Virtue Quest

While surfing the internet, I stumbled across this:
Australia is the most sinful nation on earth!

Hat tip to Mark, who is currently in Australia, to the envy of us all!

I’m having problems with my netbook, so I’m posting this from another computer.

I apologize to anyone who has sent me an email, or who expected an email from me, in the past couple days. Also, I don’t think I’ll be able to post regularly till I get this sorted out.

Hopefully, today or tomorrow! Meanwhile, pray for me and my microchips!

UPDATE!
Everything seems to be up and running again. Thanks for the prayers and the patience!

Open me!

I had a great conversation with a friend this morning. She pointed out to me that none of us choose to be here – either in the sense of being born in the first place, or where we happen to be in a job or family or what not. My situation in life is not something I have much control over, and most of it I have absolutely no control over.

And I realized that, till recently anyway, I have been harboring resentment about that. It made me feel powerless and frustrated. I wanted more control. I wanted to be where I chose to be, rather than where I was.

But there’s another way of looking at it: my life, and my situation in life is a gift. It’s both a gift to me, in that there is a great deal of good – comfort, love, friendship, and so on – in my life; and it’s a gift to others, in that I have good things to give to the people I encounter every day.

Yep, I’m God’s gift to the world.

But then again, so is everyone else. You’re God’s gift to me, for example. So it’s not that big a deal.

Anyway, I just realize that I need to shift my attitude from resentment, which is focused on what I don’t have, to gratitude, which is focused on what I do have. And that’s more realistic anyway: what I do have is real, but what I don’t have is a product of my imagination.

I crashed pretty hard after work yesterday, probably a combination of mild sleep deprivation and just the stress of playing an extrovert all day. Anyway, here’s yesterday’s inventory:

• Got up about 8am
• prayed about ten minutes in the morning, another fifteen in the evening
• worked about seven hours, with an hour commute each way
• played cribbage with my parents; got skunked by Mom
• read for about half an hour
• walked 2700+ steps
• crashed early, about 9:30 I think

Today was the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas! May he bless us all with his prayers for wisdom.

• Slept in till almost 9:00
• Prayed, don’t know for how long
• Yes, Tammie, I made my bed!
• Played cribbage with my dad
• Did some research for my other job
• Received a shipment of nummy books
• Had a couple good conversations with friends
• Made dinner for and watched a movie (“The International”) with a good friend
• Wrote a post for Virtue Quest
• Got some reading in
• Will make it to bed by midnight, probably asleep by 12:15

I read books three or four at a time, often at starts and stops, and I take forever to get to the end of one. But I read this book in about a month and a half – which is lightning speed for me. Part of that is due to Kreeft’s simple, even homey writing style. Part is due to his straight-forward organization. And part, I admit, is due to my frustration with his approach: I just wanted to get the durned thing done with.

A Christian morality

Now, I’m a Catholic myself and I have no problem with a book on a Catholic approach to the moral life, using scripture as its structure and stories of saints for examples. It’s just not quite what I’m most interested in, so I found myself growing impatient. I wanted a deep treatment of classical (i.e., Greek) virtue ethics; instead I got a comparison of the Beatitudes with the seven deadly sins.

That’s fine. I learned (I hope) a little patience, and I also learned a little more clearly what my own interest is and where I focus. I’m interested in the basic human side of ethics or morality. I’m focused on what fundamental assumptions are necessary for people to live morally with one another.

Or, at least, I’m focused on what fundamental assumptions I need to change in myself so that I can live morally in this world.

Kreeft, however, has practicing Christians as his target audience. His main purpose is to encourage, and also to give context to the struggles that Christians face in their personal and public lives. And that brings me to the two aspects of his book that I absolutely loved.

Virtue in the public sphere

The entire first section of the book describes the relationship between personal virtue and social morality. Granted, he does so in more melodramatic terms than I would choose, but he was writing in the mid-eighties, when the threat of nuclear annihilation loomed large. Still, he connected the dots between a virtuous person and a virtuous culture, and that is no mean feat.

He gives a four-part analysis of any ethical system. All approaches to human behavior follow the same pattern:

1. The problem – what is wrong with the world?
2. The cause of the problem
3. The solution – what the world ought to be like
4. The cause of the solution – that is, the way to make things better

This structure applies to individuals as well as to the human race as a whole, and to communities of any size in between. He then contrasts various philosophical and religious systems, pointing out the limitations of each. Essentially, an error in the first, second or third stage leads to problems in the fourth.

Virtue can be fun!

The other point he makes is that a virtuous approach to life should be, well, lively. It’s not about dour or tedious “thou shalt not’s.” Rather, it’s about finding the fulness of life, the expression of human nature in its entirety.

In other words, virtue leads to freedom, joy, peace, and happiness. If it didn’t, well, what would be the point?

• Woke around 7:20
• Spent 15 minutes in dedicated prayer
• Worked for 7-1/2 hours
• Commuted 2 hours
• Had a conversation with my boss from another job
• Watched about 1-1/2 hours of TV (mostly “Leverage”)
• Walked 4300+ steps
• Wrote a blog post for this site and the other one
• Ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner – just for you, Kelly!
• Caught up on some email
• Hopefully, will make it to bed by midnight

Sometimes words can hinder clear communication as much as they help it.

I’ve seen many commentators, on this blog and elsewhere, object to the phrase “intrinsically evil” with reference to torture. So I’d like to try to translate and/or clarify what this phrase really means.

Evil

From a philosophical point of view, evil is not a thing itself. Rather, evil is the twisting or destruction or denial of a good thing. Evil must have a good thing to distort; it cannot exist as a separate thing, any more than “big” can exist without some thing to be large.

Keeping that in mind, when we call something “evil” or “bad” or “wrong”, what we really mean is that the thing is not what it ought to be. A “bad” apple is one that has rotted, or perhaps one that has not yet ripened. An “evil” deed is one that fails to enact the love or truth which it should.

Intrinsic

It’s understandable to me that some would consider the phrase “intrinsic evil” to be an oxymoron. After all, what’s wrong with the apple is not that it exists; it’s that it lacks the good that it ought to have.

This is also where we get the very sane requirement to love a sinner (because he or she is good, being a creature of God) and to hate the sin (because such actions distort or pervert the goodness of being human).

Now, some evils are accidental. If I step on my co-worker’s toe because I wasn’t watching where I was going, I harm the health of my co-worker and the camaraderie between us; but that is easily remedied by an apology and (if I was wearing my steel-toed boots) an ice pack.

But other evils are actions whose entire purpose is to distort the good. A deliberate lie, for example. Or, if I were to stomp on my co-worker’s toe out of spite. Whatever good thing I might be seeking (safety or advantage or even a vengeful kind of justice) is itself ruined because my action is itself meant to harm. The intention is to attack what is good, such as truth or health, in another.

And this is what “intrinsically evil” conveys: an act with the direct purpose of attacking, distorting, twisting, breaking down, or altogether destroying some good thing. That is, the evil is intrinsic (rooted inside) the action.

Torture

Now, just as human life and human dignity is perhaps the greatest good we have in this life, attacks on human life and dignity are some of the greatest evils.

This is why torture, which directly attacks the dignity of another by physical and mental and spiritual torment, is considered an evil so great that it is absolutely prohibited. It is not an act that one can commit accidentally. It requires someone to twist and distort some part of his or her conscience in order to do it. It is literally inhuman.

Now, I’m happy to concede that there are limits to the usefulness of the phrase “intrinsically evil”. But an objection to the phrase cannot be an excuse for a twisting of one’s conscience to the point that torture becomes an acceptable practice, under any circumstances.

Cross-posted from Coalition for Clarity.

I've got a little list!

Okay, here’s something new I’m trying. I’m going to publish a sort of diary or inventory of my days. No commentary of my own, no comparison to anyone else. Just a list of what I did.

Feel free to heckle, berate, or compliment obsequiously, as you will….

On to today:

• Woke at 8:00am
• Read some email; deleted a bunch of old email
• Added a quick post to Coalition for Clarity
• Worked for The Man for 7-1/2 hours
• Commuted for 2 hours (1 hour each way)
• Walked 8000+ steps
• Had a conversation with my mother
• Watched 1 hour of TV (“Men of a Certain Age”)
• Picked up some job leads
• Posted inventory to Virtue Quest
• Will probably make it to bed by 11:00pm

‘Nuff said.

Pure concentrated goodness?

Siobhan asked me if I was ever going to write about anything besides prudence. My short answer is, yes-and-no.

The long answer is that, the way I see it, writing about any one of the virtues really entails writing about them all. Every virtue implies every other, ultimately. The names are simply a matter of focus.

… from a certain point of view…

As far as I know, this approach to virtue is something I made up on my own, so I welcome anybody to correct or refine what I’m saying here.

It seems to me that the virtues are not exactly separate things from each other, but distinct aspects of a virtuous action.

So, any given action – for example, eating a bowl of ice cream (one of my favorite actions!) – can be seen from the perspective of prudence, or justice, or fortitude, or temperance. For that matter, you can look at it from the point of view of faith, or hope, or love.

My thinking is still a bit muddy, but I find the cardinal virtue / theological virtue distinction to be valuable here, showing two major lenses to use in looking at actions.

Cardinal virtues

So, in deciding about eating a bowl of ice cream, one can ask whether it is prudent. That is, is eating ice cream really a good thing for me in my current situation?

One can also ask, is it temperate? That is, are my desires within me in harmony with the truth and facts I’ve prudently discovered? Or, is it courageous? That is, must I overcome obstacles in order to achieve the good that I have prudently discovered?

Finally, one acts. And one asks, is this action just? That is, am I pursuing good in accordance with reality, opposing my false desires and overcoming obstacles?

So, prudence discovers the good; fortitude and temperance clear the way to pursuing that good, one by overcoming external obstacles and the other by opposing internal disorders; and justice acts to pursue the good. All the virtues collaborate in the process of taking action, and any given action is virtuous to the extent that it conforms to all the cardinal virtues.

Theological virtues

I see the theological virtues as a kind of parallel. Faith discovers the good – not merely relying on my own reason, but trusting in the testimony of others. Hope clears the path to the good by putting false desires and external obstacles in proper perspective. And love acts for the good, even by laying down one’s life for one’s beloved.

So the theological virtues build upon the cardinal virtues and express them, not merely from my own individual and human perspective, but from a higher perspective, even a divine perspective.

What about the ice cream?

I understand that the greatest question here may be, “Yeah, but did you eat the ice cream?”

How could you be in any doubt? Ice cream is a form of pure concentrated goodness.

Of course I ate the ice cream!