Virtue and Vice
Praise, blame and the mechanics and pitfalls of recognizing (or failing to recognize) virtue and vice.
Thursday, 2009-01-15 | Philosophy
| "Caution is preferable to rash bravery." |
I believe it was Mark Twain who, while parodying the shameless vanity and doctrinaire avarice of Ben Franklin's Poor Richard in the character of his similarly self-satisfied alter-ego "Pudd'n Head Wilson", remarked that "ignorance of danger" is not to be confused with courage.
For if it were, would we not be obliged to reflect on the "bravery" of each and every single-celled organism to perish while attempting to win a foothold in our upper gastrointestinal system as a consequence of our natural digestive and immune processes?
If, for example, someone says, "oh, so-and-so has behaved virtuously by doing such-and-such: he really deserves a gold star", consider whether he was able to understand his circumstances and grasp the consequences of his actions. I've noticed a disturbing trend in the people of my time to valorize the behavior of people who behaved in a certain way because of the fact that they had no idea what the hell they were doing or why.
An easily explained real-life example is the eulogy for the woman born on the eve of the Great Depression who "never touched a drop of liquor in her life." The speaker will commend her temperance, abstemiousness, etc. but really, all he is describing is a fact about her habits of consumption that says absolutely nothing about her moral fortitude. If, however, she were a fall-down drunk who, having seen whatever light and resolved to mend her wicked ways, then she would, in fact, be a shining example of temperance and abstemiousness and the praise would be warranted. A woman who has never touched a drop cannot, in her completely ignorance of "distemp'ring draughts", know the first thing about temperance.
To praise that behavior is to praise the impartiality of a man born blind: "he never judged a soul on the basis of his or her physical appearance."
It is comic in the case of the blind man and it is comic in the case of the teetotaler.
Similarly, a person who knows nothing about a vice cannot practice its opposite virtue for the same reason that a person who knows nothing about a virtue can be said to be practicing a vice. A person to whom the concept of a gratuity is completely alien cannot be called "stingy". "Ignorant", maybe: "careless", even. But not "cheap." It just doesn't wash to call a behavior vicious if the actor has no concept of an equal and opposite virtue.
Would you scorn the selfishness of a newborn baby? How about praising the temperance of that same newborn?
This is a logic that really ought to be applied any time someone in the vicinity alleges virtuous conduct. It ought to be applied because its application can, in many cases, reduce the amount of invidious comparisons you make between yourself and others. And, it should go without saying, drawing invidious comparisons between yourself and anyone else is worth avoiding if for no other reason than for the fact that failing to avoid this type of thinking encourages sentimentalism, the cultivation of a generally competitive attitude and, perhaps most dangerous of all, self-pity.
Worse, it devalues the whole concept of recognizing virtuous deeds with laudatory language. Such behavior is, furthermore, largely responsible for the fact that organized systems of belief are forever cycling between periods of impossible hypocrisy and excessive abnegation.
At the bottom of the cycle, where mental and physical discipline are excessive, nothing is called a virtue and you've got something more like a boot camp than a religion: at the top of the cycle, where hypocrisy is the rule, nearly every behavior is recommended for its exceptional virtue.