PETER KREEFT BACK TO VIRTUE Traditional Moral Wisdom For Modern Moral Confusion FOREWORD BY RUSSELL KIRK IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO Originally published as For Heaven's Sake by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Nashville Tennessee © 1986 Peter Kreeft Cover art: The Seven Virtues, by Francesco Pesellino (ca. 1450). Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art: Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation Cover design by Riz Boncan Marsella Published 1992 Ignatius Press, San Francisco © 1992 Peter Kreeft All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-89870-422-8 Library of Congress catalogue number 92-72114 Printed in the United States of America For Edna who already knows this because she knows Him virtue (n.) 1. Moral excellence; right living; goodness. 2. A particular type of moral excellence. 3. A good quality or feature. 4. Purity, chastity. 5. Effectiveness. Virtue comes from the Latin word virtus, which meant manliness, or virility. Thus, as one wag notes, the word which used to mean a man's ability to impregnate a woman (meaning 5) came to mean a woman's ability not to be impregnated by a man (meaning 4). CONTENTS Foreword by Russell Kirk 9 Introduction: Is Virtue out of date? II I Missing: A Virtuous People I. A Civilization at Risk: Whatever Became of Virtue? 19 2. Western Culture on the Couch: A Spiritual Psychoanalysis 37 3· Spiritual History 101: How Did We Get to the Edge? 47 II The Key: Personal Virtue 4. Justice, Wisdom, Courage, and Moderation: The Four Cardinal Virtues 59 5· Faith, Hope, and Love: The Three Theological Virtues 71 6. The Beatitudes Confront the Seven Deadly Sins 79 7· Poor in Spirit vs. Proud in Heart 97 8. Giving Mercy vs. Getting Things (Avarice) 109 9· Blessed Mourning vs. Mourning at Others' Blessedness (Envy) 121 10. The Meek and the Peacemakers vs. the Anger-driven 133 II. Hungering for Righteousness vs. Satisfied with Sloth 153 12. Pure of Heart vs. Lustful of Heart 165 13· Courage under Persecution vs. Self-indulgence (Gluttony) 177 14· In Conclusion: The Winsomeness of Virtue 189 FOREWORD Can virtue be taught? That question of the fifth century before Christ looms gigantic again near the end of the twentieth century of the Christian era. Peter Kreeft, who perceives much about life and death, aspires to teach us about virtues, both classical and theological. He does not aspire to teach us about values, praise be. As he puts it, "Values are like thoughts, like ghosts, undulating blobs of psychic energy." The positivistic sociologist would reduce our moral order to personal preferences called "values"; Profes- sor Kreeft has taken arms against such reductionists. The practical aim of this book is to help in the restoration of moral habits among the rising generation. Gustave Le Bon remarks that we folk of the twentieth century may be more moralistic than were medieval people, in the sense that we fret more about morality, but men and women of the Middle Ages had better moral habits. In medieval times, the seven cardinal virtues were known to everyone, while nowadays it is a rare university student who can name the seven. In its classical signification, virtue means the power of any- thing to accomplish its specific function; a property capable of producing certain effects; strength, force, potency. Also the word virtue implies a mysterious energetic power, as in the gospel according to Mark: 'Jesus, immediately knowing ... that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?" (Mark 5:30 KJV, italics added). Presently, virtue also signifies moral goodness; the practice of moral duties and the conformity of one's life to the moral 9 10 Back to Virtue law; uprightness; rectitude. It carries with it a strong sugges- tion of public leadership. Peter Kreeft reminds us that "ethics without virtue is illusion". He is moved by the Christian perception that virtue is the fruit of faith. Therefore, he does not hesitate to draw the sword of faith and then sound the horn of virtue, rallying us (in the phrases of Pi co della Mirandola) "to join battle as to the sound of a trumpet of war" on behalf of man's higher nature, defying the vegetative and sensual errors of our age. This book, Back to Virtue, is steeped in old virtues. It exhorts us to renew them. Russell Kirk INTRODUCTION Is Virtue Out of Date? A book about virtues and vices? How quaint and out-of-date! I reply that a civilization with such a notion of virtues and vices will soon itself be quaint and out of date. "But life today is so confusing!" Yes, life is always confusing-to someone without principles. Finding your way through downtown Boston is very confusing - to out-of-towners without road maps. The most fundamen- tal issue our civilization faces is: Are there moral road maps? If there is a God, there is a map. If God has a map, his map is the true map. The civilization you sit in as you read this book, the civiliza- tion that is now in obvious crisis, perhaps death pangs, twisting grotesquely like a dying animal, swirling down the garbage drain-this civilization was founded on God's road map. The most striking feature of this map is the stark fact of the Two Roads. There is the road that leads to Life, and there is the road that leads to Death. There is Good, and there is Evil. There is Right and there is Wrong. Here is one of the earliest and strongest statements of this map. It comes from Moses just before he dies. It is his last word to God's chosen people, as they are poised to enter their Promised Land; it is to be their unforgettable guidepost forever: See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day, by loving the Lord your God and walking in his ways and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply and II 12 Back to Virtue the Lord your God will bless you .... I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse~ therefore choose life, that you and your descendents may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life to you (Dt 30 :15-20). Here is another statement of the same map. It is the first Psalm, the key and gateway to all the others. The map shows us two roads. Only two. Road #1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked Nor stands in the way of sinners Nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord And on His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water That yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Road #2 The wicked are not so But are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous But the way of the wicked will perish. Here are three more statements of this vision of the Two Roads, from our century's most powerful and influential Chris- tian writer, C. S. Lewis: / . Is Virtue out of Date? We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre; rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision . . . . I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road (The Great Divorce). II As there is one Face above all worlds merely to see which is irrevocable joy, so at the bottom of all worlds that face is waiting whose sight alone is the misery from which none who beholds it can recover. And though there seemed to be, and indeed were, a thousand roads by which a man could walk through the world, there was not a single one which did not lead sooner or later either to the Beatific or the Miserific Vision (Perelandra ). III There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done', and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done' (The Great Divorce ). 13 If this teaching is not true, then the whole Bible is a lie, for this teaching is either presupposed or taught in every verse. If it is true, it explains our social decay and confusion: we are lost because we have thrown away the road map. Why don't we restore the map? Because it is old, because it is "out of date". But when you are edging closer and closer to the abyss, the most progressive direction is backwards. 14 Back to Virtue Before the miraculous Second Russian Revolution of 1989, the nuclear abyss dominated people's fears. Now, most people assume that terrible danger is over, and we can concentrate on our internal problems of social decay. This book is written precisely to address those problems; but I do not think we can simply dismiss the other fear. Do we really think Gorbachev was more likely to have a nuclear tantrum than Saddam Hussein or Khadafy or some other tin-badged despot? Let's think about the nuclear abyss for a minute before addressing the social abyss. For this book is equally relevant to both problems. There are only two roads that lead away from the edge of the nuclear abyss. They are the road of ignorance and the road of knowledge. The road of ignorance is the ignorance of the facts about how to make nuclear bombs. That road is closed forever. The only other road is the road of knowledge-moral knowledge, knowledge of moral virtue that would make it unthinkable ever to use these weapons. That road is still open, and is the subject of this book. Our cult of novelty has brought us to the brink of suicide. Modern Western man cultivates risk and revolution. He scorns the traditional, the tried and true. That is one of the reasons the supreme novelty of nuclear holocaust looms so hideously pos- sible on our horizon. Walker Percy says there is one thing that secretly terrifies us even more than life with a nuclear war: life with no nuclear war. A friend of mine recently taught a course to some bright prep school students on the problem of nuclear war. [This was before 1989.] The students were highly motivated and fasci- nated with the question. At the end of the course most of them had come to believe that there will not be a nuclear war. What do you think their reaction was? Joy? Relief? No. Shock, an .1 Is Virtue out of Date? IS empty look, and a deeper and subtler terror than the fear of death. The terror not at physical nothingness but at spir- itual nothingness. "What do we do now?" The existential vacuum! The feeling must have been like that of the early Seventh Day Adventists whose lives had been geared to the world's ending on a certain date and when the date passed, they found themselves still here. What now? It is a simple question but an awful one. What now? For behind its horizon looms a face more hideous even than that of the mushroom cloud: the face of The Nothing. Nihilism. What can ftll The Nothing? What is its opposite, its opponent, its conqueror? Being fills it. Being human fills The Nothing. Getting on with the business of life answers the question, What now? But what is it to be human? What is the business of life? Our primary business in life is not business, or construction work, or sales, or teaching, or even motherhood, but becom- ing a complete human being. But what is that? There used to be maps, diagrams, pictures of a complete human being. A very large part of those old maps were about virtues and vices, good and bad qualities of character and life. But the old maps have fallen into disuse. In this book I try to perform the radical task of blowing some dust off the old maps, so that you can make the astonishing discovery that the old maps still work. In other words, this book is basic moral teaching, the kind of thing you could expect from run-of-the-mill philosophers as a matter of course for the last few millennia but which has become increasingly scarce in our time. The first part of this book, chapters one through three, is about virtue for social survival, virtue for Western civilization. The second part is about virtue for individuals. Many readers 16 Back to Virtue will think the first part is more important, but I disagree, for two reasons. First, the only way to a good society is through good individuals. As Confucius said: If there is harmony in the heart, there will be harmony in the family. If there is harmony in the family, there will be harmony in the nation. If there is harmony in the nation, there will be harmony in the world. Second, individuals are infinitely more important than civi- lizations because they are immortal. When all civilizations are dead, when even the stars blink out billions of years from now, everyone of us will still exist, in eternal joy or eternal misery. And that is the only issue that matters infinitely: Quo va dis? I MISSING: A VIRTUOUS PEOPLE