Natural and Theological Virtues

“Hope as a Natural Virtue”

Peter J. Leithart

First Things

November 22, 2019

“Dante’s Commedia draws on the tradition of the seven virtues, four ‘natural’ (justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude) and three ‘theological’ (faith, hope, and love). ... Exceptional pagans can achieve natural virtue, but, with very few exceptions, the habits of faith, hope, and love are beyond their capacity.”

Above is a link to a short essay you might find as interesting as I do.

It addresses an existential dilemma others with far greater minds than mine were in, yet found a way out. See for example, Kierkegaard and C.S. Lewis. I am currently in a similar if not the same dilemma.

The four ‘natural virtues’ given in this essay are also those of Stoicism - courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. I certainly cannot claim mastery of any or all of them. Besides, to do so would make me a saint and a sage. Either is a very rare achievement.

I do not sniff at or take sagacity or beatification and canonization lightly. However, either might well be an undesirable achievement, for would it not make one boring, predictable, and lazy from having no inner personal challenges left to face? Then again, sages and saints by definition must know how to deal with such pedestrian problems. Besides, sagacity and canonization should be honors conferred upon one by others, rather than pursued as personal achievements. All that said, I have made some progress in my pursuit of the natural virtues over the past few years through Stoic study and practice. Progress, not sage- or sainthood, is all I have sought and seek.

Still, I have not found the happiness or contentment I wrongly hoped the study and practice of Stoicism would bring me. I say ‘wrongly’ because Stoicism does not promise happiness or contentment. It simply suggests a method to respond personally, and optimally, to the vagaries of life as they arise. Stoicism does not offer, say, the relief and contentment Kierkegaard and Lewis found in the three ‘theological’ virtues of faith, hope, and love.

I have become a slave of evidence, skeptical and cynical about hope for Humankind, and unable to fully have faith in or love and humble myself regarding anything or anyone beyond my personal experience.

Hope

I may well be exaggerating so far, for I remain confident in my ability to love and to be loved, and that more progress in this on my part is achievable. I am also hopeful about and for the future of members of my family and my friends. 

However, the hopelessness and despair I have felt and continue to feel more broadly has deepened since the US electoral system gave the presidency to a despicable scoundrel named Trump. This event and the wreckage he and his Republican Party backers are making of US society and its noble institutions, have left me without much hope for US society, all of Humankind, and the so-called Enlightenment or Modern Project. See here.

Since Humankind’s transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settled living between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, there has been an ebb and flow of human societies emphasizing various combinations of individualism and collectivism, capitalism and socialism, nationalism and globalism, and emotion or reason in the management of human social affairs. See here and here.

Over the past one hundred years, individualism, consumer capitalism, emotion (self, race, and tribe), and nationalism have come to dominate human political and economic thought and action in all societies. See here. In the long term, there is still some reason to be hopeful but not in the short term.

Faith and Love

As for faith, especially as in religion and the supernatural, despite the evidence from all the societies in prehistory and history, that religious supernaturalism is as fundamentally human as sociality, politics, economics (work), kinship, and ecology, I nevertheless refuse to take that leap, that leap of faith.

Instead, I choose to sit and stew, and berate myself for all my past transgressions, a lack of self-acceptance and self-love. I refuse to accept the remote possibility that Humankind just might reform capitalism and avert ecological collapse, a lack of hope.

Without the three - faith, hope, and love - my Stoic practice, despite its acceptance of a certain understanding of God and fate, falls short of what it seems I need. Probably more accurately, I fail Stoicism. 

I therefore find myself with a choice of living in hypocritical yet blissful faith in the supernatural, or continuing to languish in the drudgery of atheistic melancholy and accepting that unhappy existence as the most truthful and therefore most virtuous. A sort of choosing a mediocre contentment in an unvarnished truth versus embracing a happiness and peace of mind based on mythic faith.

Maybe this is what drove Kierkegaard and Lewis into Christianity. They simply were not happy with what atheism offered. Lewis so much as said so. K. concluded that having faith in Christianity was, for him personally, the most ‘reasonable’ choice.

Maybe I am one of the ‘pagan exceptions’ who can achieve the theological virtues without religion as mentioned in the above excerpt. Maybe not.

I am not ready to embrace and profess a religion. However, I have concluded I need to work harder and variously on improving my practice of what the author calls ‘theological virtues”- hope, faith, and love.

• To have hope despite current global economic, political, and ecological evidence to the contrary;
• To have faith in things beyond which I have knowledge and evidence, after all, the universe is mostly ‘dark’ matter and energy which is only an place-holding expression for our lack of evidence and ignorance, and;
• To more actively express love and charity, unconditionally - to persons, including and perhaps especially those I disagree with, those I despise, and those who despise me - and to all things beyond my self.