Category: the virtues

Aldous Huxley on Accidie (aka, melancholy, boredom, ennui, despair)

From: “On the Margin”

The cœnobites of the Thebaid were subjected to the assaults of many demons.  Most of these evil spirits cam furtively with the coming of night.  But there was one, a fiend of deadly subtlety, who was not afraid to walk by day.  The holy men of the desert called him the dæmon meridianus; for his favourite hour of visitation was in the heat of the day.  He would lie in wait for monks grown weary with working in the oppressive heat, seizing a moment of weakness to force an entrance into their hearts.  And once installed there, what havoc he wrought!  For suddenly it would seem to the poor victim that the day was intolerably long and life desolatingly empty.  He would go to the door of his cell and look up at the sun and ask himself if a new Joshua had arrested it midway up the heavens.  Then he would go back into the sade and wonder what good he was doing in that cell or if there was any object in existence.  Then he would look at the sun again and find it indubitably stationary, and the hour of the communal repast of the evening as remote as ever.  And he would go back to his meditations, to sink, sink through disgust and lassitude into the black depths of despair and hopeless unbelief.  When that happened the demon smiled and took his departure, conscious that he had done a good morning’s work.

  Continue reading “Aldous Huxley on Accidie (aka, melancholy, boredom, ennui, despair)” →

Justice: The Most Terrible of the Virtues

by James Schall
Published in the Journal of Markets and Morality (vol 7, number 2, fall 2004).

The place of justice among the virtues, both moral and theological, has always been a delicate issue. Machiavellians tend to underestimate or deny its central significance. Contemporary religious rhetoric often tends to exaggerate it. Classi-cal philosophy was ever aware of the ambiguity of justice—its impersonality and rigidity. Unless placed within a higher order of “good,” as Plato saw, or of “charity,” as Aquinas understood, justice introduces an unsettling utopianism into any existing polity.

“Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness andpeace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of theearth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.”

—Psalm 85:10–11

“Summum jus, summa injustitia.”

—Cicero, De officiis

“Deus misericorditer agit, non quidem contra justitiamsuam faciendo, sed aliquid supra justitiam operando.…”

—Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 21, 3, ad 2

In ethical and political affairs, no more frequent or more agonizing word is found than that of justice or its related words fair, equitable, right, or rights. In its own way, of course, justice is also a noble word standing at the height of the practical, not theoretical or theological, virtues. It is also one of the attributes applied to the divinity—God is just. Justice, following Plato, can have a very broad scope. It means that everything is voluntarily doing what it ought to do so that the whole may do what it is ordered (that is, designed) to do. Such is the fifth definition of justice in the fourth book of Plato’s Republic. The standard subtitle of this famous dialogue is precisely “On Justice.”

Justice is classically treated in the fifth book of Aristotle’s Ethics, wherein he distinguishes between legal or general justice and special justice. In earlier books, he offered an overall description or analysis of virtue and responsibility, together with the vices opposite to each of the virtues.1 Aristotle explained how virtues applied to human action and passion in which they exist as habitual guides or moderators. Justice is a virtue, which, unlike courage or temperance, does not look inward. Rather, it looks ad alium, to how we stand to another or others besides ourselves when we chance to come into various relationships with them. It implies that our perfection is not something totally dependent on or related to ourselves alone. If we speak of “justice to ourselves,” we mean that we compare or relate what we ought to be with what we in fact are and do. Continue reading “Justice: The Most Terrible of the Virtues” →

Botticelli — Fortitude

fortitude.gif

“What is chiefly notable in her is–that you would not, if you had to guess who she was, take her for Fortitude at all. Everybody else’s Fortitudes announce themselves clearly and proudly. They have tower-like shields and lion-like helmets, and stand firm astride on their legs, and are confidently ready for all comers. But Botticelli’s Fortitude is no match, it may be, for any that are coming. Worn, somewhat; and not a little weary, instead of standing ready for all comers, she is sitting, apparently in reverie, her fingers playing restlessly and idly–nay, I think, even nervously–about the hild of her sword. For her battle is not to begin to-day; nor did it begin yesterday. Many a morn and eve have passed since it began–and now–is this to be the ending day of it? And if this–by what manner of end? That is what Sandro’s Fortitude is thinking, and the playing fingers about the sword-hilt would fain let it fall, if it might be; and yet, how swiftly and gladly will they close on it, when the far-off trumpet blows, which she will hear thorugh all her reverie!” (J. Ruskin, “Mornings in Florence,” iii. 57.58. Quoted from “The Spirit of Discipline” by F. Paget, p. 50).