Category: Virtues and Vices
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The Noble and the Base
If a noble man becomes aware of my moral defects, he is saddened, disappointed, disillusioned perhaps. But the base man reacts differently: he is gleeful, pleased, reassured. "So he isn't better than me after all! Good!" The noble seek those who are above them so that they can become like them. The base deny that anyone could be…
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The Mortalist’s Hope
Must not the materialist, the mortalist hope that bodily death is the absolute end as death draws near? For he has lived as if it is. He has made no provision for anything else. He has decided that this life is all there is and has lived accordingly. He hopes he is in for no…
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Milton Praises the Strenuous Life
Near the end of Richard Weaver's essay, "Life Without Prejudice," he quotes Milton: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we…
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The Fragility of Patience
A while back we had to deal with a difficult person. Afterwards, wanting to praise me for my patience, my wife said, "Thank you for trying to be patient." At that I lost my patience. "I wasn't trying to be patient, I was succeeding!" Until that moment.
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Vanity and Shamelessness?
From the pen of E. M. Cioran: Indolence saves us from prolixity and thereby from the shamelessness inherent in production. The aphorism is from Drawn and Quartered. Is all production vain and shameless? Perhaps not if one keeps one's productions to oneself. But writing books, articles and blog posts is not just production, but…
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David Brooks on the Vigorous Virtues
David Brooks makes some good points in The Vigorous Virtues, but ends on a silly and naive note: Finally, there is the problem of the social fabric. Segmented societies do not thrive, nor do ones, like ours, with diminishing social trust. Nanny-state government may have helped undermine personal responsibility and the social fabric, but that…
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On Temptation and the Perfection of Jesus
Joshua Orsak e-mails: Your recent posts on temptation got me thinking (again) about a problem I've wrestled with a long time. I'm a Christian minister and I've long thought about a tension between Jesus Christ's focus on intentions and sin in the internal life of man and the Christian conviction summed up in Hebrews 4:15…
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Temptation Again
This from a reader: I have been a follower and great admirer of you and your blog writing for some time. I enjoyed reading your most recent post, especially as this topic has been fresh in my mind from preaching a sermon last week from James 1:13-15 on the nature and power of temptation…
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Temptation and Meta-Temptation
Is it built into the very concept of temptation that if one is tempted to do something or leave something undone that the act or ommission is morally wrong? I should think so. This is not to say that in ordinary English 'temptation' is not used in looser ways. For example, 'I am tempted to…
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Dennis Prager, Jealousy, and Envy
Talk-show host Dennis Prager is a fount of wisdom. I recommend his Happiness Hour to you, and the rest of his show as well. But I just heard him say on the Happiness Hour segment of his show, "jealousy slash envy." I beg to differ. I see a distinction between the two. See my Envy, Jealousy,…
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The Ascesis of the Lower
It is useful to suppose oneself composed of a lower and a higher self. Much good comes from denying the former, good that accrues to the latter. Companion post: William James on Self-Denial.
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Be Hard on Yourself
The better people are hard on themselves. The exemplify the anti-Bukowski property: they try. They set themselves difficult tasks and strive to complete them. They make intellectual, moral, spiritual, and physical demands of themselves. They are alive to the discrepancy between what they are and what they ought to be. But they also know how to…
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The Mighty Tetrad: Money, Power, Sex, and Recognition
Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below. But none of the four is evil or the root of all evil. People thoughtlessly and falsely repeat, time and again, that money is the root of all evil. Why not say that about power, sex,…
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On Postponing Self Mastery
Wait too long to develop self-control and you may find that your vices have abandoned you before you have had a chance to abandon them. In divorces of all kinds it is better to be the one who sends packing rather than the one sent packing.
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Attitude, Gratitude, Beatitude
The attitude of gratitude conduces to beatitude. Can it be said in plain Anglo-Saxon? Grateful thoughts lead one to happiness. However you say it, it is true. The miserable make themselves miserable by their bad thinking; the happy happy by their correct mental hygiene. Broad generalizations, these. They admit of exceptions, as goes without saying. …