Ep. 5 - How Can We Keep From Being Deficient or Excessive?

In episode 5, Teresa Morris and Will Wright discuss how virtue is the mean between excess and deficiency. They talk about how virtue relates to spiritual life. Teresa explains Plato’s analogy of the Cave, Mumford and Sons, G.K. Chesterton, and Dr. Peter Kreeft are brought up. This conversation has a few tangents, but all of them are worthwhile. Give it a listen! Listen to episode 5 and then join us as a free or paid subscriber here at https://gooddistinctions.com/ Rough TRANSCRIPT of the Video: Will Wright: Welcome back to Good Distinctions. I'm Will Wright. Teresa Morris: and I'm Teresa Morris. Will Wright: And good distinctions are... Teresa Morris: the spice of life. Will Wright: So today, Teresa, we are talking about virtue. I'm glad that you're with me because I don't have a lot of it. I'm working on it, but I would like to grow in virtue. So hopefully this conversation will be helpful to everyone that's watching. So let's dive right into it. First of all, let's define what is a virtue. Teresa Morris: Hmm. I wish the answer was as simple as just being able to give what is a particular virtue or what is the overall definition of virtue. I will give the definition of virtue that I tend to think is maybe the best one. And then perhaps we can kind of talk about why people have different opinions on why that may or may not be a good definition. So virtue was initially proposed by Aristotle and Aristotle essentially said that virtue is a habit of excellence and that it's a mean between two extremes of excess and deficiency. So his proposal was that people should be trying to live a virtuous life and where virtue falls, if you think about kind of like a line, virtue falls right in the middle. and you want to be oriented towards this kind of middle ground and you're not trying to fall to one of the other sides of excess or deficiency. So you don't want to be too much of something but you also don't want to be lacking in something or deficient in something. So virtue is kind of that middle ground of excellence that we're trying to cultivate. Will Wright: So we could say in Medio stat Virtus, which is Latin. I don't know why I know the phrase in Latin. Aristotle spoke Greek. Anyway, it means in the middle stands the virtue, right? And so that's what we're getting at. I think it's hilarious when asking a philosopher anything because you're gonna get a very philosophical answer. No, it was very beautiful. And I'm excited to unpack that. I would just like to offer. I guess the theological answer would be what's in the catechism, right? So the virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to the good. So I'm not thrilled with that definition as like the end all be all. I don't think it includes exactly what you mentioned of excellence as being the mean between excess and deficiency. But I think we should start by unpacking that real quick. So It's habitual, which means it's a habit. It's something that we have to do. And it's something that we have to habituate and make part of our routine, something that we need to practice. Later, I think we'll definitely talk about the difference between the theological virtues and the cardinal virtues and moral virtues, because there's a huge distinction to be made there. But putting a pin in that, habitual. So it needs to be habitual, but it also needs to be firm. Right, it's not wishy washy. You can't just... You know, you're walking down the road and you see a kid walking towards the street and there's a car coming and you go and you reach out your hand half-heartedly, grab the back of their shirt and say, hey, don't do that. That doesn't make you a brave person. That doesn't make you courageous. That makes you basic borderline minimum human. Teresa Morris: Mm-hmm. Will Wright: You're not a monster. Teresa Morris: Yeah, right. Will Wright: So good for you. You know, everybody's, well, I didn't kill anybody. Like that's not a very good metric for whether you're a good person or not. But anyway, so it needs to be firm. It needs to be something that you practice every day. You wake up and you say, I'm gonna be courageous today. If there's an opportunity where I need to practice courage, I'm going to. And then disposition, so disposing ourselves towards the good, which ultimately is God, and being in accordance with natural law and the eternal law. Teresa Morris: Yeah, I think something that is is helpful about the concept of virtue is, you know, what you're saying is that it's a habit. It's a really hopeful view of morality. It's a really hopeful view of building character because it's saying that we have the capacity to improve upon ourselves. So sometimes people are like, well, I'm just not built that way. Or I'm just like not a good person. Or I'm not given when other people are given, which may or may not be true, right? Like we're all given different gifts. We're all given different upbringings that can dispose us to different virtues or not. but the proposal that virtue is a habit inherent in that idea is that you have this capacity to work on yourself and build up this habit. So it's not something that you're just gonna wake up and you're like yeah today I'm gonna be courageous and you're just gonna automatically be that way. It takes practice and it's something that requires intentionality and eventually it becomes our natural mode of being. So spoiler alert for Nicomachean ethics at the end of Nicomachean ethics, Aristotle is asking this question of like, well, how do we even get here, right? That if we can say, here's this list of virtues that we have determined are important to strive for. How do we get from point A to point B? Point A saying, I see that this is a good thing. Point B being this is integrated into my life. And what he says is you have to surround yourself with virtuous people and learn through imitations. So if I find in myself a lack of something where I'm like, I just wish that I was more honest, or I wish that I was more courageous, or I wish I understood chastity better. It's not that I have to white-knuckle my life and just force myself into those things. Will Wright: Hmm. Teresa Morris: What I should do is I should say, who do I know that lives these well. Who do I know who's really courageous? Who do I know who's really honest? Who do I know who lives chastity beautifully? And I look at how they're living and I just kind of imitate them. It's kind of like how children learn, right? It's like when we're teaching children how to speak, we're like, say, da-da, and then we're trying to get them to imitate it. That's how humans just naturally learn is we're given a model for something and we kind of like act it out until we can do that. So It's, I love the concept of building virtue as a habit because it connects us to community and it says you're not supposed to do this on your own. This idea of becoming a good person isn't solitary. You're not doing this in isolation. You do this by imitating the people around you. And it takes time because habits take time to build and that's okay. It's not something that we should feel discouraged about which I think sometimes in ethics or in just the process of becoming a good person. it's easy to get discouraged because it's like, oh my gosh, I failed again. I woke up and I made this decision to be this way and I missed the mark and virtue ethic says that's okay. Habits take time to build just like anything. Will Wright: And we will mess up. And it's not just about aiming for the good, it's about the reality that God is the greatest good and that we're in a relationship with Him. And so, when we encounter good, whether it's in ourselves or in someone else, we're encountering the spark of the divine, we're encountering the image of God in that. And so, it's not... Like you say, it's not just picking ourselves up by our bootstraps and white-knuckling it. We're not Pelagians. The Pelagian heresy is that we can will ourselves to heaven, that we don't need grace. Well, that's a huge lie. Of c… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gooddistinctions.com