Virtue Quest

Distinct, though not divorced

Aristotle says that the point of his book on ethics is to lay the groundwork for politics. He, like most of the Greeks from what I can tell, had a very State-centered view of the world.

But I think there are a couple important points here.

First, personal ethics really does have public implications. How I act in private cannot be separated from how I act in public and how the rest of society acts.

Second, Aristotle’s insight isn’t quite so anti-individual as it seems; after all, he sees that the human person is a social creature, that no man is an island, that it is not good to be alone. So, looking for the good life, he necessarily has to look at the life of the community.

Government and society

The poster I’m using to illustrate this post comes from a Conservative Party campaign in Great Britain. It’s a kind of retraction of a saying of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister in the 1980′s. She once said, “There is no such thing as society.”

This poster turns that statement on its head by pointing out a distinction that we tend to blur in the 21st century – at least, in the English-speaking world. I can’t count the number of times when, in conversation, I’ve mentioned that “society” or “the whole community” has responsibility for some aspect of life – health care, to take a current example.

My interlocutors often would jump in with either, “No! The government should stay out of health care!” or “Yes! That’s exactly why we need a single-payer program!”

But government is not the same thing as the community.

Instead, it seems to me that people assume government will take responsibility for the problems and duties of the community. I’m not convinced that’s the case.

Neither right nor left

Here’s the thing: the so-called political right has a point in saying that a big government or “nanny state” tends to encourage irresponsible behavior by citizens by absolving them of personal responsibility for themselves and for one another.

And the so-called political left has a point in saying that government is the only entity which really comprehends the entire populace, and so can serve those who fall through the gaps in other social structures.

But while both of these “sides” see a real problem, neither seems to know where the solution lies. The right tends to want government to serve the “private sector”, meaning business; and the left tends to want the private sector to become a branch of government. But neither focus on the truly personal.

Personal virtue

It seems to me that any system, whether in government or business or anything else, is doomed to failure if it bases itself on a fantasy rather than on a reality. And one fantasy is that a system, in and of itself, will make the world better – no matter what quality of people are in the system.

But the fact is, human nature tends to find loopholes and gaps and ways to “work” any and every system it encounters. The answer is not a new system. The answer is to encourage each and every person to strive for excellence, for goodness, for virtue. The answer is to focus on the person.

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.