Virtue Quest

Some days I just have trouble rolling out of bed in the morning. It’s not just laziness – though that’s one chunk of the problem; it’s wondering what in the world is worth getting out of bed for. It’s a deep-seated pessimism about life, the universe, and even God that has earned me the nickname “Mr. Cranky.”

In more classical terms, it’s the deadly sin of sloth, or tristitia.

What it really is, the foundation, the root of it all, is a lie: the lie that bad things are real and good things are not.

Shutting my eyes to reality

The fact is, the only real things in the world are good. Food is good; friends are good; work is good. It’s only when something is missing, or damaged, or twisted that we call anything bad. Bad, or evil, is just the fact that something good isn’t where it ought to be.

It takes a certain blindness, or at least a distorting squint, to see only the bad – the thing that isn’t really there at all – and to overlook the good thing that is there.

For example, I’m currently writing a book about my grandmother. Every time I sit down to work on it, I keep thinking about how stupid my words are, how clumsy the phrasing, how inadequate they are to capture her personality and story.

What I’m missing are (at least) three fundamental goods:

1. I have a fascinating grandmother to write a book about
2. I put words on the page, that really convey some meaning
3. I have an idea of what this book could be, of the good story that it could convey

And maybe there are more goods than these that I’m overlooking.

The point is, I’m in the rotten habit of ignoring what’s good and focusing on what’s missing; then I take what’s missing and call that reality. That’s a lie, and a sin, and a vice.

Prying my eyes open

I find, for myself, the best antidote is a good slap in the face, or a kick in the butt. (As a friend pointed out, God gave us butts so he’d have somewhere to kick us.) I need a sharp encounter with reality.

Even a real evil will do: hunger is a great motivator to get out of bed. It’s a great motivator to put inadequate words on a page, or to hand in that imperfect resume, or to produce that good-enough widget. And it’s the least of all the possible motivators in the world.

A real good is an even better reason to live and to act. My book may not be a Pulitzer winner, but it will tell something of Grandma’s story, it will convey something of her goodness to people who wouldn’t otherwise know anything about her. And that’s better than nothing. Something is always better than nothing.

The mistake of sloth

Sloth, on the other hand, thinks that nothing is better than something. It’s the illusion that nothing is something easy and comfortable, like sleep. But sleep is a positive good; it’s a real act that restores and refreshes.

Nothing is like hunger: it’s a great void, a need without fulfillment. Nothing is a hellish wretchedness; but sloth denies this truth until it’s too late – until I’ve missed that appointment or bungled that opportunity; until the good that was there is damaged or lost.

The English journalist G.K. Chesterton quipped, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” In other words, something is always – always! – better than nothing. That’s partly why I write this blog; because even if it’s bad, it’s at least words written. And I’m no kind of writer if I’m not writing words, even bad words. Even bad words are better than no words at all.

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.

English is a tricky language, and especially around this word, “love.” It can mean anything from simple enjoyment (I love ice cream) to affection (I love these puppies) to romance (I love you, and only you, forever and ever) to sacrifice (I will lay down my life for those I love).

Latin makes things a little easier. Thomas Aquinas describes amor as a passion which we share with other animals, but when he speaks of human virtue he uses the word caritas. The latter is usually translated as “charity,” but these days “charity” is mainly associated with giving money or second-hand stuff to poor people. And while assisting the needy is certainly a loving act, it hardly expresses the full range of what caritas means.

Meanwhile, amor usually gets Englished simply as “love,” which doesn’t convey the specific kind of love that is amor. Even so, amor and caritas, like the Greek words eros and agape, have great areas of overlap, and find their way into each other’s territory. And occasionally English can help out Latin: there is no Latin verb form of caritas, but in English I can tell someone how much I care for them.

Passion

Even the word “passion” means, in contemporary English, almost the opposite of what its Latin origin, passio means. Passio means “to endure” or “to suffer” – hence, Jesus’ torture and execution are called his “passion” – but in everyday speech we generally use “passion” to mean a driving desire, a kind of obsession that moves us to action.

That’s why I say “almost the opposite”: it is the object of our passion, whether that object is chocolate or one’s spouse or a Beethoven composition, which incites us, which moves us, which forces us to respond to it. After all, the other common English word that derives from passio is “passive.”

So the connections is that we don’t initiate a passion ourselves; passion is thrust upon us by some object that draws our desire. Our action is a response to the desire that we endure or suffer or (less dramatically) receive.

An example: when I was in college in snowy Colorado Springs, there was a local ice cream shop that made fresh ice cream right on the premises. They offered a punch-card to customers so that, when you filled the punch card, you received a free ice cream cone. Normally, you received one punch for every purchase you made; but you would receive more punches as the temperature grew colder, and if it was actually snowing at the time of your purchase you would get a full card’s worth of punches. Now, years later, I still salivate for ice cream like Pavlov’s dog whenever it snows.

No one would deny that love has this element of passion to it. We don’t really choose who or what we love; our beloved (in a way) chooses us. But virtue is not really about our passions; it’s about our actions.

Virtue: our response to passion

Of course, I would be even fatter than I already am if I indulged my passion for ice cream every time it came over me. And I would be even more emotionally scattered (and scarred) than I am if I pursued every person I found attractive in any way.

Fortunately, I have a mind that puts my passions in order and shows me how to respond to my desires in a fully human fashion. The virtue of love is not only to desire and to enjoy what is good, but to see our desires in the context of the rest of the world.

The more I see and know, the more I love, because love is attracted to any and every good thing. But in a human being, a person who has both reason and emotion, love is able to recognize that the greatest good is a life with all the smaller or temporary goods ordered toward the greater or more permanent goods. Ice cream is a very good thing, but it is better when it is dessert than when it is the whole of my diet. And it is far better when it is something I share with my friend or my spouse, rather than something that distracts me from those people.

In a comment on a previous post, Paul writes:

I looked up a contemporary definition to establish a framework as to what is virtue. Then I had to wonder “is virtue, in the ‘doing good easily and often’ practicable and important?”. Morality yes but virtue, I’m undecided. Can one use virtue to navigate the world as it exists? There are a lot of instances in business, social interactions, maintaining or improving ones place within a civilization in which a virtuous person would be vulnerable to all kinds of abuse, deception and repression. Is virtue a weakness?

This is a great question. But in order to answer it well, I’ll have to ask Paul a question right back.

What, in your mind, is the difference between morality and virtue?

I ask this because you seem to place them in very different categories. In the tradition I’m writing from, Thomist Catholicism, that difference doesn’t make much sense. Morality is the theory, and virtue is the practice. “Morality” is the word for how we recognize good (and evil) and “virtue” is the word for how we do what is good (and avoid what is evil). So, when you say, Morality yes but virtue, I’m undecided, I’m not sure I follow your meaning.

Virtue and vulnerability

That said, I think I can speak to the question of whether virtue (or moral behavior) makes a person weak or vulnerable. The short answer is: Yes.

But yes only in a sort of tunnel-visioned way. Virtue opens someone to attack or harm from one small and specific direction: injustice.

In chess or poker, in love or war, if you play fair and others cheat you will suffer harm. You will probably lose the game. But you will save your dignity.

One of the oldest sayings of philosophers is that it is better to suffer evil than to commit evil. And that’s what’s really going on here: if you refuse to commit evil, if you cling to what is good, then odds are that someone will try to commit some evil against you. It might be as small as a white lie or as big as theft, adultery, or murder. And it’s possible they’ll succeed.

Strength to endure whatever may come

However, from the broader perspective of a whole human life, virtue is exactly what gives a person the strength to endure injustice rather than to be broken by it. After all, one of the first lessons of virtue is that life ain’t fair. We’re confronted by all the same “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that tempted Hamlet to suicide and that tempt me to sloth, but that motivate the truly virtuous to rise to the challenge and stand fast in their humanity.

Whether those challenges come from a natural disaster or from the unjust acts of another person, virtue enables a person to prudently sort out the real dangers and the genuine options; to respond in a just and even loving manner; to take those actions courageously despite the hardship or danger; and to temperately refrain from the easy escapes that tempt us (well, me, at least) to avoid facing the sea of troubles in our lives.

Those easy escapes are the sorts of thing that work well for a moment, but have lasting consequences: the quarter-by-quarter greed of Wall Street, the comfort of vegging with a bowl of ice cream or a TV show, the awkward dodge of a white lie. As far as I can see, it’s only virtue, which endures suffering and injustice in the short term, that enables a person to remain true to him-/herself and to avoid the even worse consequences of vice.

In a Church as big as the Catholic one, there are thousands of little corners of spirituality. A friend invited me to check one of them out, a group called Communion and Liberation, and basically they spent about an hour discussing the reflections of one of the group’s leaders.

The passage they read that evening concludes with the reflection that, we sometimes flee from reality because it is too overwhelming. It describes this as “loneliness, which is nothing but inability to face reality.”

Are we really supposed to face reality?

Now, there’s lots to argue with here, especially for a contrarian like myself. I mean, is this really the best definition of loneliness? But I have to admit that loneliness strikes me most when I’m feeling overwhelmed, like I just can’t face life anymore – at least, I can’t face it alone.

And it occurred to me that maybe, if human nature is inherently social, if I am really not fully human unless I’m engaged in relationship with other people, I’m not supposed to face reality alone. Maybe it’s just the way things are, maybe even the way things are supposed to be, that life is too big and too difficult and too confusing for me to deal with.

In other words, maybe my frustration, anger, fear, sadness, and loneliness come from a false assumption: that I’m supposed to be somehow entirely self-sufficient, that I’m somehow big enough to face reality on my own.

Facing reality with a friend

Now, I’ve been blessed with some of the finest friends in all of history. Not only do they put up with my endless noodling through abstract ideas and my needless nitpickiness about the exact etymological meaning of words, not only do they agree to see the tedious movies I want to watch and play the tedious games I want to play, not only do they eat my cooking with no greater objection than adding a bit of salt, but they constantly teach me new things about the world and how to live in it.

In fact, every time I’ve found myself really able to face some piece of reality that’s getting in my face, whether it’s a burnt piece of toast or the loss of a job or the prosecution of an unjust war, it’s only been because of a friend. Left to myself, I curl up into a ball in the darkest corner I can find. But with a friend by my side – or even on the long end of a phone line – I find a strength and a resilience that is greater than I possess in myself.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

The 1967 film version of “Camelot” formed a great deal of my childhood, and still stands close by me today. Indeed, I remember in the 1980′s seeing Vanessa Redgrave in a contemporary film and being shocked because I knew her as the lithe young Guenevere. And I dearly loved the hyper-emotional Richard Harris in every role he played (he was magnificent in “Gladiator” in part because of the resonance between young Arthur and ancient Marcus Aurelius).

But perhaps the most powerful scene, for me, is the one where Arthur goes hunting in the woods, and reminisces of his youthful training under Merlyn (played by Laurence Naismith). Arthur asks Merlyn, “What’s the best thing for being sad?” and Merlyn replies, “The best thing for being sad is to learn something!”

Now, I’ve discovered a number of other things that are good for being sad, and, although things like sitting and talking with a close friend and doing something productive are also very good when I’m sad, I’ve never found anything that would definitively displace Merlyn’s advice about the very best thing for sadness.

Sadness and learning

I’ve had to rely on all these methods over the past week or so. The cause of my sadness has been a number of small, personal events that don’t really need talking about (though it began with that car accident I wrote about last week). But when friends were not available and work was just too difficult, I could always learn something.

I’ve been reading voraciously in Thomas Aquinas’ First Part of the Summa Theologica, specifically what is known as his “Treatise on Man” in which he describes human nature.

What is wonderful about this is, not only was it good learning, but it helped me understand why learning is a solution to sadness.

According to Thomas, humanity stands at a crossroads of creation: we are both material and spiritual beings. That is, we are physical (like stones and shrubs and squirrels) and also intellectual (like angels and God). This puts us at a unique place in the universe, and this uniqueness extends to how we understand (intellegere, in Latin) and how we act.

We do not act in the same way that other animals do, because they are guided by sense and instinct, while we are guided by reason. And we do not understand in the way that pure spirits do, because they apprehend truths directly, while we move from known to unknown by reason. Reason is the unique feature of human nature that sets us apart from everything else in creation.

Sadness (as an emotion, not as the vice of sloth) is an indicator that something is missing from our nature. So when an animal is sad, it seeks something to heal or restore its body (including its emotions). I’m not sure if an angel can be sad, but if it were it would seek something to return it to its direct apprehension of truth and goodness and beauty.

If a human being is sad, the answer lies (at least in part) in reason. The core, the “heart” as it were, of being human is to understand things by coming to know what is unknown. So in sadness, we seek to understand why we are sad, and then to know what we can do about it.

In other words, we learn something.

Even when knowing the source of some particular sadness eludes us, even then learning something brings a kind of healing and restoration and even growth. This is because our nature is (in part) to learn, and any time we learn anything we are fulfilling our nature. We become more happy when we learn because we become more ourselves.

Beyond learning

I said that our nature is in part to learn; that’s because our nature is also to act on what we have learned, to put our knowledge into deeds.

That’s partly what I’m doing here: I’m attempting to share something that I’ve learned with others. But it also means taking action to work better, to play better, to love our friends and family and neighbors better. The more we learn, the better we can act toward others. And, as if in reward, the more we can learn from those we love.

Amy noted that some of the posts and comments were becoming “a bit too philosophical for [her] bent.” By that, I think she meant that the conversation had grown so abstract that it was no longer connected to real life.

There’s probably some truth in her observation. I tend toward abstraction – or, as my grade school teachers put it, I’m a space cadet. At the same time, I insist that abstract philosophy is not, or at least should not be, opposed to practical action in everyday life. My goal for myself is to think clearly and live according to what I think.

One of the areas my own thought gets awfully muddy is around the question of what it is to be human. That’s why it’s important to me to make sure my thinking is clear. Otherwise I start acting, well, inhumanely.

The human creature in its native environment

The first thing that I forget about human nature is that I am finite: I am limited, mortal, not self sufficient. Now, all this is normal and natural; it’s actually good, because connection with other people is included in the very definition of humanity. But I find myself awfully attracted to those fantasies of unlimited, immortal, sufficient people like James Bond or Odysseus or Fitzwilliam Darcy. (Granted that none of them are fully self-sufficient or properly immortal, but their stories do not die, and give them the illusion of perfection.)

So when I start acting as if I know everything, or like I am the hero of some grand epic, I wind up looking foolish. I say something stupid, showing the limits of my knowledge; or I do something that hurts either myself or someone else, betraying my lack of heroism.

And the reason this happens is because my actions run contrary to my nature; they defy reality. Reality sets limits to what I can do. Reality demands that I ask others for help, that I admit when I am wrong, that I defer to those more skilled or more experienced than myself. When I refuse to act in accordance with reality, when I contradict my nature, then the inevitable result is failure and harm.

How to know nature

Now, bob (and others) raised a very good point: sure it’s easy to claim something like mortality as a universal aspect of human nature; but seeing how widely human culture varies around the globe, how can we know what really is “human nature” (and therefore what are rights, duties, just laws, etc.) and what is just local custom?

My answer is, basically, not to use the variations as a distraction from what we have in common. All of us are mortal. All of us are dependent on one another. This alone is sufficient, it seems to me, to justify a promotion of community and a prohibition against murder. All of us are dependent on using things: tools, clothing, and other objects; this means that morality has to deal with the notion of property and prohibit theft.

It goes further, though: it is part of human nature to think, to communicate, to engage in relationships that go beyond mere practicality or survival. We have more ways to engage in these human acts than there are grains of sand on the beach, but we all do them. A person who has lost the ability to communicate has lost one of the essential activities that we call “human.” Such a person is tragic, and the magnitude of his or her loss is itself an indication of the centrality of thought, communication, relationship to living a fully human life.

Let me be clear: such a person is still fully human; but handicapped, in the way that an amputee is fully human, but lacking a limb. Morality still applies in a complete way to this person. There is no excuse for considering someone “less than human” or “no longer human” just because he or she is injured or disabled.

But an injury or a disability – by the very fact that we recognize it as “bad” and as a loss – is itself an indicator of where the full nature lies. And this is not something contingent on culture or opinion: there is no culture that recognizes someone with only one arm as “normal,” to say nothing of “privileged.” Whether they treat the disabled with special respect or with derision, the recognition of disability is one of the constants across cultural lines. It is therefore one indicator of the reality and objectivity of human nature.

First off, I just want to say, “Thank you!” to readers Jeana and bob, who in the past week or so have helped me fulfill one of my goals for this blog: to generate provocative and intriguing conversation. Thanks!

So, in continuing the question of whether there’s any such thing as “natural rights” – or, more generally, what Thomists call “natural law” – the next step is to consider … the Order of the Universe!

Actually, I’m serious. By “order,” I mean specifically teleological order. In non-techno-babble, that means, whether things are in and of themselves directed to an end beyond themselves. The classic example is the eye: the eye is ordered toward the sense of sight, and so an eye that does not see is a “bad” eye.

Order and morality

Now, someone might object that you can’t blame the eye for being blind. And that’s true. So it’s important to distinguish between what’s called “ontological evil” and “moral evil.” “Ontological evil,” or evil in “being,” is simply the lack of full existence or perfection in a thing. A diseased tree, or a collapsed bridge, or a blind eye is “bad” because it lacks the fullness of what it is to BE a tree, or a bridge, or an eye.

“Moral evil,” on the other hand, involves the freedom of the will. Without personal freedom, there can be no “bad” or “evil” except in the ontological sense. For something to be evil in a moral sense, it must be a bad choice

Now, according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and those who follow their tradition, the mind has several major parts, two of which are the intellect and the will. The purpose of the intellect is to understand things abstractly. The purpose of the will is to choose freely. If the intellect has a problem – for example, my intellect has great difficulty grasping poetry and metaphor, but thrives on mathematics – then we recognize that as a problem in the mind. I tell people that I’m “bad” with poetry, and they know what I mean.

If the will has a problem, it affects a person’s ability to choose freely. Sometimes this is a mental illness; for example, a psychopath is not free to act empathetically, or even responsibly. But often, we limit our own freedom by our very choices themselves. If I choose to insult you, I am no longer free to be your friend.

The slavery of vice

Now, part of the nature of the will is to develop habits. Habits are to the will what memory is to the intellect: they keep us from having to re-invent the wheel every time we hit the road. So, a virtuous habit is one that protects, or even extends the freedom of the will. Vice, on the other hand, increasingly limits the will’s freedom.

But this freedom is not freedom to do anything at any time; it is freedom to fulfill the nature of the person. It is freedom to pursue the good.

The best image I’ve found is that of a piano keyboard. Anyone at any time is free to hit any key or combination of keys on the keyboard. (This is what Pinckaers calls “freedom of indifference.”) But only someone who has practiced a great deal is free to play Debussy, or to compose an original work of music.

Now, every moment of every day, our will faces at least 88 possible choices of what to do next. If we practice making those choices well, with an idea of harmony or rhythm or beauty in mind, then we will develop habits that allow us to make more interesting and more complex and more, well, good choices. The will really does become more free, more fulfilled in achieving its purpose.

But if we simply hammer away at life according to mood or blind emotion, like a piano student who refuses to adopt proper posture or fingering, then we limit our freedom and risk hurting both ourselves and the instrument – that is, everybody around us.

Natural morality

This view of the human person, one who has a purpose or an end in both being and acting, and whose purpose is to pursue greater and greater goods, is the foundation of any theory of natural rights, or natural law, or natural morality of any kind.

Some thinkers have tried to do away with “human nature” without losing universal morality, but I haven’t found any of them (that I’ve read) to be convincing.

Others have noted that it’s incredibly difficult to pin down exactly what’s involved in “human nature” and have accepted that rejecting nature also means rejecting any universal morality. But then why do even they act as if moral questions remained vital? Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment is a brilliant exploration of the problems with this way of thinking.

So that’s largely why I’m convinced that there really is such a thing as human nature, and that the nature of the will is to choose freely, and that virtue is the true path to freedom and fulfillment and happiness.

But I’ve been talking too much. Looking forward to continuing the conversation.

Jeana left a wonderfully provocative comment on an earlier post. I began to reply in the comments, but I realized that this merited its own post, so here’s a bit of Jeana’s comment, followed by my response:

Perhaps a start would be the argument that there is a natural order to the world, and things work better when we cooperate with it. Plants die without life. Cows were made to eat grass. We live longer if we exercise and eat our veggies than if we sit in front of the TV and eat cookies all day every day. Men’s and women’s bodies each operate in ways that the other cannot.

If you were able to argue that following the natural order is a moral obligation, you could argue that….

This touches on, I think, the different moral roles of virtue and law.

Virtue enables us to realize the full potential of our nature and, according to Catholic teaching, of our supernatural gifts. Law, on the other hand, prevents us from (or at least warns us against) acting contrary to our nature. Virtue motivates us to reach for excellence, but places no obligations, strictly speaking, on us. Law places obligations on us, both positive and negative ones, but only obliges us to a bare minimum.

Law does not ask us to fulfill our nature; it only demands that we not act contrary to it. It does not strive for excellence. It is a stop-gap against excessive vice.

Now, ever since the so-called “Enlightenment” (if I understand my history correctly) western culture has been obsessed with the notion of law, and has largely forgotten the idea of virtue. This is why “morality” immediately brings to mind the idea of obligation.

But virtue sets a higher standard. Or, to put it another way, it opens up a broader field of possibility. Morality is not just about jumping through hoop X and avoiding pitfall Q. Morality is about living my life in a way that fulfills its potential, that brings to reality the potential good that is within me.

And that good is both for me and from me. It is good for me to be healthy. It is also good for me to serve my neighbor with whatever gifts I have. Indeed, serving my neighbor with my gifts is good for me as well, because it exercises and brings to greater perfection those gifts themselves. And it feels good to do so, which is a sign of health in using those gifts.

When we’re focused on obligation, feeling good is taken as a sign of not meeting an obligation. But when we’re focused on excellence, feeling good is a sign of health, of growth.

So much more to say, but I also want to prepare a reply to bob. So, till soon…!

I’m cross-posting this both on my personal blog and on the Coalition for Clarity, because it’s the rare topic that fits both topics pretty well.

On Virtue Quest, I’ve been blogging about my reading of Alisdair MacIntyre’s “classic,” After Virtue. At the Coalition, I’ve raised the question of what the basis is for actions permitted to agents of the State that are forbidden to private citizens, such as capital punishment and war. So, toward the end of After Virtue, I ran across this passage:

But my present point is not that patriotism is good or bad as a sentiment, but that the practice of patriotism is in advanced societies no longer possible in the way that it once was. In any society where government does not express or represent the moral community of the citizens, but is instead a set of institutional arrangements for imposing a bureaucratized unity on a society which lacks genuine moral consensus, the nature of political obligation becomes systematically unclear. Patriotism is or was a virtue founded on attachment primarily to a political and moral community and only secondarily to the government of that community; but it is characteristically exercised in discharging responsibility to and in such government. … Loyalty to my country, to my community – which remains unalterably a central virtue – becomes detached from obedience to the government which happens to rule me.

Now, I’m far from being in easy agreement with everything that MacIntyre says – or even with most of it. But his distinction between “political community” and “government” struck me as exactly the sort of thing that I have argued in saying that the State as embodied in modern nation-states is not necessarily the same kind of beast as the State as embodied in the variety of forms known to, e.g., Thomas Aquinas.

Here is how the very modern Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1910) describes the role of the State:

It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies.

I’m still reading through what Thomas has to say about the State, but my impression thus far is that the power of the State derives from its responsibility for goods that are common to society and therefore beyond the power of any single person as such. And the Catechism agrees, at least insofar as its authority is bound to the common good and does not bind whenever an agent of the State acts against the common good. Or, in a saying at least as old as Augustine of Hippo, an unjust law is no law at all.

Now, the first thing that almost everything I’ve read says about the authority of the State is that is “orders” things to the common good. That is, it resolves what is otherwise disordered and chaotic when left to individual persons or families. This is clearly the source of authority for laws and lawmaking. It also is fairly clearly the source of authority to tax or conscript, that is, to call individuals to a duty owed to society.

Now, I myself have to this point held the opinion that war and capital punishment are simply “public” forms of self-defense. In other words, I’ve assumed that the State does not have any “rights” or authority that is essentially beyond what is given to individuals; the authority of the State is simply exercised on a larger scale, with broader consequences. Yet almost everything I am reading implies or assumes that the State’s role of ordering things to the common good extends to acts that are different in kind from the moral responsibilities of individuals.

So I’m left with a couple questions at the end of this rather rambling post:

First, does a radical difference in the structure of government make a real difference in the relationship of individual persons to the State (such that Patriotism is no longer the same thing, for example), and in the role or authority of the State itself?

Second, does responsibility for the common good extend to acts that are beyond the normal scope of morality as applied to persons taken singly?