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Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

intellectual virtues

What is a virtue?

January 31, 2019 by Geoff 3 Comments

Understanding virtue is so crucial for true happiness and success that you should probably read this page even if you don’t intend to read anything else at Virtus et Potentia. Essentially a virtue is a good habit. But what is a habit and what does it mean for a habit to be good?

Introduction: Virtues are Good Habits

Virtue, without reference to morality, is a good habit.[1]

A habit is a stable or persistent way of acting in the world, habits are like emotional base lines. They are not easily altered. The difference between a virtue and an emotional baseline is that one might be natural to who you are due to genetics (emotional baseline), but your habits are based on repetitive choices (conscious or unconsciously made).

What makes a habit good is whether or not it is fit for purpose.

Examples of habits fit for purpose:

If you want money, but have a habit of sleeping in and missing work that is very difficult not to do, then you have a bad habit on your hands.

If you want to make friends and have a tendency to listen carefully, tease effectively, give generously, and offer helpful advice, then you have good habits of friendship.

The result of possessing virtues/good habits is that with practice they give their possessor the ability to act in that fashion easily and well[2]. So a man with the virtue of justice has no problem making restitution when he has wronged him by mistake. Similarly, a man with courage will act in spite of fear for noble causes as a matter of course, not merely because circumstances have become so dire than action is the only alternative to death.

This is why you want to develop virtue. In the lives of many people, success does not come easy so they resign to mediocrity. But according to a virtue theory of human development, you cannot have “easy success” unless you first imprint yourself with several virtuous habits.

Be The Oak

My favorite metaphor for virtue is the oak tree.

In your life you already have a will, a set of emotions, and rational powers. These are like an acorn.

Every good choice you make is like choosing to water this acorn and give it fertilizer. Every choice you make at odds with your goals or your purpose in life (more on that another time), is like pouring poison on the seed or depriving it of water and soil. Eventually, as you train your desires with your reason, the tree grows so much that external impediments to success, power, or virtue simply become stimulus to further growth. This is similar to trees which need to be pruned or coastal trees which only grow stronger in the face of the harsh wind from the sea.

In classical thought there are several categories of virtues, some are moral and some are amoral. The two categories I’ll deal with are the intellectual and the moral virtues.

The Intellectual Virtues

The five intellectual virtues are listed and described below (btw, intellectual virtues are not necessarily possessed by intellectuals):

  1. Understanding/Sanity – This virtue is the power to understand first principles (cause and effect, number, non-contradiction, etc.).
  2. Science/Knowledge – This is the ability and habit of making inferences and drawing conclusions from principles and sensory data.
  3. Wisdom – While the word wisdom is often used as a synonym for prudence, in this case it is the ability to see things in context and relationship to one another with reference to values, consequences, and so-on.
  4. Prudence/Deliberation – Prudence in classical virtue theory is the habit of right choice. Prudence relies upon and builds upon the foundation of understanding, science, and wisdom for the purpose of making good decisions (decisions which move the man of action toward his goals). My own definition of prudence (because it builds upon the previous virtues) is “understanding the world, discerning good from bad, and acting accordingly.”
  5. Art/Know-How – Art is the virtue of “right reason about things to be made.[3]” This is the virtue of the engineer, the chef, the gardener and the painter. Observe how little modern art is actually created under the guidance of reason.

Moral Virtue: The Cardinals

The next category of virtues are the moral virtues. What makes them moral is that they tend toward governing the customs of society for the purpose of the perfection of individuals and their increased happiness. A moral virtue is a habit that is fit for the purpose of human excellence and happiness:

  1. Fortitude – This is the virtue of action and endurance in the face of fear of great danger or death. In one sense it is presupposed by the other virtues, because one must pursue prudence, justice, and temperance in the face of many difficult obstacles. In another sense it is its own virtue in that pursuing the other virtues rarely puts us in the gravest of dangers.[4]
  2. Prudence – Understanding the world, discerning good from bad (not just in moral, but especially in morals), and acting accordingly.
  3. Justice – This is the virtue of habitually giving others their due. It has to do with your relationships with others in regard to money, honor, duty, and friendship. Just men pay their debts, protect the weak, and ensure the well-being of their families.
  4. Temperance – This is the virtue of rightly using the external goods such as food, drink, sleep, shelter, clothes, etc. It is the virtue of enough. A temperate man doesn’t sleep too much, avoids obsessing over being liked or loved, enjoys food but eats the right amount, and so-on.

Conclusion

Many people feel that they cannot be successful because they would have to become bad, be inauthentic (by going against their natural habits), or that their efforts are often thwarted. But if you shift your mindset toward making happiness your goal (it already is) and you begin to seek happiness by gaining the virtues then I submit to you that you’ll become happier and more successful. The problem is that you must pursue the virtues until they become virtues (hard to alter habits) and not mere occasional heroic actions. Here, I’ll try to give you tips from experience, modern literature, and the classics on how to do that.

[1] R. C Mortimer, The Elements of Moral Theology. (London: A. and C. Black, 1947), 100

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, n.d.), “Art is nothing else but the right reason about things to be made. And yet the good of these things depends, not on man’s appetitive faculty being affected in this or that way, but on the goodness of the work done. For a crafts-man, as such, is commendable, not for the will with which he does a work, but for the quality of the work.”

[4] Mortimer, 156.

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Filed Under: Ethics, Philosophy Tagged With: cardinal virtues, intellectual virtues

Martial arts for your mind: thought kata

January 10, 2019 by Geoff 1 Comment

One of the great analogies for growing in virtue is that of a battle against the passions and appetites. The particular virtues which are like a battle to develop are temperance and fortitude.

[Read more…] about Martial arts for your mind: thought kata

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Filed Under: Thought Kata, Mindset Tagged With: cardinal virtues, intellectual virtues, temperance

The life of the mind in early Christianity

November 25, 2017 by Geoff Leave a Comment

This is the best couple of paragraphs from N.T. Wright’s massive two volume tome:

That is the point at which Paul found himself inventing and developing this new discipline we call, in retrospect, ‘Christian theology’. The radically new worldview in which he and his converts found themselves was bound to face the question ‘why’ at every corner, and in order to answer it, and to teach his churches to answer it for themselves, he had to speak of one particular God, and of the world, in a way nobody had done before.

 

This had an important result: the life of the mind was itself elevated by Paul from a secondary social activity, for those with the leisure to muse and ponder life’s tricky questions, to a primary socio-cultural activity for all the Messiah’s people. The interesting question of whether one thinks oneself into a new way of acting or acts oneself into a new way of thinking will, I suspect, continue to tease those who try to answer it (not least because it is of course reflexive: should you answer it by thinking or by acting?).

 

N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4, Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 27.

For the early Christians, philosophy became a way of life. 

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Filed Under: Bible, Christianity Tagged With: mind, intellect, intellectual virtues, Paul, Thoughts, N.T. Wright, Tom Wright

On Pedagogy: Transmission and Revision

June 21, 2016 by Geoff Leave a Comment

I’ve written a few posts that overlap with themes concerning education. But I think that, over all, good education has this main goal: it supports human happiness.

Of course, everything humans do is “for happiness,” just like every arrow is aimed at a target. But like arrows, decisions and processes can miss their mark. Education is no different. And just like how we do everything for happiness, we should make sure we define it happiness in terms of our specific nature as human beings. Happiness requires virtue (goods of the mind and soul), wealth (goods of the body and mind), and friends.

So, what makes education different from other activities of human happiness such as eating, sex, or meditation?

Education is Transmission

Education, perhaps more than any other domain of human activity relies upon the transmission of knowledge. This, is where people get confused. Knowledge is typically perceived as merely that which is accepted as true or mere cognitive content. But knowledge is actually more than this. The skills of civilization (virtues, customs, etc) constitute knowledge, attitudes and habits are learned, and one’s vision of the goal of humanity (hardly what many consider knowledge) is also a form of knowledge. Knowledge is certainly cognitive content, but it also includes “know-how,” bodily, emotional, social, and habitual information which can be difficult to put into precise words (because it is non-verbal in nature).

In this sense then, if the purpose of education is human happiness/flourishing and the nature of education is the transmission of knowledge and information it must be said that education is the transmission of knowledge that tends toward happiness in a way that tends toward happiness. Observe that while “getting a job” or “making money” are not the chief end of education, happiness includes have the goods of the body and therefore having money/food are part of the purpose of education. In other words, education is the transmission of tradition for happiness.

Education is Revision

But education cannot merely be the transmission of a settled body of information for several reasons: human beings find new knowledge, the world changes in ways that old knowledge cannot always anticipate, and human beings have different callings, personalities, and skills. Education must be attuned to the individuality of each person and to giving human beings the capacity for finding the limits of older knowledge in order to add to it, reapply it, and reformulate it for whatever present situation exists. In this sense, education must be personal.

But if education is in its nature personal and for the purpose of happiness, then it must be personal for the purpose of happiness. Education cannot be personal with respect to allowing tradition to die (for traditions survived a process of natural selection that makes them robust and even antifragile). On the other hand, traditions must be questioned for their veracity, effectiveness, and applicability. An example of this might be the tradition claiming that everybody in the medieval era believed that the earth was flat. I learned some version of that claim every year I took history. Then I found out that it was absolutely false using the research skills I had gained in high school English. Another tradition is going to college right out of high school. This tradition, while at one point, made tremendous sense for some people is treated as a gold standard of life advice (knowledge). It really should be questioned by students because schools won’t question it for them…the survival of many universities often depends upon this tradition remaining intact.

In this sense then, for education to be truly helpful for human happiness, educators (and students themselves) must aim to create a sense in students that while they should be grateful and try to benefit from the past, they must be willing to be independent of it in order to seek truth and virtue.

Conclusion

True education it seems has three elements:

  1. The transmission of knowledge and habits.

  2. The building up and equipping of individual persons for their unique circumstances in light of their personalities and potentials.

  3. The intended goal of human happiness.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: education, intellectual virtues

Ancient Assistance for Memory in the Modern Mind

November 28, 2015 by Geoff Leave a Comment

Many feel as though they could become wise if they only could remember things more exactly. But how? The ancients wondered the same thing.

[Read more…] about Ancient Assistance for Memory in the Modern Mind

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: intellectual virtues, prudence

Fools lack wisdom, but how do you get wisdom?

November 26, 2015 by Geoff Leave a Comment

One of the fundamental questions we should ask ourselves is this, “How can I get wisdom?” Wisdom can lead to riches, happiness, success, friendships, a good name, and so-on. Who wouldn’t want the riches of wisdom in their life? Few know this, but in more ancient times, the elements of wisdom were essentially agreed upon. If wisdom is a puzzle, the completion of which would make your life less anxious, wouldn’t you want to know what the pieces were?

[Read more…] about Fools lack wisdom, but how do you get wisdom?

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: intellectual virtues, prudence

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