[Vision2020] More on the Virtues Project

[Nick Gier]

Dear Melynda:

Thanks for your critique of the Virtues Project.  In our committee work 
cleanliness and assertiveness have already been targeted for discussion, 
and I hope that we decide to focus on the cardinal moral virtues.

Linda and Dan Popov have done a great job of reaching a very wide audience, 
but a virtue a week is spreading the virtues very thin.  I will propose 
that we focus on the universal virtues of fidelity, loyalty, integrity, 
compassion, justice, courage, benevolence, friendship, perseverance, and 
nonviolence.

I disagree with you that common sense is culturally constructed.  (I direct 
you to the best article on this subject: Martha Nussbaum, Non-Relative 
Virtues in  Midwest Studies in Philosophy [Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame 
University Press, 1988], vol. 13.) Yours is a deconstructive postmodernism 
of the French variety that throws the wisdom baby out with the 
philosophical bath water.

The Sunday sermon at the UU Church refreshed my memory of the Schwartz 
Values Types.  He or his associates have taken surveys in every corner of 
the world and has come up with a Circle of Values that even the far right 
and far left, Eskimos and Chinese, can enter for discussion, if they will 
just choose to.

I prefer virtue talk to value talk, because the virtues are more concrete 
and personal.  I believe the ancients were correct that most virtues are 
means between extremes.  It is always wrong to eat too much, but each and 
every one of us will find a personal mean between the anorexic deficit and 
the gluttonous extreme. If people ignore objective factors--such as 
temperament, body size, metabolism, and other physiological factors--then 
their bodies, sooner or later, will tell them that they are out of their 
respective means.  This is one way to show that the virtues are relative 
but still normative.

There are certainly cultural variations in the virtues and the virtue of 
tolerance will allow us to accept those variations and even the minor 
vices.  (Hundreds of millions of Indians have a very good time without ever 
touching a drop of alcohol, so our moderate drinking is shocking to 
them.)  As I have said in a previous post, there can be a wide variety of 
emphasis in the virtues under the umbrella of the Declaration of Human 
Rights.

I'm always a little dense, so perhaps you could tell me how the fables you 
chose from  Aesop actually advances your argument.  Instead of Aesop I 
would choose a collection of stories each of which embodies one of cardinal 
virtues.  I've forgiven Bill Bennett for his little vice of gambling, so I 
would recommend his Book of Virtues as long as it is supplemented with 
similar stories from Asia and Africa.

For selections from my book The Virtue of Non-Violence see 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm.

Yours for world of virtues,

Nick Gier

"The god you worship is the god you deserve."
~~ Joseph Campbell
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