Virtue Quest

Classical virtue - very classy

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…)

"Have you read my new book?"

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?

Eons ago, during the SuperBowl, Old Spice premiered a commercial which became an instant hit. Among the reasons, I think, is because it’s a great example of virtue. Here’s the commercial:

Virtue?

Yes, virtue. First off, it’s encouraging both men and women to strive for excellence. Men, smell like an excellent man. Here’s what the ideal is. (“Sadly, your man isn’t me. But he could smell like me…”) Strive for this. And women, hold your men accountable, accept nothing less than an excellent man.

On top of that, the humor is a humor of excellence: it’s highlighting the absurdity of its claims in the midst of claiming them: “Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not like a lady.” Obviously not – but great things are possible when you strive for excellence, for virtue. Meanwhile, there’s a joyful exuberance in the exaggeration that I can’t help but laugh at – even after watching it a dozen times or more.

Finally, there’s the artistry of the filmmaking. The commercial is all one shot, with almost no animated effects. (The diamonds were the only part edited in.) Here’s a rather long-winded interview with some of the filmmakers. It’s almost twenty minutes, but it shows the lengths they were willing to go in order to produce a truly excellent commercial. The writers had great faith in the crew, the actor showed exceptional temperance (“He was spot on for every take”) and the director had the courage to attempt such a complex piece of work.

Beautiful. Downright inspiring. Can’t help but love it.

So: go and do likewise.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return

Today, Ash Wednesday, begins the season of Lent in the Catholic Church. It’s a season of prayer and fasting and almsgiving, imitating Christ’s forty days in the desert, and preparing to celebrate his passion and resurrection at Easter.

Some Christian traditions, such as the Orthodox, have a very strict discipline for Lent. We Catholics have it fairly light in terms of required discipline: two days of actual fasting – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday – and no meat on any Fridays. But we’re encouraged to take on other penances ourselves.

So, here’s how I’m going about the whole Lenten thing.

Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving

Prayer is the foundation and the heart of Lent. But not just any prayer. It’s a prayer of testing. Jesus went into the desert to be tested, so this prayer is for strength and endurance in the face of testing, in the face of temptation. It’s also a prayer of abandonment to God. It’s giving him permission to test me, and to challenge me in ways I haven’t necessarily planned for.

So, I’m taking up an old form of prayer: the Liturgy of the Hours. I’ve prayed this way before, and I’ve taken a break from it for a little while. But it’s very appropriate for Lent because it constantly recalls me to the very basics of my dependence on God.

As for fasting, I’m going to give up salty snacks (like chips and peanuts and such) as well as desserts at home. These are things that I really do long for, that I’ll notice are gone from my diet, and that will remind me that “man does not live on bread alone.” And that’s the main point of fasting: to rely on God’s care at a fundamental level. I don’t make my own food. God, ultimately, is the one who feeds me.

Also, on the not-so-foodlike-stuff level, I’m giving up computer games. I enjoy the heck out of them, but they too easily distract me from what’s truly important in life.

I’ll be honest: I don’t quite know what to do about almsgiving. I do make regular charitable donations from my income. I probably could devote a bit more money to it, but I don’t have all that much to give. So I’ve been thinking about doing some kind of volunteer work. I know there’s plenty that needs doing. Just not quite sure where to focus.

If you have any ideas, I’m open to them. I figure I’ll talk it through with my spiritual director when I next see him.

In any case, giving alms is like the other two Lenten disciplines: it forces me to put my trust in God. Not only that I can make do with less, but that God can give great things to others through me.

I don’t know how many of my readers celebrate Lent, but if you want to share what you’re doing, I think it would make great conversation in the comments box!

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.”