Hi, I’m Dr. Anadale and in this video I’m going to talk about section 2 of this book,
Josef Pieper's The Christian Idea of Man. At the end of the video I'll show you up close what
this little blue thing on the shelf behind me is. Section two is titled “The True Concept of Virtue
and the Hierarchy of the Virtues,” and Pieper begins by noting that in his own time, in 1949,
the word “virtue” has fallen on hard times. It… he quotes a famous literary figure to the effect
that one only hears the word virtue today in jokes, in church, and in academic discussions.
There may be some reasons for this. Pieper entertains the idea that perhaps this is the
fate of all great words: words that describe important realities are used quite a lot;
eventually they are overused, their meaning and use is appropriated and misappropriated by
others and the meaning eventually drifts into cliché and people disregard it and discard it.
It may also be, Pieper says, that the term virtue has fallen prey to
a modern tendency to sneer at what is good, to regard goodness as being something naive
and ridiculous and an object of jest. But, he says finally, it certainly is the case that Christian
thinkers have done a poor job of communicating to the general public just what virtue is and what
virtue means, the role of virtue in a well-lived life. And that of course is part of the situation
that this book is intended to remedy, to give us a clearer understanding of just what virtue means.
He tells us part of what virtue means at the bottom of the second page of this section. He
writes: “Virtue does not mean nice and orderly behavior in relation to isolated instances
of doing or leaving undone.” So we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that virtue is a kind of
rare quality that one might call on in exceptional occasions when heroism is demanded. So I might
think of a person who is honest in the sense that, well, the one time in five years that she found a
wallet with money in it on the ground she returned it to the person who dropped it without taking any
money from it. So she had the necessary honesty to perform that one action that one isolated time.
This would amount to reducing virtue to a kind of exceptional capacity to be used only rarely.
So for example if I learned just a little bit of Spanish I might say, I might be able to, when
somebody asks me a question in Spanish, respond, and I would say “Well, you know, that's what I
studied Spanish in high school for, so I could respond to that guy's question at the airport,
but it's not useful in my day-to-day life.” It's the kind of thing that I sort of keep on reserve
as a sort of special quality that might help me on the rare occasions when it's demanded.
Pieper continues… I’m sorry, this is not the correct way to think about
virtue. What is the correct way? Pieper tells us next: “Instead, virtue means
that the person *is* right in both the natural… in both the supernatural and the natural sense.”
So here again is our shift from thinking about isolated actions, heroic virtuous actions,
to thinking about virtuous character as a stable possession. The honest
person is not just the person who is able to be honest on the occasions when honesty is demanded.
The honest person is herself, deep down, oriented towards honesty, oriented towards truth-telling
in a fundamental way. We are, as Mojo Nixon might say, getting, getting existential here.
We'll see more of this in what's to come. Pieper goes on to identify two different
problems that a Christian approaching this idea of virtue might face. First, we might become
moralistic, we might begin to think of virtue and goodness as isolated from our daily activities,
as something that is better than our ordinary daily run of life. Or we might fall prey to a kind
of supernaturalism which holds that holiness and goodness is above the mere virtues of our nature,
that being merely virtuous in a natural sense is not enough to please God, is not enough to be,
to rise to a truly supernatural goodness. Both of these, Pieper says, are mistakes.
On page 11 of this section Pieper then goes on to give us, I think, a very good one sentence
definition of virtue. He begins by saying: “Virtue in the quite general sense raises the level of
existence of the human person,” and here's that existential turn I was referring to earlier.
He quotes Thomas to the effect that virtue is the ultimate potential of the human being, so when
we are being ourselves, when we are living out human existence to the highest possible degree,
that is when we are realizing the virtues. And he writes on page 11:
“The virtuous person is [exists] in such a way that, from the innermost tendency of his being,
he realizes the good through his actions.” So there's a good one sentence definition. What
do we have? We have virtue: honesty, courage, and the like, is a fundamental orientation of the self
at the level of one's existence. It's a matter of existing in the world in such a way that you,
on a regular habitual basis, tend to act well, to realize the good successfully, through your
actions. So we might think of what it means to be courageous. I’m recording this right around
the anniversary of 9/11. What does it mean to be a courageous firefighter? It means not simply to
be possessed of a kind of extraordinary quality of heroism that you can draw upon in an extraordinary
circumstance, facing death. It means instead to be oriented as a person in your daily act of existing
in such a way that your actions will on a regular basis bring about the good in the world
that the virtue of courage is oriented towards. So we think a courageous firefighter exists as a man
in a certain sort of way, in an admirable sort of way we would say. But it's precisely that way
that makes him prepared to charge into a burning building if that's called upon.
It's precisely that way of existing that gives him the faculty of judgment to decide
“that building is about to come down, it's not prudent to go into that building at this time.”
So we'll see more about this when we look at the specific virtues next, but virtue is a
fundamental existential possession or orientation of the human self that then is realized in action
and the results of action. So if we look just at the actions and the results of the actions,
we're not going deep enough to actually grasp what a virtue truly is, according to Pieper.
In the final paragraph of this section Pieper speaks about the hierarchy of
virtues. In addition to knowing what virtue is and having a correct concept of virtue,
we also want to be clear about how the virtues are ranked within themselves. For the Christian,
obviously the highest and most important virtue is the supernatural love of God and neighbor
that we often call “charity.” If you know the famous passage from 1 Corinthians about “faith,
hope, and love,” you've heard this before, perhaps in the readings, scripture readings at weddings.
Beneath charity as the chief virtue we have the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity
being of a higher order than the natural or cardinal virtues
of courage, justice, prudence, and the like. In the next five sections of the book Pieper
is going to talk about these specific virtues and groups of virtues. We will turn to the
virtue of prudence next in section three. Before I get to the end of the video
let me show you, as I promised, this blue thing on the shelf behind me.
This is a little blue origami three-headed dragon that my daughter, my youngest daughter,
made for me. She found the instructions in a book. This is a King Ghidora
dragon and I think it looks really fantastic: the wings, the tail, the three heads.
I’m pleased to have it on my shelf here in my office. So, that's all for now. I hope you’ve
enjoyed this video and will enjoy the next video in the series. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.