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<DIV>Dear Nick,</DIV>
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<DIV>It's true, French post-structuralism rocked my world--but I disagree that it tosses out the possibility of wisdom. It calls us to greater wisdom by reminding us insistently that no totalizing project (including its own) is without its corresponding blindness to the abyss.</DIV>
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<DIV>There are still, it seems to me, some unanswered questions about making Moscow a "city of virtues," and I want to re-pose them, while womanfully resisting the siren call of Nussbaum's notions of common sense, the descriptive (rather than prescriptive) cross-cultural analysis of Schwartz and his associates, and the odious Bill Bennett and his *Book of Virtues.* (All matters of limited interest to the rest of the list, I'm sure.)</DIV>
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<DIV>First, is it the task of our city government to support with money, time, or other resources, a project which attempts to make citizens better or "more virtuous" people?<BR></DIV>
<DIV>If it is, how should citizens be involved in choosing the means by which they are to be improved?</DIV>
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<DIV>What evidence can be adduced to show that the Virtues Project will succeed in improving the citizens of Moscow?</DIV>
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<DIV>What need gave rise to this project--that is, who decided that Muscovites are at present insufficiently virtuous?</DIV>
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<DIV>Finally, a methodological question: how do we determine which values or virtues are cardinal or universal? The approach described by the Popovs, looking at world scriptures and deriving virtues from them, seems at the least to be subject to cultural (and linguistic) distortion. You list ten cardinal virtues you'd like to go with; there's the seven (courage, temperance, justice, mercy, faith, hope, and charity) which go with the deadly sins in Catholic theology. The Romans got by with the first four in that list. Any number of other lists are available worldwide. What significant benefits come with your list(s) that should convince us all to throw our lot in with them? Does the fact that cleanliness is on the Popovs' list not call into question the rationale for including any of the others?</DIV>
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<DIV>Yours in a spirit of inquiry, </DIV>
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<DIV>Melynda Huskey</DIV>
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<DIV><BR>-----Original Message----- <BR>From: Nick Gier <NGIER@UIDAHO.EDU><BR>Sent: Jun 27, 2005 3:23 PM <BR>To: vision2020@moscow.com <BR>Subject: [Vision2020] More on the Virtues Project <BR><BR><ZZZHTML><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times">Dear Melynda:<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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 <I>Midwest Studies in Philosophy</I> [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.<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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 <I>Book of Virtues</I> as long as it is supplemented with similar stories from Asia and Africa.<BR><BR>For selections from my book <I>The Virtue of Non-Violence</I> see <A href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm" eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm</A>.<BR><BR>Yours for world of virtues,<BR><BR>Nick Gier<BR></DIV></FONT><X-SIGSEP>
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