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The Civic and Moral Virtues
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12111 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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12 / 1987 |
7,006 Words |
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Anne M. Wiles
Anne M. Wilesis professor of philosophy at James Madison
University |
From one point of view, this could be called an age of morality. Moral outrage is exhibited in congressional hearings, in the appointment of special prosecutors, and in the indictment of corporate and public officials. The resulting public spectacles and castigation of these offenses have, however, a certain hollow ring. Some detect beneath the sideshow moralizing, a deep disquietude and uncertainty about moral values that accompany the demise of a culture. The consensus that underlies the laws we live by seems to be crumbling, and if that goes, the moral and social values based on it will not long survive. In troubled times, we need to look to the wellspring of the civic order to determine its sources in human nature and in an inherited wisdom built upon centuries of accurate observation.
Civic and moral virtues sometimes conflict. The virtue of a good citizen consists in performing his obligations to the state. If the moral virtues do not vary--for instance, if temperance, courage, wisdom, justice, and friendship are always constitutive of the virtue of a good man--but the obligations of citizens differ from society to society, there arises the possibility of conflict. The conflict is most sharply drawn when the rules imposed by a society are such that one cannot at the same time obey them and remain a good man. Rarely, if ever, is the conflict resolved by one person single-handedly raising the society to a higher moral level: Witness Plato's attempt, which resulted in his virtual imprisonment in the court of Dionysus. The more usual resolution is that the bad government or society destroys the good person who opposes it, as Athens did to Socrates and would have done to Aristotle; as Nero did to Seneca; Rome to Cicero; and Alexandria to Hypatia.
The conflict need not, and ought not, arise, for it will certainly damage both the individual and the state. The key to preventing it, as astute political theorists since Plato have recognized, is education. Aristotle says the most important task of a statesman is to form good habits in the citizens, to induce them to love what they ought to love. This presupposes that what is worthy of love can be distinguished from what is not. Specifically, in relation to the formation of character, it presupposes that there are moral values capable of being known, articulated, and transmitted, and that excellence in the conduct of civic and personal life can be identified and developed.
This view, for various reasons, is rejected by the "who's to say" mentality of relativistic, materialistic, anti-intellectual, and increasingly secular age, an age largely ignorant of its
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