Virtue Quest

I, the party of the first part....

I was listening to the radio on the way into work this morning and heard a story about how some scientists are afraid they’ll have to throw out the past eight years’ worth of research on human embryonic stem cells.

The reason? It seems that proper consent was not obtained for some of the stem cell lines that President Bush approved back in 2001. I can only assume they were talking about these objections from a UCSF team.

I had to laugh. They can’t do the research because they don’t have a signed permission slip?

Yet these same people pooh-pooh those who object on the grounds that the embryos are human lives being destroyed. Because that’s just not an important question.

Consent: the sole criterion of the good?

My friend Mark likes to point out that our culture seems to have rejected every virtue except tolerance, and every standard of goodness or value except informed consent. He notes that neither of these are sufficient to base a human society on; in fact, they both ultimately lead to a society that collapses upon itself.

I think the problem is that we have, by and large, accepted unquestioningly the myth that we are first and foremost individuals. A nation, a community, even a family, is presumed to be something that we enter into by choice. We have a “social contract,” and all our relationships suddenly have the nature of a contract. They are negotiated, agreed to, and disputes are adjudicated based on the terms of the contract as understood by the parties.

No wonder we have so many lawsuits. No wonder politics has become the common religion practiced by Americans. No wonder the only solutions we can come up with to any problems are legal ones.

No wonder we pay more attention to a medical form than to a human life.

Why human nature is important

On the other hand, all the ancient and medieval thinkers knew that the human person is a social animal. “No man is an island,” as John Donne put it. We cannot be born without other people. We cannot survive without a family. We cannot accomplish any tasks without relying on others to provide what we cannot provide for ourselves.

And we cannot be fully human without other people to converse with, to laugh with, to play with, to work with. We actually are least human when we are isolated as individuals.

When we forget this, when we base our entire sense of goodness on my own individual consent – as if I were utterly independent of the rest of the world – then we lose sight of what is truly good for the human person: love, friendship, collaboration, joy and peace. All these are gifts; they cannot be legislated and are not subject to a contract. We have no right to them. The only consent required is the consent to receive them from those who love us.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Here’s a gentlemanly rant against what’s commonly known as “relativism”.

I basically agree that there must be truth that we can know – at least to some extent – since A) the alternative is utterly absurd, and B) without truth, there’s no relationship to reality.

Truth, after all, is simply the connection of what we can think or know with what is real. Something, like an apple, is; it exists. What makes it true is that the idea or understanding of the apple is (roughly, at least,) the same as the apple is in its existence.

The trick is when we move from sensory truth – the apple I see and feel and taste really exists and is real, which only the insane or the skeptical extremists question – to moral truth. Lots of people question how we can know that something is “right” or “wrong”.

I don’t have a final answer, but my hunch is that it’s something to do with the fact that we can even think of terms such as “right” and “wrong,” or “good” and “evil.” If there weren’t some kind of reality to those notions, how could they even enter our minds – to say nothing of becoming a universal of human life and culture and philosophy?