Man of Leisure

The Penultimate Paper: Habit and Freedom

I've been making slow progress on my MA work with the College of the Humanities and Sciences, but early this morning I finished a 7-page paper on the relationship between habit and freedom, reviewing the reading and discussions that kept me occupied for all of July. I can now proudly announce that as of today, I'm actually just one class shy of being done! Woo-hoo!

My final course will explore the relationship between work and leisure, which is the inquiry that inspired my entire educational program. Interestingly enough, to get here, I had to work my way through the concepts of habit and virtue, since leisure is considered the opposite of the Protestant Work Ethic. My major author that I'll get to read at the end of the course is American economist Thorstein Veblen, who wrote the work The Theory of the Leisure Class. I've dipped into that volume already, reading an excellent chapter on the effect of disposable income. I'm excited to read it in toto!

And now, without further ado, here is the paper I wrote to wrap up my penultimate class:

Habit and Freedom
The discussions in this course considered the effect of habit on human freedom. Do habits stifle freedom? Or do they strengthen the will to make judgments and act according to its own decisions? Accordingly, how should we develop habits to serve the good of freedom? And finally, can we fashion a society that builds upon these principles? The major authors in these discussions included Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, St. Thomas Aquinas, William James, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Samuel Beckett.

Habit and Freedom: Habit Stifles Man
The relationship between habit and freedom is confusing. Habits are originally freely chosen actions that become, in the words of Plato, “like a second nature (Republic 330).” If they are freely chosen, it would seem contrary to reason that habits could be considered as stifling freedom. Yet that is exactly the position taken by several modern thinkers, including Kant, Mill, Hegel, and Hume.

Kant draws a distinction between types of habits, and says that habitual actions which have become customs by frequent repetition cannot be considered truly moral habits, since they involve only the elective will — that is, the choice to perform this or that customary action is made without the use of reason. On the other hand, rational actions can be judged as moral or immoral, since only rational actions can be considered as whether or not they should become universal laws — that is, a decision that everyone should choose when presented with the same circumstances — the Categorical Imperative. In this sense, the Categorical Imperative is a universal rational habit — whenever you encounter a certain set of circumstances, you make the same decision, over and over. This can be considered stifling, yet eminently rational at the same time.

Mill says that habit leads us sometimes to do things that we no longer desire, merely because that’s what we learned to do back when we did desire it. This includes performing actions that are hurtful, what we would consider “bad habits.” Examples of this may include the psychological phenomena of binge-eating when presented with stressful situations, or cutting oneself to get attention.
Hegel, whose philosophy describes the dialectical struggle that suffuses history, warns that habit kills man, inasmuch as when he ceases to struggle or work in order to achieve some end, he ceases to have any reason to continue (cf. 132-133). Tolstoy counters with the description of a soldier who tired of life outside the regiment, and sought the reassurance of regular military life as a soothing existence:

Here in the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all the rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment, everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four months, there was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order, to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered — and all would be well. Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on lying down to rest (221).

Habit and Freedom: Habit Frees Man
The counter view of the Western Tradition is that habit frees man — but in a sense somewhat different than may be expected. This freedom which habit provides is not freedom from everything, but freedom to do something rather particular: freedom to develop virtue.

Dewey points out that freedom defined as the removal of external control is not true freedom, but has the potential to leave man at the hand of caprice and fancy; thus, education’s aim is “the creation of the power of self-control (116).”

Hegel concurs with this definition of freedom, criticizing the notion that “a limitation of caprice and self-will is regarded as a fettering of freedom. We should on the contrary look upon such limitation as the indispensable proviso of emancipation (172).” He argues that following the community’s laws is a true expression of freedom, since the law of the community is meant to reflect the collective will.

Habit and Freedom: Beckett’s Three Options
Samuel Beckett’s brilliant play Waiting for Godot, its own plotline based on repetition, offers three approaches toward how habit affects man. He proposes first that habit leads to predictability:

VLADIMIR: But behind this veil of gentleness and peace, night is charging and will burst upon us - pop! like that! just when we least expect it. (Silence. Gloomily.) That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.
Long silence.
ESTRAGON: So long as one knows.
VLADIMIR: One can bide one's time.
ESTRAGON: One knows what to expect.
VLADIMIR: No further need to worry.
ESTRAGON: Simply wait.
VLADIMIR: We're used to it. (546-547)

A second possibility is that habit leads to repetition of meaningless and insignificant actions:

VLADIMIR: (sententious). To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.
ESTRAGON: In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.
VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think.
VLADIMIR: We have that excuse.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't hear.
VLADIMIR: We have our reasons. (560-561)

Finally Beckett echoes Hegel’s suggestion that habit is the “great deadener” of man, once he realizes that the struggle is over and it is pointless to continue:

VLADIMIR: I don't know what to think any more... Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be?
(Vladimir looks at Estragon.) He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. (Pause.) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can't go on! (579-580)

The Effect of Youthful Habits
Nearly every author in the Western Tradition recognizes the importance of habitual actions learned in youth. William James felt that early-developed habits can serve as a straitjacket, in that habits that we acquire early on will later hold us back from trying new experiences. This can be countered by providing a wealth of opportunities to the young person. James suggests therefore that

the great thing is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil's interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired -- a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterward the individual may float (711-712).

Dostoyevsky’s Father Zossima says that a habit like monastic detachment from objects actually strengthens man in the face of temptations and challenges later in life, by subduing “my proud and wanton will and chastis[ing] it with obedience (164-165),” a freedom of spirit is achieved. This freedom of spirit, reminiscent of the Buddhist concept of Nirvana, is much more easily attained in youth than after a life of wanton satisfaction of desire.

John Locke, first describing a concept that William James would later give scientific backing in Psychology, warned that educators ought to carefully guide the mental connections that young people make, for their influence in later life is considerable:

This is the time most susceptible of lasting impressions; and though those relating to the health of the body are by discreet people minded and fenced against, yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate more peculiarly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding or passions, have been much less heeded than the thing deserves: nay, have, as I suspect, been by most men wholly overlooked.
9. Wrong connexion of ideas a great cause of errors. This wrong connexion in our minds of ideas in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after (249).

Habits of Increasing Perfection
In the Categories, Aristotle says that growth toward virtue builds upon itself. He explains that a bad man who begins to practice good habits will be encouraged and find the good habits ever easier to perform, saying that “as this process goes on, it will change him completely and establish him in the contrary state, provided he is not hindered by lack of time (18).” In other words, the more just acts I perform, the easier it is for me to perform further just acts.

Epictetus, providing an excellent warning to students of virtue, says that it is critical to show actual progress in performing such virtuous acts, not simply to point to one’s learning about virtue:

...when you say, "Take the treatise on the active powers, and see how I have studied it." I reply, "Slave, I am not inquiring about this, but how you exercise pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion, how you design and purpose and prepare yourself, whether conformably to nature or not. If conformably, give me evidence of it, and I will say that you are making progress: but if not conformably, be gone, and not only expound your books, but write such books yourself; and what will you gain by it?” (103)

Epictetus then echoes Aristotle’s teaching that good acts engender further good acts:

If then you wish not to be of an angry temper, do not feed the habit: throw nothing on it which will increase it: at first keep quiet, and count the days on which you have not been angry. I used to be in passion every day; now every second day; then every third, then every fourth. But if you have intermitted thirty days, make a sacrifice to God. For the habit at first begins to be weakened, and then is completely destroyed (161).

Plato’s advice for growing in virtue is that the body must be worked as well as the mind in order to keep proportion in perfection:

...we should not move the body without the soul or the soul without the body, and thus they will be on their guard against each other, and be healthy and well balanced. And therefore the mathematician or any one else whose thoughts are much absorbed in some intellectual pursuit, must allow his body also to have due exercies, and practice gymnastic; and he who is careful to fashion the body, should in turn impart to the soul its proper motions, and should cultivate music and all philosophy, if he would deserve to be called truly fair and truly good (Timeaus 474-475).

Francis Bacon, previewing Locke’s advice that educators guard against youth developing undesirable mental connections, suggests that habits should be evaluated even as they are being developed, lest bad ones be formed:

...the ordering of exercises is matter of great consequence to hurt or help: for, as is well observed by Cicero, men in exercising their faculties, if they be not well advised, do exercise their faults and get ill habits as well as good; so as there is a great judgment to be had in the continuance and intermission of exercises (69).

Habit and the Laws of Society
The interaction of habits and laws is complex. Aristotle, Plutarch, Tacitus, and their successors all held that law gains its force from the customs and habits of the people that live under the law. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that this is why changing laws should be done only for very serious reasons:

...when a law is changed, the binding power of the law is diminished, in so far as custom is abolished. Therefore human law should never be changed, unless, in some way or other, the common welfare be compensated according to the extent of the harm done in this respect. Such compensation may arise either from some very great and very evident benefit conferred by the new enactment, or from the extreme urgency of the case, due to the fact that either the existing law is clearly unjust, or its observance extremely harmful (I-IIq97a2).

When the laws of the state do not reflect the customs and habits of the citizenry, the state is in trouble. Rousseau gives a striking example of how strongly habits can contend with laws:

As before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see if it will bear the weight, the wise legislator does not begin laying down laws good in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are destined, to receive them. Plato refused to legislate for the Arcadians and the Cyrenaeans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not put up with equality; and good laws and bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos had inflicted discipline on a people already burdened with vice...
Most peoples, like most men, are docile only in youth; as they grow old they become incorrigible. When once customs have become established and prejudices inveterate, it is dangerous and useless to attempt their reformation; the people, like the foolish and cowardly patients who rave at the sight of the doctor, can no longer bear that any one should lay hands on its faults to remedy them (402).

St. Thomas, providing a philosophy of the just state, says that laws needn’t try to make men perfect by upholding a standard that is too high, but should seek to improve men gradually, otherwise they might grow discouraged by the difficulty of abiding by the law and therefore reject the laws altogether:

The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue not suddenly, but gradually. Therefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous, namely, that they should abstain from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet greater evils; thus it is written... (Matthew 9:17) that if new wine, that is, precepts of a perfect life, is put into old bottles, that is, into imperfect men, the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, that is, the precepts are despised, and those men, from contempt, break out into evils worse still (I-IIq96a2).

Some in history have proposed that laws ought not be the basis of the state, but rather habit and custom. Plutarch describes the approach of Lycurgus, who didn’t prescribe any laws at all, but rather trusted to the power of education:

Lycurgus would never reduce his laws into writing; nay there is a Rhetra expressly to forbid it. For he thought that the most material points, and such as most directly tended to the public welfare, being imprinted on the hearts of their youth by a good discipline, would be sure to remain, and would find a stronger security, than any compulsion would be... One benefit among many that Lycurgus obtained by his course was the permanence which it secured to his laws. The obligation of oaths to preserve them would have availed but little, if he had not, by discipline and education, infused them into the children's characters, and imbued their whole early life with a love of his government. The result was that the main points and fundamentals of his legislation continued for above five hundred years, like some deep and thoroughly ingrained tincture, retaining their hold upon the nation (38, 63-64).

Lycurgus sounds like the ideal leader, one who presided over a state built upon the virtue of its citizens. Is such a state possible in our contemporary pluralistic world community? In my view, this Utopia is unachievable as long as the dominant understanding of freedom seems to be “freedom from” rather than “freedom to”.

The Glories of Reading Good Books

I started to read Angels & Demons two nighs ago as my bedtime book. Now you must understand, I read The DaVinci Code back when it came out, and considered it hack writing and little more than a day's light entertainment. But Angels really bothered me, because it's the exact same book as DaVinci! (Yes, I recognize that Angels actually predates DaVinci, but that doesn't change the fact that they're the same book.) Both begin with the same disclaimer: "The facts in this book are true" [sic]. Both have the same main character, a Harvard "symbologist" [sic] named Robert Langdon. And the dialogue is similarly banal in each.

While attempting to read Dan Brown's tripe, I became embarassed for myself, mainly because I've been working so hard to better myself through the Great Books master's program, and yet here I was, reading the worst sort of pulp fiction. Ten feet away I would find Dickens, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. So, my heart convicted, I shunted Señor Brown aside, and grabbed a book of essays called Reading In Bed, a collection of some great pieces on why we should read, and why we should read well.

No more Dan Brown, I promise.

A Response: Up the Great Books!

This is an email I sent to the author of an essay attacking the Great Books of the Western World:

I was reading your essay regarding the Great Books Search 1997, and I was inspired to write you with some thoughts. I am finishing my MA in Philosophy at the College of the Humanities and Sciences, which is a school based on the Great Books of the Western World as edited by Mortimer Adler. I was intrigued by your criticism of the 102 Great Ideas and the consequent selection of which books make the "Great Books canon" based on their addressing of these ideas. I didn't see a counter-proposal for what makes a book great in your essay, so I am left wondering what the point was of the Great Books Search 1997, if it's not simply a repeat of the 1845 high-school extracurricular reading survey that you ridiculed.

The criteria for being published by Britannica as a Great Book, that it address several of the 102 Great Ideas, seems to me to be a standard that at least guarantees that the work in question participates in meaningful dialogue with the deepest philosophical ideas in the western intellectual tradition. To dismiss the Great Ideas as simply an arbitrary list is to ignore the importance of the ideas themselves. A read of the book "How to Think About the Great Ideas" by Adler will disabuse you of that notion, by helping you to understand why these are ideas and questions that continually arise in our public and private discourse. None of the ideas is settled intellectually; take, for example, "Virtue and Vice", my own special area of study. To define virtue is to take an ethical stand about which reasonable people can disagree. Yet once I've identified my own ethical ground for action, my choices and actions are able to be judged in light of that as virtuous or vicious. Other people may choose different ethical stances; eventually one may be right and the other wrong, but the conversation that we conduct through reflection upon our choices is what is important.

The lack of inclusion of non-Western authors does not denigrate the societies that are not represented, nor deny that they have written great books. It merely reflects a judgement that other societies have to identify their own intellectual tradition and great works, in order to see where their "great conversation" is taking them. To date, there is no "Great Books of the Asian World" set which is comparable to that published by Encyclopedia Britannica for the West. That doesn't mean that Great Books do not exist elsewhere - it merely means that work remains to be done; this work must be undertaken by those who are versed in the tradition of the society in question. And unfortunately, a simple "bestseller list" doesn't indicate that a book is necessarily being read, digested, and influencing society; it merely means it's being bought; elsewise, the currently most important books in America are: "Godless: The church of liberalism" by Ann Coulter, and "Ultrametabolism: The simple plan for automatic weight loss". Are these the "Amazon.com Great Books"? Hardly.

To address your assertion that only the 517 works in the published set are "Great Books", it's important to note that the Syntopicon also includes suggested additional readings which number in the thousands. What is published in the 60-volume works are those which best address the Great Ideas and are obtainable. The inclusion of "Portrait of The Artist as A Young Man" actually may work better in the set than "Ulysses", because people will read the shorter "Portrait" before they will attempt "Ulysses" and be better prepared to read the longer work about the same character. And if a book is unobtainable, it hardly can have an influence on a great number of minds.

You ask, "What makes a great book?" I offer a simple answer: One that is read. As a fellow reader, I salute your search for the best that the pen has to offer.

Dave and Oprah: A Remarkable Rehabilitation!

I've just finished watching The Late Show, where David Letterman welcomed Oprah Winfrey as his guest for the first time in 16 years. Now while I'm a huge Letterman fan, I always had the sneaking suspicion that the "feud" that kept Oprah from guesting on the Late Show had more to do with Dave and his caustic humour than anything on Oprah's side of the equation. It is pleasing to see the hatchet buried, and Dave couldn't have been more gentlemanly in the process.

Oprah Winfrey is doing great things with her popularity and her riches - one might say she is "magnanimous" - literally "great souled". I am especially appreciative of her Book Club, which has not only inspired millions to take up everyday reading of serious literature, but she has also brought some classics into American homes, especially Anna Karenina (link to discussion guide by the Great Books Foundation) by Leo Tolstoy, as well as works by John Steinbeck and Gabriel Maria Márquez. (Side note: Is it mere coincidence that the Oprah Empire shares the same home base as the Great Books Foundation, Chicago?)

Dave, as I mentioned, was quite a gentleman last night, asking Oprah to explain her childhood inspiration to charity, as well as her latest venture in South Africa to start a school for girls who would otherwise not have an opportunity for education. He got in a few good comedy bits before Oprah came on stage, including a great bit in the monologue: "Oprah thinks she's here to see Spamalot. And we had to give her a Pontiac." But most telling was Dave's pointing out that she had nothing to gain by appearing on his show - "It's not like things are going to really go her way after this!"

Oprah told Dave that she herself began to see him change and "soften" when his son Harry was born two years ago. I must say, I have seen the same, and it's charming to see him become less caustic and more reflective on occasion.

I predict that this warming relationship between Dave and Oprah will have a great impact on Dave's popularity. In my opinion, David Letterman is the funniest man on television, as well as a great comic inspiration to me, so I'm darn happy that he's beginning to make a comeback against that no-talent ass clown Jay Leno. Cheers to Oprah for rehabilitating my boy!

technorati tags: comedy, letterman, media, radio/tv/film, tv, oprah, great books program, culture

Language, Gender, Categories

A post on "Interesting Thing of The Day" has me thinking about categories this afternoon, as I gaze out the window at the darkening sky. Of course, Aristotle is the master of the categorical approach to knowledge. His work, The Categories, is pretty much the reference guide to thinking about how sensible objects relate to one another. If you'd like to dip in, it's available in full through Project Gutenberg at this address.

The ITOTD post begins with an exposition on language, particularly how non-English languages often group words by gender or some other category:

Lots of languages assign gender to nouns, and speakers tend to regard these odd inconsistencies as “just one of those things”—something one must memorize when learning a language, without trying to read too much significance into it. But nearly all languages have some implicit method of grouping certain nouns into categories, and some of these category divisions, which go way beyond the two or three so-called genders, are extremely thought-provoking.

In English, though we don't categorize words by gender, we still sometimes think of qualities of things as being gender-related. For example, it's jarring to hear a woman described as "handsome", or a man as "pretty" - it's considered a form of gender-bending. Since we don't assign gender in the English language, there must be a mental construct that causes such ideas to lead to cognitive dissonance.

William Safire today has a bit in his column about the word "crony" and how it's associated in the mind with males. British and Australian men use the term "mates" to describe the (male) fellows they hang out with. And yet, "guys" is a generic term that, at least on the college campus where I work, is perfectly acceptable to use with a group consisting of mixed gender. Hmmm.

Tagging - an idea at the core of Web 2.0, as well, is a mental construct. Not unlike the original goal of Yahoo to provide an index to Internet that was humanly understandable, individuals have begun to create their own indexes to the Web, using tags. Tags are little more than categories to help humans fit the myriad of websites, essays, and online resources into our own mental constructs. Online tools such as Del.icio.us and Technorati are dedicated to helping people create, manage and share their personal tagging sets, sometimes called "folksonomy".

Each of my entries here on my blog is categorized, sometimes under multiple categories, because there can be several ideas located in just one entry. For example, this entry already fits under "language", "philosophy", "great books program", "delicious", and "web/tech" (a full list of the categories I am currently using is located here). The challenge that I find is that when one has too many categories in number, it becomes a nightmare to manage them all, and they lose their usefulness. But of course if the set of tags were closed or limited, it could hamper our ability to create new ideas.

Technorati Tags: language, philosophy, great books program, web/tech, delicious

The Work of the Mind

Though my colleagues and the students at the University are just coming off of break, I have been studying seemingly constantly these past few weeks. I am half-way through my current class, "The Interrelationship of Virtue & Habit", and it's going swimmingly. In the past two weeks, I've dipped in to: Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, J. S. Mill, James Boswell, Hegel, Darwin, Johnathan Swift, William James, and Sigmund Freud. What's most exciting is that I've understood what I've been reading, and been able to connect them all together.

Reading these authors, and really getting it, has made me want to read them more, such that I actually look forward to cracking a book open to struggle with the ideas therein. This is what it's like to be "in the zone", as they say, and I find it such a strange feeling that I want to try it all the time.

This, of course, annoys the heck out of my special lady friend, since it means that I have less time to devote to her needs. I recognize this, but I hesitate to do anything about it, for fear that I will lose the train of understanding, and consequently my excitement to finish the work I have begun.

Such are the challenges of my life.

Technorati Tags: academic, daily life, great books

A BA's Worth of Philosophy Reading in a Few Hours!

Glyn Hughes, an Englishman, has done something quite inspiring: he's created a sort of Readers' Digest of the greatest Western thinkers, and published it on his website, Squashed Philosophers. Damn!

Server Changes/Downtime

I've cancelled my manofleisure.us account on GoDaddy.com. They really chapped my hide by not supporting the Macintosh, and I'm simply not going to pay for something that I can't fully use.

When I first signed up with GoDaddy, everything looked very easy and the server worked fine on my Mac. But when I was trying to perform some maintenance to make the new TypePad site as my homepage, a series of unexplained security problems cropped up. A voicecall to their support center was particularly disappointing:

"I'm having problems all of a sudden with your DNS Total Control service."

"Uhh, are you using IE 6.0?"

"No, I'm on Safari, like I always am."

"Oh, we don't support Macintosh."

"Really? How come I was able to sign up for the account on this exact same computer and browser just six months ago? Where would I have seen the 'Macs not supported' warning? I mean, it wouild've made quite a difference to me when I was looking around to choose my webspace provider!"

So, today I cancelled my GoDaddy account. As a result, for a few days, manofleisure.us will not come up. But never fear, the data still exists on this TypePad site. When the DNS system is ready, I shall have it repointed to the new site, [fingers crossed] and all of the links will work fine.[/fingers crossed]

One change is that the Wiki will no longer be available to the public. Since I really like the idea of the Wiki, I've relocated it to my own computer, where it runs as my own notepad/thinking space. I've been using it quite a bit to take notes for my Master's project. But I am sitting behind a firewall that prevents you from accessing the machine if you're not on the UP campus. Sorry for the loss, but never fear, I am still using the Wiki technology for good (not evil)!

TNR Skewers "Love, Actually"

Crap, Actually is the rather insightful review over at The New Republic of a film that I kind of had problems with earlier in the year. Warning: don't read it if you liked Love, Actually (and you know who you are)!

My Great Books discussion got postponed today, so I stayed up until 3am for no reason. How delightful that I get to share this experience with my residents, who are in the midst of their own final exams. I feel for you, folks!

More Conceptions of Virtue

Plato, Meno, 190a: "Virtue is neither natural nor acquired, but an instinct given by God to the virtuous."

Plato, Gorgias, 276a: Callicles gives a preview of Nietzche's Slave Revolt in Morality: "They enslave their nobler natures, and being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance and justice out of their own cowardice."

Plato, Gorgias, 284b: "The virtue of each thing, whether body or soul, instrument or creature, when given to them in the best way comes to them not by chance but as the result of the order and truth and art which are imparted to them... And is not the soul which has an order of her own better than that which has no order? Certainly."

Plato, The Republic, 390a: "Whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to bodily quantities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be implanted later by habit and exercise, the virtue of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains."

Plato, Theatetus, 530c: "You cannot easily convince mankind that they should pursue virtue or avoid vice, not merely in order that a man may seem to be good, which is the reason given by the world... the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous -- he is perfect righteousness; and he of us who is the most righteous is most like him... For to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice."

Plato, Sophist, 557b-d: Virtue is a purification of the soul which brings symmetry to the soul.

Plato, Laws, 653b: Harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue... And the Gods, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals, wherein men alternate rest with labour, and have given them the Muses and Apollo, the leader of the Muses, and Dionysus, to be companions in their revels, that they may improve their education by taking part in the festivals of the Gods, and with their help."

Plato, Laws, 688c-d: "Worthy of honour is he who does no injustice, and of more than twofold honour, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any; the first may count as one man, the second is worth many men, because he informs the rules or the injustice of others... The same praise may be given about temperance and wisdom, and all other goods which may be imparted to others, as ell as acquired by a man for himself; he who imparts them shall be honoured as the man of men."

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa I Q95 A3 Ans, 508c: "The virtues are nothing but those perfections by which reason is directed to God and the inferior powers regulated according to the dictate of reason."

Aquinas, Summa I-II, Q54, A3, Ans, 25a: "A good habit is one which disposes to an act suitable to the agent's nature, while an evil habit is one which disposes to an act unsuitable to nature. Thus, acts of virtue are suitable to human nature, since they are according to reason, while acts of vice are discordant with human nature since they are against reason."

Aquinas, Summa I-II, Q55, A4, 28c: "Virtue is a good quality of the mind, by which we live rightly, of which no one can make bad use, which God works in us, without us."

Aquinas, Summa I-II, Q71, A1, Reply Obj2, 106b: "Virtue implies not only perfection of power, which is the principle of action, but also the due disposition of its subject. The reason for this is because a thing operates according as it is in act, so that a thing needs to be well disposed if it has to produce a good work. It is in this respect that vice is contrary to virtue."

Aquinas, Summa I-II, Q71, A2, Ans, 107b-c: "Human virtue, which makes a man good, and his work good, is in accord with man's nature to the extent that it accords with his reason."

Aquinas, Summa I-II, Q71, A1, Reply Obj1, 107b: "Cicero says that 'virtue is a habit in accord with reason, like a second nature'; and it is in this sense that virtue is said to be in accord with nature."

Aquinas, Summa II-II, Q31, A3, Ans, 538c: "Grace and virtue imitate the order of nature, which is established by Divine wisdom. Now the order of nature is such that every natural agent pours forth its activity first and most of all on the things which are nearest to it; thus fire heats most what is next to it... Therefore we ought to be most beneficent towards those who are most closely connected with us."

Hobbes, Leviathan, 62b-63d: "These simple passions called appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy and grief have their names for diverse considerations diversified." Situations when vices can be called rather virtues follow.

Hobbes, Leviathan, 66d-68b: "These virtues are of two sorts; natural and acquired. By natural... I mean that wit which is gotten by use only, and experience, without method, culture, or instruction. This natural wit consists principally in two things: celerity of imagining... and steady direction to some approved end... As for acquired wit (I mean acquired by method and instruction), there is none but reason; which is grounded on the right use of speech, and produces the sciences."

Hobbes, Leviathan, 92b-c: A discussion of the difference between a just action and a just person. One unjust action does not an unjust person make: "because his will is not framed by the justice, but by the apparent benefit of what he is to do."

Hobbes, Leviathan, 96a-b: "So long as a man is in the condition of mere nature, which is a condition of war, private appetite is the measure of good and evil: and consequently all men agree on this, that peace is good, and therefore also the way or means of peace, which... are justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the laws of nature, are good; that is to say, moral virtues."

Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, Sc. 3, 296c: "For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,/But to the earth some special good doth give./... Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,/And vice sometimes by action dignified."

Spinoza, Ethics, 395a-d: "Nothing happens in nature which can be attributed to any vice of nature, for she is always the same and everywhere one. Her virtue is the same and her power of acting; that is to say, her laws and rules, according to which all things are and are changed from form to form, are everywhere and always the same... The affects, therefore, of hatred, anger, envy, considered in themselves, follow from the same necessity and virtue of nature as other individual things" (395b-c).

Spinoza, Ethics, 424b-c: "By virtue and power, I understand the same thing; that is to say virtue, in so far as it is related to man, is the essence itself or nature of the man in so far as it has the power of affecting certain things."

Spinoza, Ethics, 429b-c: "Firstly, that the foundation of virtue is that endeavour itself to preserve our own being, and that happiness consists in this -- that a man can preserve his own being. Secondly, It follows that virtue is to be desired for its own sake, nor is there anything more excellent or more useful to us than virtue, for the sake of which virtue ought to be desired" (429b). "There are many things, therefore, outside us which are useful to us, and which therefore are to be sought. Of all these, none more excellent can be discovered than those which exactly agree with our nature... Men can desire, I say, nothing more excellent for the preservation of their being than that all should so agree at every point that the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one mind and one body; that all should together endeavour as much as possible to preserve their being, and that all should together seek the common good of all. Form this it follows that men who are governed by reason, -- at is to say, men who, under the guidance of reason, seek their own profit, -- desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for other men, and that, therefore, they are just, faithful, and honourable" (429c).

Spinoza, Ethics, 430d: "Prop. 24: To act in absolutely in conformity with virtue is, in us, nothing but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three things have the same meaning) as reason directs, from the ground of seeking our own profit."

Spinoza, Ethics, 434b: "Prop. 37: The good which every one who follows after virtue seeks for himself he will desire for other men; and his desire on their behalf will be greater in proportion as he has a greater knowledge of God."

J.S. Mill, On Liberty, 304a-d: "We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us... What are called duties to ourselves our not socially obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to others. The term duty to oneself, where it means anything more than prudence, means self-respect or self-development, and for none of these is any one accountable to his fellow creatures, because for none of them is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them."