Not for All the Gold Under the Earth: On Virtue

     What does it mean to be virtuous? That is a question I have found myself meditating on the past few days. The great philosophers of antiquity spoke highly of virtue and the need to live virtuously. Plato said, "All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. Clearly, this is no small matter! 

     

      In regards to virtue, I feel most of us more or less think we "know it when we see it." But to suppose that is to suppose that virtue is simply a matter of the end results, and not intertwined with the means or methods by which we end up performing virtuous acts. Consider this: two people sit alone in a diner at some out of the rest stop. Both have finished their small meal and their waitress disappeared into the kitchen some time ago and has yet to return to give them their checks. Both are eager to get back on the road and have grown a bit impatient. The first person entertains the thought and seriously considers on skipping out on the bill, but ultimately decides to wait it out and pay. The second person is tempted with the same thought of dining and dashing, but immediately resolves to pay. Of the two people in our story, which is the more virtuous soul?

     For me at least, I can relate much more with the first figure. I usually arrive at the "right" decision, but boy do I sometimes struggle in order to get there and do so for reasons that have to do more with social acceptability and the fear of getting caught than it does with doing the right thing for its own sake. That struggle, while noble, is an indication of a yet underdeveloped virtue. To be truly virtuous is to do precisely what our second figure does: he takes the right course of action precisely and solely because it is the right course of action. Virtue allows a person to make right choices virtually automatically, insofar as their is a clear right choice. The deciphering of what is "right" is rendered through the development of wisdom, which strengthens the virtuous person and sheds light on what ought to be done.

     I think it is important to note that to be virtuous does not mean to go through life without temptation. Both our figures were tempted with the same idea. Temptations are natural and not in and of themselves  a sign of moral deficiency. The mark of a virtue is to what degree that temptation is automatically dismissed. I find it to be true that the longer we allow a temptation to linger, the more likely we are to succumb to it. To be able to reject temptation at its first appearance is extra-ordinary: a sign of a well developed, virtuous individual.

     The elevation of the virtuous figure over the other does not sit perfectly well with me. I want to give some more credit to the person who battled with his temptation and ultimately won over it. I desire to give points for effort. But to do so ignores the effort that the virtuous person already exerted to reach his or her elevated moral state. Virtue is a gift, but it is a gift that needs to be maintained and cared for by the recipient.

     Often the virtuous figure gets ridiculed as something of a "do-gooder". One of the most salient memories from my childhood is a virtuous act by my mother. We were at Applebees (should have called them to see if I could have gotten some money for advertising) and the bill arrived shortly after the completion of our meal. My mom noticed that they had left our drink orders off , and immediately called the waitress over to correct the mistake. For the next 10 or so minutes, my family argued with my mother over whether we are responsible for correct the waitresses mistake. While at the time I though it was silly and we should have just taken the "freebie", I know have great respect for my mom's virtue. A good way to check whether an act is virtuous is to consider what we would do in the opposite scenario. If the waitress had overcharged us, I am sure our family would have been quick to point out the discrepancy. We are quick to correct a teacher's grading error in our favor, far less so when we received more points than we earned. Virtue allows us to cut through the fog of our society's moral relativism, a phenomenon that threatens to bankrupt our consciences and render us all utilitarians who deny that there are any such things as objectively good or right acts. That is why virtue is worth more than all worldly riches for Plato. It is through virtue that we can rise above our the faults of our human intellect and begin to desire only the good, only because it is the good. Virtue transcends the darkness of this world and helps us begin to squint into the infinite light that is God.