arises between them.
It trains attention toward:
- Presuppositions
- Silences
- What each ethos must ignore in order to function
Only then do the first three become visible as ethē rather than as “just reality.”
Closing Remark
We do not think freely.
We think as trained noticers.
To live on notice is to remain awake to the ethē that shape us—
and to those we need in order to finally see ourselves.