Is frugality a virtue?

Penelope Trunk, career blogger, continues the great tradition of praising frugality, a virtue that, in America at least, is quite easy to forget.  She argues that frugality enables career flexibility, which certainly resonated with me.  Frugality as a virtue has a long lineage, most interestingly defended in Seneca.  Seneca’s advice was, once every so often, make due with the simplest food, clothes, and entertainment for a day.  His conclusion was that material things, when missing, do not greatly decrease happiness.  (This has since been confirmed by the majority of more scientific happiness research).

Any truly public philosophy in this time and place must concentrate, at least in part, on our struggles against materialism.  A worthy topic for reflection today.

-John

Related posts:

  1. On commuting and value neutrality
  2. Happiness is an elephant
  3. Survey data permanently settles philosophical question

February 2, 2010 · Filed Under John

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  • Editors

    Jacob Bronsther is a law student at NYU, a former Fulbright Scholar to Mauritius, and a graduate of Cornell University. He has an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • Sam Gill is a consultant in Washington and a graduate of the University of Chicago. He studied Political Theory at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

  • Marc Grinberg is a Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. government and a graduate of Princeton University. He earned an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • John Rood is the founder of Next Step Test Preparation and a graduate of Michigan State University. He has an AM in Political Theory from the University of Chicago.

  • Luke Freedman is a student at Carleton College, pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Political Science.


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