Eunice Belgum's Akrasia Project - Links and podcasts

Who was Eunice Belgum?   

Eunice Belgum was a Montana girl, in the matriarchal line, daughter of  Esther Holberg, of Fairfield, MT.  She was a Westinghouse  Scholarship recipient, a graduate of St. Olaf's, with a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard.   And she killed herself after her second year of tenure track teaching at William and Mary (her first job was at Trinity College in Connecticut) - after being voted Teacher of the Year, or some such thing.

Even after gaining a large following among young feminists,  peace and justice people, etc., she was sure that she didn't deserve it.  She had "the imposter complex".   Her "self-concept" did not match her reality.   Along with medical ethics (some published in the Harvard Law Review), her main work and life obsession was something called "Akrasia" - knowing better but doing the worse. 

Akrasia has a long history in philosophy as one of those questions that don't get solved.  Psychology has had better luck explaining various kinds of self-destructive behavior.  But Eunice's PhD Thesis at Harvard was later re-published as one of the 50 best Harvard Philosophy Theses of the  20th century.   I  have a copy of it, and I was just lamenting this morning that she didn't simply write her own "account" of this problem, rather than "researching" what every white dead male in history had already written about it.  Unfortunately, that is the nature of the academic game.  

Esther was very free about discussing Eunice's "death", and was active in survivors and suicide prevention groups.  Eunice smoked, and was unable to quit, so that was kind of a metaphor for her own "Akrasia."  And she seemed to have become a lesbian, which Esther blamed on "radical feminists" who used guilt and other illicit methods to "convert" Eunice to their "cause" (which rather astonished me, but these were people who grew up in the 1930's and  '40's.  Eunice would be 67, now - a year older than I and a year ahead in school).  

I wrote some poems and other things and showed them to Esther, hoping she would pursue the idea of writing her own book about Eunice, which she intended to do.  One I remember was called "The Will to Suicide", which I'll try to locate and attach, later.  

The Peace Movement in Great Falls

As major agents and promoters of the Peace Movement (especially Beyond War, the Sanctuary Movement, and other Peace and Justice projects) in the Nuclear Garrison Town of Great Falls, the Belgums' work and values were not especially welcome to the  "Base Boosters" and Nuclear Mafia which  largely control our town and even the whole state (we have an army general as Lt. Governor at the moment).  Joe was from North Dakota and a graduate of North Dakota State, which didn't help much, either.  Esther had attended the Normal School in Dillon, and taught at Greenfields School (part of the Fairfield district), where she met Joe, who was  doing a Lutheran minister internship, or something.  Pastor Lunde, who was based in Great Falls and confirmed my father and aunts, was also Esther's pastor.

It's important to note that Eunice's uncle, David Belgum was a well-known professor and authority on religious psychology at Iowa, and her father, Joe, was one of the most memorable characters one is likely to meet.  So, with this pedigree and expectations, who can fail to  understand the magnitude of this human tragedy?  Nearly everyone who knew me and/or the Belgum's, apparently, for whom it was a great scandal.

Although I met Prof. David Belgum a couple of times, I never really discussed Eunice with him.  I wish I had.  He was all compassion, and professional in his response to this, but of course family dynamics would have prevented him from intervening, and Joe seemed resentful of his greater success, in any case

I devoted 4 years of my life to their service - literally - starting in 1985,  when I met them at a Beyond War presentation, and house-sat for them.  This was about 7 years after Eunice's death.  I never met her, but read some of her private journals, etc. - all of which have since been destroyed, I think, by her brother - mainly to preserve his parents' (and his own) sanity.  Aside from him, whom I am not in touch with anymore, I might still retain the best overview of this whole bitter drama, and its implications for everything from religion and morality to mental health, political sanity, etc.  Eunice and I had very similar philosophical interests (as well as sexual identity confusions, family dysfunctionality, being Norwegian-American, etc.)

After Eunice's death (which basically drove Joe mad, and understandably so), the Belgum's retired from Lutheran Social Services, where he was employed in San Francisco, and returned to  Montana, where Esther's deceased mother's home was available.  Esther nearly always worked as a teacher and school counselor - an even greater burden (considering the outcome for her daughter), but one which she was trained to handle, and did quite well with it.  

The main thing, for these devoutly Christian people, was whether or not Eunice had lost her faith (which several of her friends assured me she had, but Esther didn't think so), and if she had, whether or not Universal Salvation would still apply.  That, of course, was Esther's view, while Joe knew in his heart that his beloved daughter was utterly damned.  And so they fought and blamed each other incessantly, and had done so all along, which might have been the most significant factor in Eunice's decision to "end the pain."  

Universal salvation was actually the basis for a small sect in New England called "Universalism,"  which later merged with the Unitarians - they are now "U-U's".  And the Founder of Great Falls, Paris Gibson, was a Universalist, and a serious one - a fact which is rarely noted or understood in local history and lore.  Lutheran doctrine, it should be noted, is strongly against Universal Salvation, where you must somehow "earn" or "deserve" God's Grace in order to be saved.  It's the difference between welfare and workfare, I suppose.  

Or  more to the point, the difference between "universal health care"  and the "health insurance" extortion and protect racket, where all you're buying is ACCESS to the care, after which they can still take your house, pension, and every other piece of property in your name to satisfy their fraudulent claims for minimal or palliative treatments, at a price of thousands of dollars per day, and send you to the poorhouse.  

Since our local hospitals were established as Christian institutions, the importance of ethics in medicine has been thoroughly undermined by the "secular humanists" and their "business plan" for political control and directing revenues to Wall Street and the power-wielding 1%.  A Harvard tradition, it would seem.  

Many highly accomplished (and ethical) people are driven to despair, if not suicide, when they finally  come to understand just how totally criminal nearly everything our "benevolent" welfare/warfare state has become, and how it throttles and destroys all human values in the name of "efficiency", "jobs," and "national  security."  

I'll be writing more on this, and inviting feedback.  

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Here's a brief bibliography of information and links about Eunice Belgum and the endowed lectures in her name at St. Olaf's.

Amazon lists the version of her dissertation that I have.

http://www.amazon.com/Eunice-Belgum/e/B001KHYGRK


Eunice Belgum Memorial Lectures
Each year for three decades the department has sponsored the Belgum Lectures, which honor the memory of Eunice Belgum, who graduated from St. Olaf College in 1967. The lecture series was established in the hope that Eunice’s tragic death in 1977 would not end her impact on the profession, teaching, and scholarship she loved so much.  While the lectures may be on any topic, the philosophy department makes a special effort to choose topics in areas of special interest to Eunice, namely ethics, philosophy of mind, and feminism.  These lectures are supported by a fund established by Eunice’s family and friends.

http://wp.stolaf.edu/philosophy/eunice-belgum-memorial-lectures-podcasts/

35th Annual Eunice Belgum Memorial Lectures
"Character"
Daniel Robinson, Oxford University
Monday, September 23, 2013 
Viking Theater, Buntrock Commons
More Information
http://stolaf-web.streamguys.us/podcast/academic/2013-09-23_belgum_two.mp3
MP3 Available

Previous Belgum Lectures
1979    Kathryn Pyne Parsons, Not Judge, Not Victim, Nor Savior
1980    Dagfinn Føllesdal, Understanding and Rationality
1981    Gareth B. Matthews, Conceiving Childhood
1982    Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness
1983    Georg Henrik Von Wright, Truth, Knowledge, and Freedom
1984    Naomi Scheman, Authority and Paranoia: The Social Construction of Gender and the Philosophical Self
1985    Merold Westphal, The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism
1986    Kenneth Sayre, Myths for Our Technological Future
1987    Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Social Philosophy
1988    Laurence Thomas, Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character
1989    Keith Gunderson, The Aesthetic Robot
1990    Allan Gibbard, Moral Meanings
1991    Nancy Sherman, Virtue and Ethics
1992    Arthur Caplan, Ethics and the Genetic Revolution
1993    Amelie Rorty, The Many Faces of Morality
1994    Helen Longino, Scientific Knowledge and Feminist Theoretical Virtues
1995    Georges Rey, Superficialism about Mind and Meaning
1996    Gary Iseminger, Aestheticism: Defined and Defended
1997    Hilary Putnam, Mind, Matter, and Making Sense
1998    Jean Bethke Elshtain, How Far Have We Fallen?
1999    James Harris, After Relativism
2000    Stephen Darwall, Two Dogmas of Empiricism in Ethics
2001    Lydia Goehr, Listening, Laughing, and Learning
2002    Frederick Stoutland, How To Believe in Free Will
2003    Margaret Urban Walker, Forgiveness and Moral Repair
2004    Bas van Fraassen, Seeing and Measuring: Connecting
            Science to Experience
2005    Jonathan Lear, Ethics and the Collapse of Civilization
2006    Galen Strawson, Episodic Ethics
2007    Julia Annas, Virtue and Happiness
2008    Barbara Herman, Making Motives Matter
2009    Elliott Sober, Philosophical Reflections on Darwin
2010    Thomas Carson, Lincoln’s Ethics
2011     Rachel Cohen, Hume on Virtuous Action and Character
2012     Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons: What We Are and How We Persist in Time
2013     Daniel Robinson, Consciousness, Again and Character