Having discussed virtue ethics and the Cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance in Part I & Part II, this post addresses the theological or Christian virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love.
It is essential for the sake of the argument that readers find a way to bracket their qualms about religion (at least momentarily, and not entirely). My assertion is two-fold, that human nature is religious (following William James) and that the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love are higher virtues than the four Cardinal virtues. At the same time, the higher virtues are entirely necessary for the full flourishing of our nature, and for human communities, from families to neighborhoods to nations, to live virtuously. Without them, we so far fail to reach our virtuous potential.
Consider for a moment the postmodern philosopher Jack Caputo’s take on the theological virtues, from his book On Religion, as a way into the discussion:
The present and the future-present fall under the range of our powers, our potencies, our possibilities. Here things are manageable, cut to size and proportioned to our knowledge, so that we know what to do in the present situation and what to expect in the future. Here we are self-possessed and we have our bearings. This is the sphere of what the medieval theologians called the “cardinal” virtues, the four strictly philosophical virtues “prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance,” upon which human life is propped as upon the four hinges ( cardines ) of a table. These are the virtues of the self-possessed, of the best and the brightest, what Aristotle called the " phronimoi ," the men (and he meant men ) of practical wisdom, of insight and practical know-how, the well-hinged who know what is what, the men of means who went to all the best schools and who set the pace for the rest of us who are lower down on Aristotle’s very aristocratic list. But when we come unhinged, when our powers and potencies are driven to their limits, when we are overwhelmed, exposed to something we cannot manage or foresee, then, in that limit situation of the possibility of the impossible, we experience the limits, the impossibility, of our own possibilities. Then we sink to our knees in faith and hope and love, praying and weeping like mad. These are what the theologians call (somewhat chauvinistically) the “theological” virtues, by which they mean that we have come up against the impossible. Here, in the sphere of these limit situations we are asked to believe what seems incredible (remember Mary, or father Abraham trekking his way to Moriah). For after all, to believe what seems highly credible or even likely requires a minimum of faith, whereas to believe what seems unbelievable, what it seems impossible to believe, that is really faith. If you have real faith, Jesus said, you could say to the mountain, “‘move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing shall be impossible for you’” (Matt. 17:20). So, too, to hope when all seems hopeless, to “hope against hope,” as St. Paul says (Rom. 4:18), that is really hope, as opposed to the sanguinity that comes when the odds are on our side, which is the hope of a mediocre fellow. Finally, to dare to love someone far above our station, like a beggar in love with a princess, or to dare to think that someone so wonderful could love us, to dare to love in such an impossible situation, that is love worth its salt. Or, to go to a further and still more paradoxical extreme: to love someone who is not lovable. It is no great feat, after all, to love the loveable, to love our friends and those who tell us we are wonderful; but to love the unlovable, to love those who do not love us, to love our enemies – that is love. That is impossible, the impossible, which is why we love it all the more.
The Cardinal virtues, in other words, speak to everyday material conditions, including managing risk, dealing within human power. The theological virtues, on the other hand, are for when we reach the limits of the ordinary. They are the virtues of our spiritual nature.
Faith. “Faith,” Dierdre McCloskey writes, “is a backward looking virtue. It concerns who we are; or, rather, italicized, who we are, ‘the mystic chords of memory.’ In personal and modern terms it is called ‘integrity’ or ‘identity.’” To say that you’re faithful to your spouse, for example, is to say that you’re true to them, their memory, and your promise. Faith remembers. Faith, being, in St. Paul’s words, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” cannot be blind. Or, rather, it may be better said that faith has to do with the ear rather than the eye. Fides ex auditu. Faith comes from hearing.
In his book, Faith, Hope, Love, Josef Pieper begins by asking, "Who really determines what is meant by “belief”? What do men mean when they say . . . “belief”? . . . . “believe” can be replaced by “think”, “assume”, “consider probable”, “suppose” (Pieper, 19, 26-27). “To believe always means: to believe someone and to believe something.” And no one can live life without beliefs. The principle of faith was defended best by the atheist David Hume who insisted that speaking philosophically the idea of cause and effect is the one thing we know the least about – especially when we’re talking about human action. That moment, for example, when one billiard ball hits another – that’s the moment we know nothing about. What was the cause of the second ball moving? The other ball? The stick that hit that ball? The arm holding the stick? The brain moving the arm? Most of life has to be taken on past experience and convention. We don’t know the egg on the table doesn’t have a poison yolk, but we dig in any way because we believe it’ll be just like all the other eggs we’ve eaten.
“Unbelief contradicts what man is by nature” (Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, p. 63). Truth – especially human truths about social and political organization and religion – is not some neutral thing. A jury cannot be neutral about murder, only about whether x committed murder. Truth may not be approached without allegiance, without acknowledging its claim on us, or without respect for its rank, worth, and beauty. The essence of this trust in truth is faith. While most social science today is built on the illusion that certainty can be attained in matters of social truth, another way to think is the realization that much of social life depends on faith in other people, which depends more on understanding than certainty.
Hope. “Hope is, by contrast to faith, forward-looking, the virtue of the energetic . . . It is the opposite of . . . spiritual sloth, despair, hopelessness” (McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues, 160). If you have no hope you kill your self. As McCloskey points out, America is rootless and faithless, for the most part, but Americans have always had an abundance of hope.
“Hope says: It will turn out well; or more accurately and characteristically: It will turn out well for mankind; or even more characteristically: It will turn out well for us, for me myself. . . . Both he who hopes and he who despairs choose these attitudes with their will and let them determine their conduct” (Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, p. 114).
Love. All you need is love. It is the pinnacle of human virtue. When I say I love you, I’m saying I’m glad that you exist, Pieper says. The next question, then, is am I glad that you exist for my sake or for your sake? If the latter, I’m achieving a higher kind of human experience, the fulfillment of a higher kind of desire. Of course, we often need those we love, not merely for the love they give us, but also to have something to love (and for many other reasons). Nevertheless, Love is always particular. “What is not loved for its own sake is not loved at all,” says St. Augustine.
The Greeks had many names for love. Storge: affection, especially of parents to offspring, and of offspring to parents. Philia: brotherly love or friendship; dispassionate love that includes loyalty to friends and family; from it we get Philosophy – the love of wisdom and Philadelphia – the city of brotherly love. Eros: erotically charged love; passionate and sensual; romantic longing. Agape: self-less, pure love.
Love seen in terms of these types suggests it may have various manifestations. There is gentle love and tough love. "Maternal love does not have to be “earned”; and there is nothing anyone can do to lose it. A father, on the contrary, tends to set conditions; his love has to be earned. But that likewise repeats a fundamental element peculiar to all love: the desire that the beloved not only “feel good” but that things may go well for him. A mature person’s love must, as has rightly been remarked, contain both elements, the maternal and paternal, something unconditional and something demanding" (Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, p. 273).
“There may well be untold number of possible ways for human beings to feel good toward one another . . . But varied as these forms and unsystematic as these degrees of fondness, attachment, liking, solidarity obviously may be, they all have one thing in common with friendship, parental love, fraternity and specifically erotic love: that the lover, turning to the beloved, says, “It’s good that you are here; it’s wonderful that you exist!”" (Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, p. 273).
Speaking existentially, it’s a good thing for all living beings that there is love. It may yet be the mechanism of evolution, as argued by the philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce in his brilliant essay, "Evolutionary Love." (I mentioned this argument to a friend of mine in medical school. He huffed, incredulous, and asked, “does the cell divide because of love?” I say, at least one did.)
In closing, let me re-state un-categorically my central claims:
First, that living virtuously depends on the knowledge we have of virtue (including the understanding that virtue is a mean between vices) and of the power we have to do and apply the virtues in our lives. Virtue can be taught and learned and can be adopted by habit to become second nature.
Second, that the Cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance are the virtues of the community. All of public life, from markets to courts to tennis matches, depend on people who act prudently, justly, courageously, and temperantly.
Third, that humans live by the virtues of faith, hope, and love everyday. Many may no longer charge these virtues with theological import, but we can no sooner be deprived of them than we can food and water. We live by faith; we hope for a better world; we long for that love that will never cease.
(This piece was cross-posted to www.omninerd.com.)
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