[Vision2020] More on the Virtues Project

[lfalen]

Nick

I support your project, not sure about funding. You do a better job making the case than I do. For the most part I like  Bill Bennett's Book of Virtues. However I am disenchanted with his organization in reguard to Charter Schools. In Southern Idaho his organization receives support from  school districts, but do not want to give a financial accounting. In order to keep people they don't like from attending meetings, they change the location at the last minute. The change is posted on bulletin boards in locked building. I am not opposed to Charter Schools per se, they can be a good thing. Just be open and above board. Their actions do not mesh with the Book of Virtues. Bill Bennett should distance himself from this behavior.

Roger 
-----Original message-----             
From: Nick Gier ngier at uidaho.edu
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:23:56 -0700
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] More on the Virtues Project

> 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
>