Virtue Quest

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.

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!

Some sectors of the web are astir over Brit Hume advising Tiger Woods to abandon Buddhism and embrace Christianity:

I don’t know Hume and have not followed Woods much. But I have had conversations with many of my friends about whether it matters which faith or religion one follows.

Faith as a noun and as a verb

Some of my friends think that the important thing is to have faith – any faith at all. They think that spirituality is a fundamental part of human life, and that it’s not healthy to neglect or avoid it. But the actual content of that spirituality, whether Christian or Buddhist or Native American or some mixture of anything one finds, doesn’t really matter.

What’s important is to have faith rather than what faith one has; the verb of faith trumps the noun.

At the same time, the recent controversies about politicians (such as Patrick Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi) claiming to be faithful to the Catholic Church while opposing some moral teachings of the Church indicate that content – at least by name – really is important.

In other words, the verb defines the meaning of the noun.

Meanwhile, traditional religions such as the Catholic Church teach that the noun should guide the verb. That is, one’s actions should be based on the content of one’s belief. And, moreover, the quality of one’s belief can therefore be discerned in one’s actions.

But don’t they all teach the same thing?

If the content of various religions was the same across the board, there would be very little conflict between religions, and almost none within religions. But this clearly is not the case. Content matters a great deal to a great many people, and for good reason.

I am a Catholic myself, and have done some academic theological study. I admit to being woefully ignorant about Buddhism or Islam or most other major world religions, but I do know that they differ from Catholic Christianity on a basic level.

Catholic teaching, for example, says that our ultimate destiny is communion in love with God. Buddhism, on the other hand, teaches that our ultimate goal is to end they cycle of rebirth through extinction of oneself. Islam sets forth a paradise including a vision of God, but that seems to maintain an absolute separation between God and the believer.

These different visions of ultimate destiny tend toward different attitudes toward morality: a Catholic approach emphasizes love and hope; a Buddhist approach stresses peace and equanimity; Islam sees morality as duty.

Learning from differences

Now, I’m convinced that no religion could have prospered for centuries on end without some insight into the truth of human nature and the world we inhabit. So I think there’s a great deal that the Catholic Church can learn from other religions, and vice versa.

I also know that, despite the differences, we hold many things in common. Most (if not all) world religions seek to draw the individual out of him- or herself to an attentiveness and care for others and for the world itself. This means we can collaborate on all sorts of philanthropic or environmental projects.

But in the end, reality is one; and different religions describe it in contradictory ways. It really matters whether we reincarnate, or whether we rise again in Christ Jesus. It really matters whether we are allowed to eat pork or any meat at all or only vegetables.

It is theoretically possible that all religions on earth are wrong; but at most, one is right. So I see nothing but good in sorting out exactly which one – if any – is true.

Building a habit of faith

It’s easy to see how faith is a theological virtue; but I think there is also a natural virtue of faith. It is the habit of believing or trusting in anyone’s ability to do any good.

I bring this up because I sometimes get depressed about my own failures or, more accurately, my not living up to my own expectations. I think, “By this time, I should be making six figures” or “Why haven’t I found Miss Right?” or “Holy crap, am I still living with my parents?”

When I’m in such a mood, it’s hard to trust anyone else. I reject compliments. I turn all Scrooge-and-Grinch-like. I get into arguments way too easily.

Faith and trust

It’s hard to trust others when I feel like I can’t trust myself. When I cease believing in my own ability to do good – or even to do any better than I have in the past – then I lose any basis for believing that anyone else can do good either.

I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that any experience of others I have is based on my own past experience; so, if I only have experience of disappointment, then I don’t really know how to believe or hope for something good.

The second reason is that I myself am the standard that I measure the world against. Sound kind of egotistical, but I think it’s just the nature of being a subject, of having a first-person perspective. So I look at others and I compare what I see of them to how I feel inside myself and then extrapolate to how that other person must feel or think or whatever.

So, if I’m feeling like a disappointment in myself, like I’m untrustworthy, then I don’t really remember those times when I actually fulfilled a trust placed in me, and I can only see people around me as better than me or the same as me.

Envy and lack of faith

When I see people as the same as me, or even as worse than me, it’s easy to understand why I don’t trust them. They’re even less trustworthy than I am!

But those I see as better than me, because I see them acting in good and noble ways, I tend to regard with envy. I tell myself that they’ve received some benefit, some gift or ability that has been denied to me. I envy them, and don’t trust them because of spite.

And I think that’s the ultimate problem I have in practicing natural faith: I keep referring to myself as the standard. But faith requires me to open up and let other people be other than I am – to let them be themselves. And to trust that they really can be themselves without conforming to my standard for myself. Moreover, to trust that they might have some insight into the world, even into me, that I don’t have.

Faith means remembering that the world does not revolve around me.

Theological faith

The gift of faith, as the Christian tradition articulates it, forms the basis for relating to God as a person. But it is not all that different from the natural virtue I’ve been describing. As Thomas Aquinas says somewhere, “Grace builds on nature.” (Anyone know where he says that? I admit I don’t know!)

Faith is the foundation of any personal relationship: trusting another to be him- or herself. And trusting that they also trust me to be myself: just one person among billions … yet still unique.

An article in the Daily Mail also notes that, if there’s infidelity in a marriage, it’s the woman who pays the greatest price.

In other breaking news, scientists are astounded to discover that fire is hot!

Full article here. Interesting both from the point of view of temperance and of faith itself.

A choice quotation:

Most species of birds and animals in which the male serves some useful function other than sperm donation are inherently monogamous. Humans, like other nest builders, are monogamous by nature, but imperfectly so. We can be trained out of it, though even in polygamous and promiscuous cultures people show their true colors when they fall blindly and crazily in love.

In other words, gentlemen, prove that you are more than a bicycle to a fish.

I also like that it refers to the unfaithful partner as “infidel.”

First off, welcome to all my new readers! I do appreciate your coming ’round. Please make yourself at home and check out the rest of the site. If you have any ideas on how I can improve it, let me know!

So, on to the regularly scheduled post, already in progress…

What Kind of Virtue Am I Seeking?

I’m pretty much working on the classical “cardinal” virtues, as well as the “theological” virtues, that have formed the cornerstone of Western ethical thought for the past two or three millennia. They are:

Cardinal Virtues, by Raphael

• Cardinal Virtues
• Prudence (sometimes called “practical wisdom”)
• Justice
• Fortitude (aka “Courage”)
• Temperance (sometimes called “self-control”)
• Theological Virtues
• Faith
• Hope
• Charity (aka, “Love” or “Agape”)

Now, I picked these because, frankly, they’re the most familiar to me and I’ve actually done some study on them. I know that lots of other people (from Confucius to Benjamin Franklin) have written about virtues, and come up with other lists. I’m hoping, as I keep writing this blog, to learn about some of those.

But for now, I’m going with what I know. And, since it’s held its own for several thousand years, I figure it’s a good enough place to start.

Where I’m Starting From

For me, at least, I think the main starting point will be Temperance. I’ve mentioned before that I’m less than perfect when it comes to my dietary habits. I also could stand to work on my sleep habits, and my time management, and so on. I’ll say more in the coming days.

What Is Temperance?

For now, I want to clarify a little how I understand Temperance. It’s not necessarily about cutting back; rather, I think it’s about putting the right things in the right place in my life. I should eat enough of the right kinds of food: not too much or too little, and not the wrong things (like an all chocolate diet, or a hemlock salad).

More than that, it’s about keeping my desires in line with reality. It’s about getting away from the fantasy that I can (much less, should!) feel absolutely fantastic all the time, that life should be a piece of cake, that what I want is the most important thing in the world.

It’s connecting to the reality that life has its ups and downs. It’s recognizing that some hard things are worthwhile, more worthwhile than some quick fixes.

And that’s what virtue is all about, as far as I can see: keeping in touch with reality.