V is for Virtue

And Virtue is for Education

Ask an acquaintance what virtue is, and watch her brow furrow. She might throw the question back at you, or ask why you are asking such a question in the first place. She might very well say, “It depends.”

We talk about “virtue-signalling” and we all know about “virtual reality” and perhaps most of us recall maxims like “virtue is its own reward” or “there is no virtue in necessity.”

Or perhaps you remember the ways we poke fun at virtue. Oscar Wilde says, “I can resist anything except temptation” and remarks of someone “that he hasn’t a single redeeming vice.” H.L. Mencken says somewhere, “A virtuous man is merely one who has not had the occasion to be otherwise.”

We are confused about what virtue is (and vice) for at least two reasons: First, there is a long tradition and sustained conversation about virtue and its importance. Second, we are detached from this tradition and conversation. This is another way of saying we are not well-educated, and thus generally ignorant. Sure, we know the word, and sure, we have a vague, general sense of what it is. Maybe we think we in fact do know what it is–until we are asked to define it.

• Try it yourself: Virtue is_________________. For 90% of you, this should be a humbling exercise.

• As another example, try naming the liberal arts. The liberal arts are___________________. (Hint: they do not include literature, history, philosophy, or theology).

Now that you have named a few of these arts (there are seven), can you describe why they are called “liberal”? And why are they “arts” and not “sciences” or something else?¹

Lest anyone think I am boasting, I was 35 years old before I realized I could not answer these questions, and I was a new headmaster at a classical school.

This is the common predicament of educated Americans who think they are well-educated when they are not. Professors at liberal arts colleges usually cannot name the liberal arts–so how can we expect them to define virtue for us? Much less, how can we expect them to cultivate virtue within us?

I often say that we could recover the entire classical tradition of education simply by re-visiting and re-defining educational words, beginning with “education.” It doesn’t mean now what it used to mean. Could an etymological study renew education?² I have written about our need for an etymological recovery of education here, and here. I have spoken about it here.

Virtue comes from the Latin virtus. Virtus is related to the Latin word vir, which means man. Someone with virtus, was a man come into his own; certainly he was courageous and brave, but he was a man as we would hope a man could be. It lives in our word “virtuoso”–someone who is supremely excellent at some skill like playing the violin.

Virtue, then, is human excellence of any kind from fighting a battle to playing a violin. If it is human excellence, well there are lots of ways that humans can be excellent. They can be martially excellent and musically excellent, but they can be morally excellent, civically excellent, academically excellent, and spiritually excellent.

Paul uses the Greek word (areté) for virtue in Philippians 4:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent (areté / virtus) or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

When Paul was writing to the Philippians, the word and concept of virtue was already well-known and reflected upon for centuries. It is in Homer, Plato, and Aristotle. In the Old Testament we find the Greek word areté used six times; it is used five times in the New Testament.

Moral Virtues

If humans can be excellent in many ways, it is no surprise that over the centuries we have classified these various ways we can excel. The tradition (beginning with Homer, Plato, and Aristotle) lists four universal, overarching, “keystone” virtues that every human being should possess to be morally excellent: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude.

These were called cardinal virtues–from the Latin word for hinge–cardo, cardonis). These are the virtues on which one’s moral life revolved or were “hinged.”

Note that now we are talking not just about virtue but about four virtues. It is proper to speak about virtue as a general concept of human excellence in the singular; but humans are multi-dimensional and so there must exist a good number of particular ways humans are excellent, and these are called virtues in the plural.

There are moral virtues–the grand ones being prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude (or courage). Moral virtues describe the way we humans develop habits of behavior in relation to one another, thus making up the mores (morals, customs, habits) that describe our society or ways of living together.

Intellectual or Academic Virtues

Can such virtues be developed or cultivated? The tradition says yes. It also says that the cultivation of these virtues involves a cooperative effort. No one grows virtuous in isolation–we all need models, teachers, and parents. But we also must respond, act, work. Not surprisingly, humans also discovered that there is a class of virtues particular to study and learning–usually called intellectual virtues. If anyone would be a good student, there are various habits of excellence he ought to acquire (and vices to avoid). These would include wonder, zeal, humility, diligence, attentiveness, discipline, courage (academic courage), and temperance (modulating study). Do your students have these traits? Would you like it if they did?

Here’s what surprised me as a 35 year old headmaster: Education is the cultivation of virtue–both the moral and intellectual virtues–and we could add the civic, spiritual, and even physical virtues.³ When people before 1900 heard the word “education” this is what would register in their minds. Education was formation, formation of a human being, a human soul, formation in virtue. Sometimes people would add “wisdom” (another word for prudence in some contexts) and sometimes “eloquence” (the consummate expression of a formed human being). These were the chief and clear ends of an education.

Now that we are learning what education is and used to be, don’t you want it for yourself and your own? I sure do.

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Postscript

Here is a list of the intellectual or academic virtues that Carrie Eben and I collected for our forthcoming book The Good Teacher, available this spring from Classical Academic Press.

Intellectual or Academic Virtues

Love / Wonder
Gratitude to be in the world and a spirit of wonder and admiration for the cosmos.

Studium / Zeal / Inquisitiveness
A zeal and thirst to know and understand; a healthy spirit of curiosity⁴ about how the world works.

Humility / Docility
A recognition of one’s ignorance and a willingness and desire to be taught by those who know more than we do.

Diligence / Constancy
A love-compelled study that stays on tasks and resists distraction.

Attentiveness
Propelled by a thirst to know something true, good, and beautiful, the mind stretches out to grasp, know, and possess.

Discipline / Thoroughness
A disposition and habit to do work carefully and all the way to its conclusion.

Courage / Tenacity
The disposition to face academic difficulties that may at first be daunting and overcome them with perseverance and necessary help.

Temperance
Moderated, prudent use of time and energy to do academic work, neither under-studying or over-studying.

Responsibility
The disposition that realizes that all deep learning must be done by the student who decides to learn for herself and cooperate with her teacher teachers.

If you would like to hear me talk about virtue as the great master concept of education, here is a 19-minute podcast episode in which I do that: The Great Idea of Virtue.

1. For those now beyond curious, these are the traditional seven liberal arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric (verbal arts, a.k.a, the trivium) and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music (mathematical arts, a.k.a, the quadrivium). For why they are called “liberal” and “arts,” I will leave the reader to contemplate.

2. If you are curious about the etymology of “etymology,” it comes from etymos (true) and logos (word, reason). What do words truly mean anyway? Of course, there is such a thing as an etymological fallacy. The origin of a word need not recover what the word should “truly” mean today, and this is because words evolve and change in meaning. For example the word “nice” is from nescio in Latin which means “I don’t know.” Nice people can be ignorant, but this is no longer what we usually mean when we say “he’s a nice guy.”

3. The civic virtues can include: courage, responsibility, civic-mindedness, honesty, care, loyalty, generosity. Physical virtues include: speed or swiftness, strength, endurance, agility or coordination, grace, health. The spiritual or theological virtues are faith, hope, and love.

4. Traditionally, curiositas (curiosity) was a pejorative word that described what was the opposite of studium. It used to mean an unhealthy interest in novelty or forbidden knowledge; this meaning is still preserved in our phrase “Curiosity killed the cat.” Today, we can use the word curiosity positively as a healthy spirit of inquiry.