virtues

where's gluttony

not traditionally a virtue

i try to develop virtues. i think they make u a better human being and more pleasant to be around. i wish i were better at humility, ambition, and compassion.

no master virtue no credibility

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--d30DEW-y--/195qh07u4cy50jpg.jpg

compassion obv

Agree with compassion. Many of the other virtues flow naturally from it, such as patience, tolerance or humility.

interrelated surely but aren't there expressions of patience and humility completely delinked from compassion? patience when you're waiting for a package, or for a file to finish downloading, or humility when talking about your own thoughts + ideas, or when learning not to talk at all?

not at all sure that it's possible to cultivate virtues but i think it's a good thing to strive to do it. BUT this is a big list to pick the bones out of and i think that there are things in it commonly labelled as virtues that, broadly speaking, are very much not. will have to go thru lately and pontificate at length maybe.

patience and the whole compassion/forgiveness/kindness nexus are i guess what i think of as cardinal virtues

xp yeah i wd separate patience as in "not fretting about shit that you can't influence" from patience as "able to tolerate the unkindnesses of others" - i think both are pretty cool tho

for me those last two things mordy lists, partic knowing when not to talk, only come when i try to imagine what it would be like to be one of the other people in the room. (this exercise usually followed by horror.) even patience waiting for a package... yknow, you think abt how many deliveries the package guy has to make. it's a struggle inside yourself sure but one of yr better weapons in it is still conscious awareness of the experience of others.

waiting for a file to finish downloading is pretty hermetic tho yes.

These are just behaviour policing mechanisms maaaan

could broadly characterize things some of these things, like virtues of self-mastery, virtues of nurturing others, to draw up lines of similarity or difference - which in turn makes me thing that "virtue" lacks a simple, coherent meaning beyond itself

Why wouldn't it be possible to cultivate virtues?

i'd like to know the same - is it bc our personalities are all chemically or psychologically determined in such a way that they completely lack malleability?

wealth

forgiveness is by far the most tangible of these virtues, and maybe the only one that's possible to cultivate. i often try to cultivate forgiveness while finding myself unable to cultivate other virtues on this list. i find many other virtues stem out of this cultivation of forgiveness.

I remember discussing morality and ethics a lot as an undergrad.

The short answer:

I believe the key to a good life is a combination of living virtuously (or striving to)--that old Greek concept--and utilitarianism. Thus, yes, virtue can be learnt and, what's more, must be cultivated (again, I'm showing my ancient Greek influence).

This list is a little long and of some other virtues would naturally flow, thankfully. But I appreciate the intention of having the option to dissect each one closer.

I'm undecided for now, but it is between fair-mindedness, tolerance, truthfulness/honesty, respect, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion.

I think it can be argued that there is no act of compassion without forgiveness; however, there is forgiveness without compassion.

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100413161906/u5lazarus/images/c/c5/Creation.jpg

Why wouldn't it be possible to cultivate virtues?

― très hip (Treeship), Monday, April 7, 2014 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd like to know the same - is it bc our personalities are all chemically or psychologically determined in such a way that they completely lack malleability?

― Mordy , Tuesday, April 8, 2014 12:15 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

up to a point. i'm inclined to not believe accounts of human personality that seem to require a step outside of causality. of course that doesn't mean personalities lack malleability - but they mayn't be self-malleable. to look at it another way, i think there's something circular about arguments involving self-discipline.

"i would like to be more industrious but i lack self-discipline"
"well you have to work at that"
"i'd like to work at it but i lack self-discipline"

questions of willpower feel very "hole in my bucket" to me

and yet it doesn't make much sense not to live as if these things were achievable. even when you doubt their achievability.

I love virtue-ethics. I think the key is to understand it as the practical or useful (if constructed) aspect of more abstract theories. Whether you are a utilitarian, deontologist etc., I think the cultivation of virtues is the most practical way to proceed. Voted 'humility' because lol Christian.

Although, perhaps choosing humility implies a lack of humbleness? Need to think about that...

humility, forgiveness

i think that believing ppl can't improve themselves might help w/ the compassion/forgiveness virtues (easy to forgive someone who can't help themselves) but that idea runs contrary to my experience of reality where i have grown over time, and seen others do so as well.

i wd agree that people change over time, i wd question the extent to which such change is truly "self-willed"

(but this is a derail so i will stop arguing the extent of free will here)

my favourite virtues are about mental self-sufficiency i think

do you never personally have the experience of consciously willing yourself to refine a particular aspect of your personality? surely the entire sj movement is predicated on the idea that ppl can change for the better if they understand why and have the will to change?

on a personal note, i have on occasion spoken cruelly or insensitively to someone, felt bad about the event, thought on it, and determined to be more cautious in the future. i don't have exact records that indicate whether such incidents have gone down over time, but it seems to me that they have.

i think i explained why i am not convinced by those experiences upthread. like i also said, i do think it better to live as if change was possible. it might be that there are behaviours that can be self-trained over time and others that are more intractable? the vicious circle of "where do you get the willpower to develop willpower?" seems difficult to me.

and maybe looking inside one person is a bad way to define the possibility of this - i wonder how many people who seriously want to become more virtuous (whatever their chosen definition) end up feeling they've succeeded, and how many feel improvement continually eludes them?

whether or not it is possible to change thru force of will, it is my experience that ppl who try to develop their virtues are much more pleasant human beings than those who don't bother working on themselves.

i think that's probably true, but not necessarily so? sure you can have self-proclaimed asshole syndrome as an example of the latter, but also certain kinds of acceptance that don't emphasize striving for virtue but appear to cultivate it anyway in some kind of Tao-y fashion?

I kind of feel like it's actually essential to the concept of a virtue (part of its grammar) that virtues can be cultivated. That's what gives virtues their ethical salience, as properties that we can be applauded for displaying or condemned for not displaying. We don't hold people ethically faulty for not having super-high IQ's, since that isn't something anyone can help. Hence it isn't a virtue. If you can will yourself into displaying remarkable courage, though, that speaks to who you are as a person.

what do we call the will that allows somebody to display courage?

guts

is it easy for the courageous person to display courage? is it easy for the compassionate person to display compassion? if these things are innate inclinations or unevenly distributed between people then doesn't that become as unpraiseworthy as other characteristics that people "can't help"?

i feel like i can try to describe it phenomenologically - a steeling of the self, a willingness to try something foreign + new, a flexibility of who i am and how i perform myself - these may seem hopelessly tautological but there is an experience of choice where sometimes i let myself off the hook (okay, this isn't worth being brave) and sometimes i decide something is important enough that i need to overcome my trepidations.

ppl aren't inherently virtuous, tho they may have an easier time developing one virtue over another. there is no one inherently courageous, or inherently compassionate, and even ppl who are inclined towards those virtues i think must still develop them + choose them over and over. it may be that after many times picking a particular virtue it may become engrained + accustomed, but there is no permanent bulwark against being lazy w/ oneself.

i feel like i can try to describe it phenomenologically - a steeling of the self, a willingness to try something foreign + new, a flexibility of who i am and how i perform myself

yeah i recognise that kind of experience. but i'm not sure that the feeling of steeling myself resolves my problem about exactly what quality it is in myself that sometimes allows me to get over the courage threshold and sometimes falls short, or more importantly whether i can choose to develop that quality. perhaps i could expose myself to manageable fears, ones that i can find the courage to face, and then build up a little at a time? like how some therapies for phobia work. that might be developing a virtue. but i might have some hard-wired limit as to how much that would develop, and that limit might vary from person to person.

people exposed to situations calling for great courage may become stronger or they may develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

this reminds me a little bit of something i heard from r' reuven feinstein when i was in high school. he said that the vast majority of choices we are given in life aren't real choices. most of the opportunities we have to sin, or perform a mitzvah, are already determined. presumably few of us will ever feel a serious choice about whether to kill an innocent person. similarly few of us will ever seriously grapple w/, idk, shedding all our worldly belongings and taking care of lepers. but there are occasionally choices that arise that precisely resonate on the level we're currently at. i remember the example he gave was a professional thief who may never have an authentic choice not to steal, since it's so engrained into his being from a lifetime of theft, but he may have a choice whether to steal from a widow or orphan, etc. that soft spot where the choice is authentic might change over time.

i love the idea of the mitzvah, an equivalent seems missing from Christianity

I think there's a similar idea in Christianity, although I'm not sure what it's called. There is a bit in CS Lewis' Mere Christianity that addresses a very similar situation to what Mordy illustrates, taking the case of two people colored in opposite directions through environment. He suggests that there aren't actions that are in and of themselves good, but rather choices that come from where we're at. So the decision of the person who grew up in total depravity to, say, not punch someone who insults them out of a sense of temperance - that decision might be a better moral choice than the decision of someone who grew up in prosperity to make a large charitable donation out of a sense of obligation.

Continence is the virtue I value most in those around me tbqfh.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

good showing. about the number of ilx posters i believe are virtuous. (jkjk)

hey don't act all superior like you won't need a diaper someday too

i held up ivan ilyich's legs in the hope that one day, when i'm infirm + sick, someone holds up my legs

Continence is the virtue I value most in those around me tbqfh.

― oppet, Wednesday, April 9, 2014 3:27 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good thread