Virtue Quest

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.

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?

A quick and dirty definition of love, according to Thomas Aquinas, is “to will the good of another.”

This even works for loving oneself, if what you’re willing is really what is good for yourself – that is, what will make you the best person you can be, rather than what simply feels good at the moment.

The trick is, how do you know what’s really good for someone? Isn’t it just arrogant beyond belief to think that I know better than anyone else what’s best? Isn’t it horribly patronizing? Doesn’t it belittle the person I’m supposedly loving?

How to know what’s good

Well, think of the alternative for a moment. Wouldn’t it be a false “humility” to neglect to do nice things for a friend, or to refuse to warn someone of a danger, on the excuse that “I can’t really know what’s good for so-and-so”?

There is a danger of arrogance or a false “superiority,” because we can only judge based on our own perceptions. We can be deceived by apparent goods, or by the illusion of ease or safety. We can be blinded or distracted from what’s really going on.

But none of this means that we’re incapable of recognizing real good things when we meet them. It just means there are limits, and that we therefore need each other’s help.

I’ve found in my own life that the best way to know what’s really good – and therefore what’s really loving – is to double-check with someone I trust. Sometimes, I talk to my mom. Sometimes, to one of my close friends. For some situations, I ask a priest or a counselor.

In other words, when I’m not sure how to love, I ask someone with a different perspective than mine. I ask them to love me, by helping me to love someone else. I don’t always do what they advise, but their point of view gives me a better picture of what’s real, and helps me sort out the real good from apparent goods.

Knowing love and doing love

Of course, actions speak louder than words. This is where the other virtues come into play. I need temperance to work when I need to work so that I can play when my friends are available to play. I need courage to stand my ground when I’m tempted to give in. I need justice to remember and to guide me in my obligations toward others. I need prudence to figure out how to put my knowledge and my love into practical action in the first place.

So, if love is willing someone’s good, then all the other virtues are the tools that help me to accomplish that will. They enable me to actually do good, rather than just thinking or desiring it.

And that’s encouraging, because I often mess up the doing part. But if I learn, and practice, and continue to grow in virtue, then I’ll come closer to that ultimate goal of loving my family, my friends, my neighbors.

More goodness from Pinckaers’ The Sources of Christian Ethics!

Following St. Thomas Aquinas, Pinckaers gives three basic stages of growth in virtue:

1. Beginner / childhood
2. Proficient / adolescent
3. Perfect / mature adult

Each of these stages essentially follows the growth in freedom of a person, and challenges the person to become more free in his or her life. Here’s how each stage works:

Beginning in virtue

The beginner needs to learn how the world works. This is the stage of getting to know – to know oneself, to know one’s abilities, and to know the world and the moral basis of one’s life in the world. The primary work of this stage is learning or, to use a more traditional word, discipline.

Now, it strikes us that discipline is something opposed to freedom, but when the freedom we seek is to live a fully human life, we start out in need of knowledge and in need of practice. Human beings need to be raised and trained and taught.

The goal of education is to lead the child to understand (and the educator must first understand this himself) that discipline, law, and rules are not meant to destroy his freedom, still less to crush or enslave him. Their purpose is rather to develop his ability to perform actions of real excellence by removing dangerous excesses, which can proliferate in the human person like weeds stifling good grain, and by guarding him against unhealthy errors that could turn him aside and jeopardize his interior freedom.

Moreover, this is only the initial stage of growth, just as practicing scales is the beginning and not the end of playing the piano.

Progress in virtue

The second stage involves internalizing the rules by seeing and acting on the reason the rules exist in the first place. It involves a certain testing of the rules – not to destroy them, but to understand them, just as a pianist might try out different formations of a chord or ask what happens when you add this note to it. This is the stage where virtues become, not actions that one follows because they’re imposed, but a kind of “second nature,” an ability that really is one’s own.

Virtue is not a habitual way of acting, formed by the repetition of material acts and engendering in us a psychological mechanism. It is a personal capacity for action, the fruit of a series of fine cations, a power for progress and perfection.

In other words, freedom and goodness cease to be mechanical exercises and become organic parts of us.

Perfect virtue

First off, Pinckaers warns (and I warn with him) that “perfect” here doesn’t mean the end of the road; rather, it means the fulfillment, and the completion of development. Probably a better word for today would be “mature” but St. Thomas used “perfect” so Pinckaers explains what he meant by it.

We can characterize this stage by two features: mastery of excellent actions and creative fruitfulness.

This is the ultimate goal: to be able to do whatever we do well, and to do it creatively. This is what Thomas Edison meant by saying that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” The virtuous person has gained the freedom and the ability to bring inspiration to reality in spite of the difficulty or obstacles in the way.

This does not mean the end of learning or of growth; rather it means that learning and growth continue almost naturally, without great effort – because the virtuous person has learned how to learn, and has rooted him- or herself in good soil for growth. Virtue has become a stable foundation for the freedom to do what really leads to happiness.

And that’s a goal worth striving for!

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.

About a year ago, I wrote a post about New Year’s resolutions on another, now-defunct, blog. The truth is, I’d been debating whether I should repost it here, and I’ve been afraid to because (like so many people) I didn’t really keep my resolutions very well. But a friend asked me about the post, so … here ’tis. It’s a reminder of where I was a year ago, and of the kind of progress I still want to make.

A quick disclaimer: the other blog was more explicitly aimed at my fellow Catholics than this one is, so in the post my assumption was that the readers were or knew something about Catholics.

For the Church, today, the First Sunday of Advent, is the beginning of the new year. It is also a penitential season, a time to repent, reform, and renew. Which puts me in mind of a more secular tradition: new year’s resolutions.

I’m going to make a new year’s resolution, and I’m going to begin now, at the beginning of the Church year. This is my resolution: to grow in my life in Christ. This resolution has three simple parts: pray, learn, and serve.

And I invite anyone to join me in this resolution. Grow in life with Christ: pray, learn, serve. After all, this is what we should be doing as Christians anyway.

Now, as for me, I know I’d fail by tomorrow morning if I left it as vague as that. So here are some concrete steps I’m going to take to fulfill this resolution.

Pray. I’m going to schedule half an hour of private prayer every day. I’m putting it in my schedule so that the time is protected, and so that I don’t come up with excuses to avoid it. I know myself well enough to know I’ll take any excuse I can find.

Learn. I’m going to read through at least one article of St. Thomas’ Summa Theologica every day. St. Thomas is still regarded as the most comprehensive theologian in the history of the Church, and he has a certain pride of place in the Dominican order. And moreover, he has a way of surprising me every time I read him closely. This will be a good way for me to make sure I’m growing in my knowledge of Christ.

Serve will be a bit trickier, since most of the Christian life can be seen as some kind of service. But the part I struggle most with is time management: I spend time I should be working for other people on distracting or entertaining myself. So I’m creating a fairly comprehensive schedule for myself, to hold myself accountable to actually spending my time serving other people. I’m also making sure that my leisure time is protected, and plan to use it in truly recreational activities — but more on recreation vs. distraction in another post.

In short, I’m focusing on one simple way I can improve my prayer, my learning, and my service. It won’t make me into the perfect Christian, but that’s not my goal right now. My goal right now is to grow in my life in Christ. Maybe I’ll grow more than I’m laying out here; but at least I’ll do this much. And I will trust that God will use all my efforts — and even my failures, since I know I’ll fall short from time to time — to draw me deeper into his life.

I’ll try to reflect on how it’s going for me over the course of the coming year. And I’ll welcome comments from you if you decide to join me. I’m doing it now, but maybe you’ll try it at some other point: for Lent, or starting on your fortieth birthday, or whenever. Just remember, the goal is simple:

Grow in life in Christ.

1. Pray
2. Learn
3. Serve

I was going to confession once, and the priest pointed out to me that what my sins had in common was that they were sins against hope.

Not to excuse myself, but more to say “it takes one to know one,” I think I see a lack of hope – or even an opposition to hope – all around us in the American culture. And I think this “sinning against hope” is at the root of many problems in the world today.

Hope … for what?

Thomas Aquinas says that the object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible to obtain. This deceptively simple definition has four parts:

• Hope seeks a good - i.e., it looks for something truly desirable and worthy
• The good that hope seeks is in the future - it is not something we can have here and now, or even immediately
• This good is difficult to achieve – it is not something that will simply come to us, that we can take for granted
• Yet, it is possible - it is not a fantasy, or a daydream, but is something real and within the grasp of those who strive for it

For myself, I find I fail on every one of these points. For example, I hope to be a good bass guitarist. But there are times I just don’t feel that playing music is very important or worthwhile. Or I grow impatient and figure if I can’t be a rock star right now then I’d rather not play at all. Or I give up in frustration, not wanting to endure the effort and pain of practice. Or, worst of all, I despair of ever improving, imagining that I am missing some vital talent or gift.

In all these cases, though, the objection is summed up easily: “Why bother?”

Why bother?

I hear variations of this objection all the time. I hear it from co-workers: “Who’s going to find out?” I hear it from friends: “Eh, whatever.” I hear it from my own heart: “I’d rather just watch TV.”

The problem here is that we lose touch with reality. Whether we wallow in a wishful fantasy or settle for a lesser or easier goal, to lose hope is to let go of the truth that good things are worth pursuing. It is to forget that music really is beautiful, and that there is a unique beauty that can only come through my own fingers.

It is to believe the lie that this – whatever situation we’re in, whether personal or political or practical – that this is as good as it’s going to get, and nothing we do can make it any better.

Despair says: “It’ll never be perfect.” But hope says, “It can always be better.”

And the virtue of hope is repeating, reminding, building the habit in myself and others of always doing things even a little bit better.