Virtue Quest

I’m a firm believer that the virtues are helpful to everybody. Any random Jane or Joe can benefit from growing in Prudence and Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. You don’t have to be smart, or strong, or rich, or anything like that.

You don’t even have to be Christian.

Huh?

So, at this point, I expect there are two groups of reactions to that sentence. First, from the Christians, I expect some flavor of “What do you mean you don’t have to be Christian?” And from the non-Christians (whether atheist or adherents of other religious traditions), “Why would you even ask that question? What does Christianity have to do with it?”

Here’s the thing. The virtues I’ve been studying arose in what’s called the Western philosophical tradition. Greeks like Plato and Aristotle wrote about them, and the early Christians picked up their ideas and ran with them. In developing the older, pagan ideas of virtue – ideas, by the way, which don’t fit neatly with the Jewish heritage of Christianity – they connected them to their theological notions, and significantly added three new virtues that were mentioned in the Bible: Faith, Hope, and Love.

The original Greek virtues were called Cardinal Virtues, since (like the cardinal directions on a compass) they point you in the right direction. The new ones were called Theological Virtues, because they are seen as gifts of God.

So I’m a Catholic myself, and I have no problem with some virtues being gifts from God. But I have big questions about how it works. (more…)

So, way back when, I promised a friend that I’d post the notes to the talk I gave on “Virtue in Everyday Life.”

I’m not quite ready to post those notes yet. There are two reasons.

The first reason is that I’ve been asked to present a similar talk to the Northwest Catholic Family Education Conference. So I’m revising my notes a bit, and I’ll post the notes (and maybe the talk itself) after that.

The other reason is that, after the talk, I got into a great debate with a friend over the way I presented Courage and Temperance. I said that (more…)

First off: I’ll be speaking this Sunday morning at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Seattle. The topic: Virtue in Everyday Life.

When: 10:30am, Sunday 20 March 2011
Where: 5062 9th Avenue NE, Seattle – the downstairs room in the school across from the church

Here’s a chart I’m putting on the handout:

Foundation	Form	Strength
Prudence: natural foundation – discern good and evil	Justice: natural form – give what belongs to another	Fortitude/Courage: overcome external obstacles
		Temperance/Self-control: overcome internal obstacles
Faith: supernatural foundation – remain in trusting relationship	Love: supernatural form – give oneself for another’s good	Hope: direct life toward God with purpose and meaning

I expect that’s perfectly clear to anyone who thinks exactly as I do. The above organization is (as far as I know) my own invention. If anyone out there actually knows stuff about virtue ethics and thinks I’m barking up the wrong tree, or am just barking mad, please drop me a line and correct me. I’m working stuff out as I go.

Anyway, if you want to know what I’m talking about, come hear me talk!

Second, and far less importantly: I’ve had tech troubles with my old computer for the past few months. Random crashes and so on. It finally became intolerable, so I have a shiny new laptop. (Okay, it’s actually a matte finish.) Now I have to constantly remind myself that cool new toys do not equal happiness.

“Yes, I love technology / though not as much as you, you see / but still, I love technology / always and forever…”

I consider tolerance to be a kind of stop-gap, a second-best, a hand-me-down virtue at most. For example, if I said to my beloved, “Darling, I tolerate you,” I would deserve the slap I would receive. Tolerance is the virtue of bearing with some necessary but undesirable thing. It is not the ideal toward which I strive.

That said, tolerance is a real virtue, even if a secondary one: I would place it as a sub-virtue of Fortitude or Courage, as a form of patience and perseverance. But it is only virtuous when directed to something that is both undesirable and necessary.

It’s clear to me that other people don’t fall into the category of “undesirable.” A human being is, by his or her very existence, good. This particular person may be inconvenient or uncomfortable – or even dangerous – to me at this particular time. But what is undesirable is not that person’s humanity; the inconvenience or danger is what is bad.

What isn’t so clear to me, sometimes, is whether I myself fall into that “undesirable” category. (more…)

Discernment is the process of seeing something more clearly. The reason to see something more clearly is to know how to act toward whatever is seen.

Pretty simple, right?

It’s one of those “easier said than done” things. There are two obstacles, at least two that I’ve encountered in my own life:

1. Admitting that I don’t see things very clearly to begin with
2. Actually acting on what I’ve discovered to be true

Seeing clearly

In terms of virtues, discernment falls under the virtue of prudence or wisdom: it is the skill of looking closely at oneself and the world to find a clear understanding of what one is to do.

There are other aspects of prudence, too. (more…)

I was talking with a friend this weekend, and she said that she was a little confused when she first visited my blog because it wasn’t clear what kind of virtue I was talking about. So I took another look at the page, and I realize that the words “classical” and “cardinal” are entirely missing from the page.

I’ll rectify that soon, but in the meantime I realized that it never hurts to take another look at the big picture.

The classical virtues

The main reason I’m writing this blog is as a kind of public self-improvement exercise. I’ve found that the classical philosophy of virtue describes my strengths, my faults, and my potential. It also gives a very practical structure to work on overcoming my weaknesses and to work toward my potential.

These virtues are traditionally grouped under the four “cardinal” virtues and the three “theological” virtues: (more…)

I just returned from breakfast with George Weigel – he happened to pick my table to sit at – who was this morning’s speaker for the Catholic Professionals of Seattle. The basic gist of his talk was to promote his newest book: The End and the Beginning, which is a “sequel” and a completion of his 1999 biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope.

There was a bit of cold war spy drama, and a bit of “Lifestyles of the Holy and Famous,” and a bit of Vatican inside baseball; but one detail from his presentation jumped out at me. He said that he took part of the structure of his book from the process of canonization – the Catholic Church’s process of declaring someone a saint. One of the stages asks witnesses to describe the potential saint’s life in terms of the theological and cardinal virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity; Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance. Mr. Weigel noted, as an aside, that it’s an interesting exercise to look at life through the lens of the virtues, but that most people don’t do it.

A life out of focus

The virtues really form the only lens that has been able to bring my own life in to focus. But I only stumbled upon them by accident, myself. The classical model of virtue runs almost directly counter to most of twenty-first century American culture.

Now, Americans tend to value daring, or initiative, or valor; and that quality is similar to courage. Americans appreciate cleverness and foresight; those are certainly aspects of prudence. And it goes almost without saying that Americans are passionate about rights, which are a part of the virtue of justice.

However, American culture takes these values for granted, as a collection of qualities whose importance is assumed to be self-evident. In fact, it’s a kind of jumble that ultimately serves another purpose: one’s own interests.

Following the more-or-less normal course of life, I always found myself confused: should I take a risk or should I follow the safe course? Should I insist on my rights or make sure I’m not trampling someone else’s? Should I pursue my own interests or those of my employer/family/country?

Putting life in focus

When I discovered the idea of the virtues, I finally found a principle to help me answer all those questions. Like putting on my glasses, it brought all the fuzzy shapes into focus, and I could see more clearly what to do – and, more importantly, why to do it.

The virtues depend on one another. Love, or Charity, shows us what is good, and drives us to pursue it. Prudence shows us what is real, and sorts out the details of the situation as it really exists. These two virtues form the bedrock and cornerstone of our lives.

Justice and Faith both guide us in knowing what to do: we give to everyone what belongs to them, and we recognize them as fellow children of God, infinite in dignity and worthy of profound respect. These virtues form the framing structure that gives shape to our lives.

Hope, Courage, and Temperance all give us the strength or the stamina to follow through on the loving and prudent actions that Justice and Faith guide us to do. They support us in the face of despair, or fear, or temptation. They are like cross-braces that give a building strength and stability.

Taken together, the virtues describe the whole form of a person’s life.

An end and a beginning?

As Mr. Weigel points out in the life of Pope John Paul II, the virtues allow us to understand the depth and complexity of a man whose actions sometimes appeared confusing or contradictory to American eyes.

But I find virtue is as important at the beginning of each day as it is at the end of a life. I ask, how can I understand my own life; and how can I bring it to be the best life I can carry out, the kind of life I was created to live?

My aunt recently passed away after a long battle with breast cancer. Needless to say, her death has affected the entire family, but my uncle and cousins most of all. Now, our whole family tends to meet difficulty with humor, so there’s been lots of laughter; but I’m sure when I’m not around to see it, there are tears as well.

Still, they put what’s called “a good face” on the matter. At the funeral, we sang songs like “Rejoice and be glad,” and at the reception the line was, “She wanted it to be a joyful occasion.” And she did. I think she wanted a celebration of life.

Being a Christian, I see a certain reason in that: there’s hope for a greater joy in heaven than there ever was on earth. Even from a purely natural perspective, there’s a certain gratitude for all the good that she brought to our lives: her sharp wit and quick smile and constant love as a wife and mother.

But the loss is real. I remember a few years ago when one of my best friends was diagnosed with cancer; she’s currently in remission and is doing well, pursuing a career and so on. But there was a stark moment for me when I realized that I couldn’t take her for granted, that at some point she might be gone from this world. And if I felt like a piece of myself was being torn away just at the possibility of losing my friend, I can’t imagine what my uncle and cousins must be enduring at the real loss of my aunt.

The problem of evil

It’s times like this that, philosophically, the so-called “problem of evil” comes to the fore. How can we understand, or explain, or just deal with the painful and grievous events that happen every day in the world around us? Whether it’s disease and death, or inhumane crime, or natural disaster … where does it come from, and what does it mean for how we live our lives?

Voltaire (to grossly oversimplify) suggested that we simply “cultivate our own gardens,” that is, do the best we can with what we’ve got, and not pretend the world is any better than it is. It’s a kind of detachment from those things that are beyond our ability to control.

Buddhism goes even further, if I understand it rightly. It advocates a radical detachment from all things, good and evil. For even good always leads to evil, when it is lost. So if we avoid attachment to all things, we will never have cause for grief. Both these approaches share the great insight that good things, good people, are ultimately limited and vulnerable. They fail to meet that unlimited longing for good that lives within our hearts.

But their solutions strike me as, well, cowardly. Grief, at least, has the courage to stand in the face of loss and acknowledge just how good this person, this relationship, is that has been lost. Grief is the act of love in the face of loss.

The “problem” of goodness

I think it goes deeper still, though. Grief demonstrates that our very awareness of evil is dependent on the existence of good. It is very possible to experience good without evil, such as on a wedding day when even clumsiness and tears are causes of joy; but it is impossible to experience evil without good. No one would attend a funeral unless the one who has died was a great good in their life.

It’s easy to answer, where does evil come from? It comes from the loss of something good. The greater question is, where does good come from?

How is it possible that wonder and beauty and joy and a profound connection between persons enters into the world? Why do I experience a painting (a mere arrangement of colored globs) or a gesture (a simple mechanical motion) or a person (just another animal, after all) as something that gives meaning to life, that organizes my priorities, that I can only describe as “good”?

This is the great mystery of life, it seems to me. And it is a mystery that is celebrated rather than solved, celebrated even in times of loss and grief.

I ran across this eulogy of Eileen “Didi” Nearne, an agent of Britain’s Special Operations Executive charged with maintaining communications with France during World War II.

She worked cleverly and faithfully, but ultimately was captured and tortured by the Gestapo (apparently using a technique similar to waterboarding). She was interred in a concentration camp, but escaped and hid until the Allies arrived.

I tend to imagine a war as a highly dramatic situation where the moral lines stand out more clearly; but Didi’s work, for the most part, took a much more everyday aspect. She operated a wireless set. She held down a day job. She had to decide when to tell a lie and when to tell the truth. She had to make difficult choices with uncertain consequences. Her stakes were, in some ways, higher; but the nature of her choice was not very different from the kind of choices I face each morning.

She maintained her cover as long as she could, but when captured she refused to contribute her labor to the Nazi war effort suffered greatly for her stand on principle. She managed, not only to escape herself, but to help others to escape with her. This required both prudence and courage in choosing just how best to combat the evils she faced.

When she returned home, she also returned to a more “normal” life. She did not cling to either the pain or the glory of her work during the war. She lived with her sister, and made the best contribution she could to her community. She continued to suffer what we now would call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from what she endured during her captivity. But she resisted the temptation to leverage her heroism or her suffering for personal benefit.

Her service was to God and Country, and she left it at that. She may not have been a saint, (or maybe she was); but she certainly was a model of courage and prudence, and is a good reminder to me that simply doing my work quietly can sometimes help change the world for the better.

Other information is available:

• Her biography at Wikipedia
• Obituary in the London Telegraph
• Obituary in the New York Times

40 Days for Life is an internationally coordinated, yet community based, campaign to peacefully raise awareness of the consequences of abortion for neighborhoods, for friends, and for families. There have been six coordinated campaigns since 2007. This time around, the campaign will run the 40 days between September 22 and October 31, 2010. 40 Days for Life follows a three-pronged strategy:

1. Prayer and fasting
2. Peaceful vigil
3. Community outreach

The prayer and fasting acknowledges that human action alone is insufficient to overcome the widespread assumption that abortion is a reasonable option. The peaceful vigil aims at letting a clinic’s employees and clients know that there are alternatives to abortion, and at letting the wider community know about the activity of an abortion clinic in their neighborhood. The community outreach educates people about the reality of abortion through church, media, and campus outreach.

It’s easy to get involved, and it’s a great way to grow in the virtues of justice, fortitude, and charity.