Virtue Quest

Just so you know, I’ve been invited to contribute to a new blog, Coalition for Clarity, which is opposing the crime of torture. My first post there is up today!

Also, there’s a link up there on the title bar.

Well, are you?

Matthew Archibold, whom I only know from his blogging, wrote a post entitled “Atheists love you. They just don’t know why.” Therein he describes the impossibility of deriving a transcendent ethic from a materialist worldview. Here’s a snippet:

I have to wonder from what philosophical grounding does Dawkins’ altruism emanate? Why is other human life worth anything if there is no God? From what philosophical groundwork is he basing his good works on? Dawkins, it would seem to me, hasn’t defined his terms and is only borrowing our definition of “good.” Because without our definitions he’d have to ask the question, “What is good without God?” And that’s something I haven’t seen answered yet.

Atheists and agnostics and skeptics – oh my!

Let me say up front that I (partly) agree with Archibold’s conclusion. But I think his reasoning is too muddy to pass muster, and therefore is not very useful.

Aristotle defines good as “that at which all things aim” or, essentially, the object of desire. This is not the hedonist manifesto it first appears to be; rather, it is saying that our desire is like a sense calibrated to detect goodness in the way that our eyes are calibrated to detect light.

In other words, according to Aristotle, goodness is a real thing out in the world that we can experience directly and point to.

Now, Aristotle certainly thought that gods, and a Prime Mover above the gods, existed. So he was no atheist in that respect. But his notion of God (with a capital G) was so distant as to be unrecognizable as the Christian Trinity. One could perhaps argue that it was closer to the Muslim Allah, but the Muslims never really took to Aristotle’s notions of God, so that’s debatable. And the Hindu Brahman is even more transcendent – and impersonal, to boot – than Aristotle’s ideas.

And yet, all these traditions have a notion of “good” that is pretty much the same thing. Aristotle’s definition makes sense, even if people would tweak it in one way or another.

So I would say that Dawkins isn’t borrowing the concept of “good” from religion generally or from Christianity specifically. Nor the concept of giving aid, nor the notion of virtue. After all, it’s not hard to find examples of altruistic atheists from various points in history.

What is good without God?

But I said above that I basically agreed with his conclusion, that morality and virtue is impossible without God. Here’s why.

As soon as we encounter something, say, a bowl of oatmeal, one of the things that happens is desire (or the flip side of the coin, aversion). It’s an instantaneous judgment once we recognize it as oatmeal: we want it or we don’t. Can’t help it. It’s part of being human.

We also desire abstract things, immaterial things, like justice or wisdom. As soon as we form the concept in our minds, we label it as “good” or “bad”.

Now, at this point, a strictly materialist universe is out the window as far as I see. Where, in a strictly materialist universe, does the experience of anything “immaterial” come from? How can there be abstraction if there is nothing abstract in reality?

But beyond that, I’m also strongly of the school that nothing comes from nothing. So, wherever this world came from, however it was formed, it had to come from some principle at least as capable of abstraction and desire as we are. Which, more or less, is what Aristotle meant by God (with a capital G).

Note that I’m not saying anyone has to believe in God to be virtuous. Nor am I saying that any one religion is wrong (though I’m happy to discuss Christianity privately with anyone). Just saying that desire indicates to me that goodness is real, and that it has to come from somewhere, just like everything else.

I hate to give an unconfirmed quotation, but the sentiment is apt. My spiritual director told me that someone once asked Robert Frost how he became such a great poet. He answered:

The first thing I do in the morning is to make my bed.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a reliable citation. Even so, it’s worth noting that great virtue has its seed and root in small virtue.

It is not good for a man to be alone with a computer

Yesterday was my day off from Working for the Man this week. I slept in a bit, read some of my favorite blogs that I haven’t read for a while, watched some TV, and played a lot of those addicting online games – the stupid ones that aim as much at making you laugh or grossing you out as they do at challenging your skill.

Never mind that my room was a mess, and I had unopened mail piling up on my desk, and I had three different articles I wanted to write and/or research, and… you get the picture.

I didn’t shower till 4:45. Yeah, that’s P.M.

Stopping the vice of sloth

Call it laziness, call it procrastination, whatever you like. Among the seven deadly sins, it’s known as sloth or (for the etymologically minded) acedia. The closest twenty-first century word might be, depression. In any case, it’s the despair of anything in the world having value. And it gives rise either to doing nothing, (because nothing’s worth doing,) or compulsive activity, (because you’re distracting yourself from your fear of worthlessness.)

Anyway, I was supposed to go to a lecture on Greek culture last night with a friend (yes, I’m a nerd; get over it) but instead I asked her to come over and sit with me while I tried to get my life back on track.

It wasn’t until I had someone else there, someone to get me out of my head and the whole spiraling cycle of unanswered questions, that I was able to actually do anything.

Replacing vice with virtue

So what did I do? I mostly got my room cleaned.

Kind of an aside: I find my mental state often manifests itself in my physical state. If my thinking is muddy, I tend to let my room and general surroundings devolve into chaos. The external disorganization reinforces the internal messiness, and sometimes the best way to reset the mind is to reset my surroundings. That’s why I focused on cleaning my room.

I’m still behind on the unopened mail, but it’s within the realm of possibility now. By shifting from doing something bad to doing something good, I’ve taken a step in the right direction.

And that’s a step I couldn’t have taken without my friend’s help.

How a friend helps

My friend didn’t take much action. She helped me fold up my bedspread, and then sat and laughed at me while I scurried around my room throwing junk from one pile into another.

But she was there.

I’ve said many times that virtue is all about taking action appropriate to reality. In sloth, I was caught up in fantasy, an endless stream of “what if’s” and “why’s”. These are questions that can’t be answered by statements or by thoughts. They are questions that need to be answered by actions, by engaging the real world.

My friend, by being there, reminded me that there was a world beyond the confines of my skull. And that’s exactly what I needed yesterday.

So, Tammie, thank you very much!

Justice is not blind

Tomorrow – today, already, in some time zones – is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, celebrated as a holiday in these United States. This coming week is also a big deal for the pro-life movement, with the national March for Life in D.C. on Friday the 22nd, preceded closer to my home by the Washington State March for Life on Tuesday the 19th.

Both these movements, civil rights and right to life, are movements of social justice that base themselves in the idea of human rights. They argue that basic human rights are (or have been) unjustly denied to human beings.

They both are political movements, asking for changes in the letter or in the application of law. They ask that the law conform to the ideal of justice. But they both also acknowledge that justice truly comes to life in the concrete actions of individual people.

Human law and Natural Law

Dr. Martin Luther King repeated a saying of St. Augustine’s on the relationship of legal justice to moral justice: “An unjust law is no law at all.” That is to say, there is a law higher than any laws that human legislators can pronounce.

This higher law usually goes by the name, Natural Law. Natural Law claims to be a universal moral and ethical code, rooted in human nature and common to every culture and creed in the world. Natural Law is the ideal of justice, the standard by which all human laws are measured.

The theory is that, if anyone from any culture gave a question sufficient thought, he or she would arrive at the same basic conclusion about what is right or wrong, what is good and what is evil. Freedom and equality are good, theft and murder are evil, for example. Therefore, these are principles that can be applied across national borders and religious differences.

This is the basis of fundamental human rights. Today, people largely agree that human rights belong to all people, regardless of racial, ethnic, or national background. In the U.S., at least, many people disagree about whether human rights belong to all people, regardless of their stage of biological development.

Legal justice, social justice, personal justice

So, the laws our government makes and enforces should not merely follow the will of the people; the law should reflect the justice of Natural Law, of fundamental and universal human rights.

But justice requires more than human legislation. It is not enough to permit people of different skin color to use the same drinking fountain or to attend the same schools. People are more than just citizens; they are members of a society, a culture, and justice requires that they be treated as fully human in that social context.

Regarding race and ethnicity, this remains a live question in the U.S. Should there be such a thing as “black identity” (or “Irish” or “Latino” or anything else)? If so, how do people of diverse “identities” treat each other with fairness and respect?

Regarding abortion and euthanasia, this question is almost forbidden. The social climate thrusts the entire matter onto the individual, the mother of an “unwanted” child – as if there are no social implications to children being “unwanted.”

Finally, justice appears properly as a virtue in the actions of individuals. Today, in this situation, facing this person or these people, how does one act with fairness and respect? How does one give to each person what is due to him or her?

Justice begins by recognizing the dignity of every human person, based simply on the fact of his or her humanity. And this becomes obvious in our actions in times of crisis: look at the response to the earthquake in Haiti. No one questions whether the Haitians are human enough, or are worthy. It is enough to know that they are human, and that their suffering is beneath human dignity.

Justice is acting to restore that dignity, wherever it is threatened.

This isn't me. Really.

As I mentioned in my last post, life has been rather … full lately. I don’t want to say it’s been bad. But it has been difficult. I’m not very good at multitasking, so dealing with all the little stuff, often coming at me at the same time, has overwhelmed me.

Feelings and facts

Now, here’s the part I have trouble with. I feel pretty good about everything I’ve been doing lately. For example, I spent a couple hours each day over the past couple weeks helping my dad with a major project. It came to a climax on Tuesday, and everything turned out better than he had expected.

And, I’ve had a few fantastic conversations with friends lately. Hour-long conversations, or longer, but delving into some very important issues and making a profound connection.

And I feel like I’ve made good progress at work, making a few mistakes but learning from them, and making some valuable contributions in my first week or so on the job.

Yet, at the end of every day, I can’t help but notice what I haven’t done. Obviously, I haven’t posted to this blog in the past week. I also haven’t kept my bedroom clean: it’s a mess of unfolded clothes and unattended-to mail and half-read books. I haven’t written anything on the articles I’m working on, nor on the short story, nor on the novel. And I haven’t kept to my commitment to spend some time in prayer every day.

Also, my diet has slipped more and more into the comfort food realm rather than the healthy food. And I have been too sporadic about exercise.

Prudence and priorities

I wish I had an easy solution to the problem, something that I could proclaim boldly and have everyone’s lives (especially my own) change overnight. But that’s not how human nature works. It’s not how virtue works. Big virtue has to build on small virtue, and it’s the small virtues that I’m struggling with.

So, yes, I can make a to-do list. And that helps. Yes, I can set my timer for fifteen minutes and spend that time picking up my room. And that helps, too. But the trouble I’m having right now is deciding what goes first on the to-do list, and what I should spend the next fifteen minutes working on.

This is when I wish I had the virtue of prudence at a much higher level than I do. It’s probably a good thing that I recognize the problem, but it would please me more to have the solution. (But, he repeated to himself, that’s not how virtue works….)

The current hypothesis

So, the approach I’m going to try for today is to make a list of all the unfinished stuff – not the little things, but the clearly important things: the things competing for that first or second spot on the priority list. And then I’m going to set aside my worry about which one belongs on top. I’ll focus on whichever one is right in front of me, whichever is easiest to tackle today.

I don’t know if this is the best approach; but when I’m feeling overwhelmed like this, I think it’s better to do something – even if it’s not the best thing – than to do nothing because I’m caught in a whirlpool of worry.

The past week has been nutsoid. We’ve had family issues, health issues, work issues, neighborhood issues…

Anyway, I apologize for not posting. (Trust me, it’s not for lack of stuff to talk about!) But I think things are back to normal. I hope to have a post a little later today.

Till then … do good and avoid evil!

Just one little bite ...

I was reading an article called “The Difference between Needs and Wants” which to me seemed useful, but not quite on target.

The author cites Aristotle as equating “needs” with “real goods,” i.e., “the things that every human requires for the pursuit of happiness,” and equating “wants” with “apparent goods,” which sometimes are actually bad for people. He goes on to describe how focusing on needs rather than wants will lead to a fuller, happier life.

What’s good and what’s bad?

Don’t get me wrong: I think the article gives basically good advice. But I think he over-simplifies the whole nature of human desire and the objects of our desires. And that can give the wrong idea that “wants” are somehow not “real goods” for us.

One of the fundamentals of Aristotle’s view of nature is that everything that exists is good because existence itself is good. So, if anything exists at all, then it is at least in that minimal way good.

More than that, the idea of “bad” or “evil” is not equal to the idea of “good.” What I mean is that goodness is a real, positive thing that exists. “Badness” or “evil” is not something that is real in itself; it is the absence or the distortion of some real thing – some good thing.

A good example is blindness. Blindness is not a thing in itself; it is only the distortion or destruction of sight. Sight is real, and good. Blindness is nothing except the absence of sight.

Virtue and human desire

Now, desire (and its partner, aversion) is the means by which we sense good and the lack of good. Your eyes see a square of a dark-brown color, and your nose smells a unique combination of sweet and bitter, and your fingers feel a hard smooth texture. In your mind, you combine all these senses into an understanding of the thing itself: a chocolate bar.

But it is desire which judges that chocolate bar to be good or bad. Or rather, it is desire that identifies what is good in the chocolate bar, and what is lacking.

So, you may find yourself with conflicting desires: you know it tastes good, but you also know it will give you a sugar high and subsequent crash, or that it is fattening. In other words, you desire both the flavor of chocolate and the benefits of health.

Thankfully, desire is not the end of the story: our ability to reason enables us to sort out the various good things that we desire, and to make a decision. The trick is to let ourselves be informed by, but not driven by, our desires.

Needs and wants, real and apparent goods

So, everything that we desire is a “real” good, insofar as it exists and has some kind of goodness that we recognize. And everything we desire is an “apparent” good, because it is a good that appears to us. There are goods that we don’t easily recognize (e.g., the value of doing your taxes,) and there are goods whose limitations we overlook (e.g., having another drink with that cute somebody); but desire is always seeking something good.

Prudence means that we let reason sort through all those good things we desire, and search them to figure out if we’re overlooking some limitation or even falsehood about the good we desire. Prudence also applies labels like “need” to goods that we literally cannot live without. Prudence weighs the goods we’d have to give up (time, money, a good night’s sleep) against the good thing we want.

Then, through the virtue of prudence, we can make decisions that we can honestly say are good.

First off, gotta say, some days it’s good to be Catholic. Here’s a report on Pope Benedict having lunch with the poor of Rome. My favorite part:

The poor — around 200 people — and the Pope enjoyed a meal of lasagna, meatballs, lentils and mashed potatoes. Candies brought by the Pope formed part of dessert and there was a toast with sparkling wine.

That’s right: Catholics know that the poor need good vino!

Next, just so’s you know, my recent post about faith wasn’t meant to say “My God can beat up your god” or anything like that. Yes, many of us (including myself on occasion) fight for some kind of victory and try to cover it with the banner of truth. But I don’t think we should let the antics of the childish distract us from the value of seeking what is true.

More on new year’s resolutions: psychologist Jim Taylor advises such things as developing good habits and overcoming bad ones, especially growing in courage and faith. Hmm… sounds vaguely familiar….

For the economics file: some links on a move to restrict payday loans, which usually charge exorbitant interest rates. Also, tangentially related, an article on why banks want us to use our debit cards like credit cards.

Okay, that’s all for now!

What I usually look like in the afternoon...

My doctor tells me that it’s not uncommon to feel drowsy in the mid-afternoon, and that either a little snack or a bit of exercise is a decent alternative to a nap. For myself, the soporific tendencies begin around 3:00pm, and a snack will at best delay the lowering of the eyelids.

But today has been a particularly productive day in a number of ways. I solved a tricky network problem for my uncle’s insurance business, reviewed my parents’ taxes from last year in preparation for filing this year’s, finished reading Book IX of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and accomplished a few other little household tasks.

By three in the afternoon, I was certainly feeling sleepy, but I also wanted to keep rolling on this productivity streak. At the very least, I wanted to write a blog entry … but I knew if I sat down at my computer I’d sooner or later drift off into the Land of Nod.

Prudence to the rescue!

So I took stock of my situation. I was sleepy, but not really tired; I wanted to get some more work done, but didn’t have the energy. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t even feeling particularly lazy, for once!

Moreover, I’d just been talking with my mother about the taxes, and I knew that both she and I were trying to incorporate exercise as a regular part of our lives.

So I asked her, “How about a walk around the neighborhood?”

As we walked, she asked about this blog and I said that I was planning to write today about the relationship of prudence and justice. I described prudence as the virtue of being in touch with reality, with one’s place in that real situation, and making decisions in accordance with one’s nature.

And it only occurred to me at that point that I had used exactly that process in deciding to ask my mom to take a walk with me.

An action and then a habit

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about prudence, thinking about how to practice it, thinking about how it fits in with the other virtues, thinking … thinking …

Today is the first time I’ve actually caught myself being prudent. I don’t think it’s bragging to say that I’m happy about it. After all, it’s a fairly small act of prudence, and it’s still a long ways from being “second nature” to me. But every action helps to build the habit; and I’m going to remember this little action when I’m faced with future temptations to nap or to do anything else that avoids facing the real world.

After all, I know that I can do it, at least in a small way. And if I can do it, you certainly can as well!