patrick.net

The Value of Virtue

... Everywhere you turn, you hear all about values, but never about virtue. Except in the context of ‘virtue signalling’, which everyone understands refers only to the false virtue of communicating that one subscribes to the correct set of In This House We Believe dogmas. Which of course, is really value signalling.

I don’t think this is accidental, nor do I think this is a matter of no consequence. Virtue and value are not synonymous concepts.

The etymology of the two words is revealing.

Tracing the noun ‘value’ back we come to an Old French meaning the worth or price of something, with additional connotations connecting this to the concept of moral worth. This in turn emerges from the Latin valere, meaning to be strong or well, or again to be worth, which itself came from the Proto-Indo-European root *wal-, ‘to be strong’.

Virtue has an entirely different origin. The Old French vertu meant force, strength, vigour, qualities, abilities. This came from the Latin virtutem, meaning moral strength, character, goodness, manliness, courage in war, bravery, valour, and excellence, with its root in the Latin vir2 for ‘man’, preserving the same meaning from the original PIE root *wi-ro-. ...

It’s probably no accident that discussion of the nature of virtue and the most efficacious means of cultivating it in the hearts of the youth, which was a major preoccupation of philosophers going back for centuries, ceased almost entirely over such a short period of time3 ... to be replaced by endless prattling about Our Values, which are open to anyone who merely recites the correct shahada.




... As the old meme has it, weak men make hard times, and hard times make strong men. We’re in the first part of that cycle now, you may have noticed. It is time for us, for at least some of us, to become hard men – more precisely, to become virtuous men. If we are to have a circulation of elites, as we must have, this is absolutely essential. I do not mean by this that it would be better if the next elites are virtuous; I mean that the strength that will enable them to become the next elites is synonymous with virtue. ...

The first four are the cardinal virtues, recognized by the pagan philosophers as the foundation of virtue. They are:

Fortitude: strength, endurance, resilience, perseverance, courage, bravery, valour. The ability to do hard things, withstand difficult trials, press on against resistance both inner and outer. Toughness, in other words. Fortitude is notably discouraged by concepts like ‘safe spaces’; to the contrary, modern education incentivizes emotional fragility.

Justice: giving what is proper to whom it is owed, both in terms of reward and punishment, acclaim and condemnation. Social justice is, as the prefix ‘social’ implies, injustice in every way: it demands that meritorious individuals be passed over for jobs, promotions, and positions in schools in favour of those less deserving; insists that whole peoples be deprived of their ancestral inheritances of territory and culture; and gives over our cities to violent criminals and drug addicts, even as the law-abiding are viciously punished for the most minor infractions.

Prudence: this is essentially making wise decisions, doing what is appropriate in a given situation by taking into account the full context of that situation. Importantly, it isn’t just intelligence or knowledge; as present social conditions demonstrate on a daily basis, and most especially over the last few years, merely smart or educated people can be very imprudent, e.g. believing known liars on such subjects as pandemics, vaccines, Ukraine, or carbon dioxide.

Temperance: When this word is used people tend to think of the hysterical church ladies that got alcohol banned, but temperance doesn’t just mean knowing when to say no to that next drink, although that is an example. Temperance is essentially achieving the correct balance. Our society, which oscillates between a level of prudishness that would have appalled the Victorians and a licentiousness that would have made Caligula blush without even noticing the obvious contradiction, is notably lacking in temperance of any sort.

Which of course, is really value signalling.