I often seem to find myself having Faith (perhaps) in the matter of my little bubble of existence, in the sense that it will all work out to be what it becomes, and the tautology to that being nonetheless somehow an affirmation. The sobering tragedies of the world, even more immediate ones, intrude and complicate my comfort levels, of course, but don’t overwhelm (at least on a permanently debilitating basis, so far). Bob Marley, Redemption Song, everything’s gonna be alright, and all that… Can one have faith in mental health?
Alright, I’ll try to explain what I mean.
We humans are social creatures, and as such we are pre-disposed to admire and/or demand certain behavior from eachother within our groups. Morality, for example, is a code of conduct that if followed would serve to minimize in-group conflicts, and it is supposed to relfect what it is we demand from eachother. Virtues are the qualities that we admire, because individuals who display them are simply more valuable to the group than those who do not. A curagous person who would rush to the defense of his friends is a person whom you would want and value as your friend and indeed you would wish your own friends to think that well of yourself. A corward who does not help his friends isn’t exactly blamed for the event (which would be the case if he had failed to act moraly), but is considered a useless person in such events. His value is less. Virtues are based on what it is we admire about eachother, and the qualities that make you more valuable to those around you. You cannot even help admiering an enemy who displays such qualities, simply because you are capable of imagining what he would be like if you were on the same side.
a virtue lends itself to your eudaimon by way of your self-image… by adopting qualities you would admire in others, you helplessly admire them in yourself, and they become points of pride that you know no one could deny you… not even an enemy.
Yes, but why isn’t it a virtue to have faith in a god who does not exist?
Your faith would still bring you mental well being… it would still sustain your good mood and positive outlook… so why wouldn’t it be a virtue? Precicely because there would be no one there to admire your faithfullness… God is not there to value such behavior… So all you are doing is pleasing yourself by believing things that make you happy.
Well, you're taking a non-virtue-ethics approach to virtue, which is fine, but...I don't think Aristotle or Jesus would say that we exhibit virtues because they make people more valuable to the group, though Hobbes certainly would. The whole point of virtue theory is to say that virtuous behavior is a good in itself...
Case in point, a courageous person could also bravely charge into your home and rob you blind, confident that the law will never catch him, do to his dutiful and attentive planning. Ideally, the virtues make a good person if the same person has them all and acts on them all correctly, but each one taken for what it is can screw us over when it manifests in other people as easily as it can help us.
So, it still seems to me that faith works the same way as courage or other virtues- a person acting on faith can, thereby, do something we appreciate, or else not.
So yeah, I guess I agree with you that virtues are primarily qualities that we admire in others, and therefore ourselves- but I don’t think that admiration is based primarily in a sense of usefulness.
Nah, I don’t think it’s that simple. I suppose that’s a side to it, but the virtue theorists I’ve read seem to think that acting virtuously will actually lead to one’s life being better- for example, an honest philosopher will thereby be BETTER at philosophy than if he was self-deceptive, in a way that goes far beyond the admiration of his colleagues. This becomes important when considering faith, since in Christianity it’s described in terms of one’s walk with God, and not as an inter-personal thing.
But not just any old things, right? It seems to me that there’s plenty of harsh realities a person of great faith would just have to accept, under the Christian understanding. I’m sure we could even think of scenarios in which, as an act of faith, a Christian would have to reject something that would be a great relief for them to believe, and accept something much more difficult and irksome instead.
Which raises the question of to what extent w really choose our beliefs at all.
I don’t think that the two are mutually exclusive. Virtue being good in itself (in so far as it affects a person’s eudaimon) seems to follow from our social nature… As I tried to explain later on in my post, the good it does YOU is not by how well you are rewarded for your virtue by the others in your group (although that part is surely good for you too) but in how you view yourself AS a social being. You can’t help but judge yourself by the same messure you judge everyone else. So if you admire someone else for a quality, you would admire yourself for it just the same… ect.
I said virtues were based on their usefulness TO THE GROUP… not just usefulness… It’s a SOCIAL instinct. We are social creatures not solitary. We don’t admire solitary behavior or thinking.
So let’s ask, in what situation could I admire the bravery of the guy who bravely stole from me? If his bravery was for the benifit of himself, than it would be a selfish act and in no way warent any kind of admiration… but if he did so for his family, than I might very well admire his bravery because it was in the service of a clan or a group! Theft is still immoral, mind you, and as such I would never accept his behavior, but I might very well wish that those in my own family show the same kind of bravery.
Like I tried to say before, Ucc: You don’t actually need someone ELSE to reward you!
You, yourself, because you are a social creature, will judge yourself just as surely as your colleagues would. I was speaking of your SELF-image, not your IMAGE as percieved by others. The two are mostly identical except that you don’t need someone else to see you, for you to have a self-image!
That’s after the fact… You’re already a theist at that point… It would be like betraying God if you didn’t.
The thing is that God becomes a person in your mind (even if it is nothing but a fantasy) and you form a relationship with this character (like when you read a book)… at that point it’s irrelevant WHY you chose to BELIEVE this person was real, the fact that you do compells you to stay loyal to him/her/it. You would think poorly of yourself otherwise. Better to dislike your circumstance, than to dislike yourself… right?
That seems aimless to me.
There’s no interest in being good if it doesn’t have an affect which causes happiness to ones self, and ones own happiness is best found when in social environments where the general happiness is at an increase due to mutual empathy, compassion, and interest in each other as emotionally connected human beings.
So...everything other than consequentialist egoism seems aimless to you? That's fine, I suppose...but there's other theories out there.
Maybe think of happiness as a state of mind, not so different from a virtue itself. Where as you seem to be saying that each person's happiness is a good in itself, a virtue ethicist would say that these other qualities are goods in themselves in just the same way- in other words, a man seeking to be happy for the sake of being happier, and a man seeking to be courageous for the sake of becoming more courageous are both equivalently good moral acts because they further expand these goods-in-themselves, and so need no other justification.
Mad Man P,
The importance of virtue being a good in itself vs. not seems pretty crucial to your argument to me. I agree with everything you said about people judging themselves, self-image, and so on, especially as a quality of how we judge our virtuous character. But what’s important here, is that if virtue is a good in itself, then those judgments are not the REASON why being courageous (say) is good. It just so happens that these judgments occur when reflecting on our virtuous/vicious actions. Faith may be a strange case in that respect, since it affects human interactions relatively rarely, but that’s all it would be, a strange case. Since the good of a virtue is prior to that, you haven’t really shed anything useful on the nature of faith itself, from what i can tell.
Sure, happiness is a state of mind, but it’s instantly demolished if the surrounding community suddenly despises your virtues where they once praised them.
The only time that self-contained virtue to good, and good to virtue cycles work is when one is in isolation from any community.
Generally speaking; if one is in isolation like this, they aren’t doing so well in a community in the first place and prefer emotional exclusion since it’s less troubling than the emotional rejection they create for themselves inside of the community.
If one is in any community, however, then the self-justified virtues are false assertions because ultimately, the community has immediate impact on which virtues an individual chases, or whether the individual needs to find a new community.
Uccisore
I only know the words good and bad to be judgements based on preference. So for something to be “good in itself” it has to be not only universally prefered but also necessarily so? I’m not sure what “good in itself” is supposed to mean.
I was only pointing out how our social instincts can explain the effects of virtuous behavior on our eudaimon. And it even explains this statement you, yourself made:
If faith was “good in itself” than it would remain a virtue regardless… right?
But we don’t think that way… it’s counter intuitive to think that way. There has to be a recipient other than yourself for it to be a virtue… it has to be in the service of something other than the “self” for it to tickle our social instinct and make us admire it. If you believe x because x makes you feel better, than that’s not admirable at all… It’s an act of self-gratification.
In anticipation of what’s to come, allow me to make a point now that is relevant: The story changes once you DO the believing, the act of believing may not have been admirable, but once that act is done, you may be virtuous by way of serving the object of your belief. It becomes an entity other than yourself… and so acting virtous in service of that entity is a socially admirable act, and would very much affect your eudaimon through your self-image much like any other virtue.
It’s actually kinda schizophrenic… in that the “other” may only exists in your mind… but when you think about it… that’s all you really need in order to satisfy your self-image.
Let’s take a more mundane example: Having faith in your wife. It can be translated to “thinking well of her despite her flaws”. This isn’t actually in service of your wife, it just makes you feel better, because you only allow yourself to think positive thoughts… But now that she’s such a wonderful person in your thoughts, being disloyal or in any other way doing her any kind of injustice is made that much worse in your mind! The wife you imagine you have, may not be the wife that you actually have, but the imagined wife is the one you have in your mind when you judge your own actions and how they affect her. So in the end she would be treated better and would benifit from your faith…
On the other hand, Faith can equally be used to justify horrible deeds… The imagined entity requires you to do someone harm in his/her/its service, and you can do those things without guilt or remorse. Your faith not only allows but demands that you to see your deeds as positive and ultimately helpful ect.
So depending on how you would define this “Good in itself” quality, I’d say my argument holds.
Faith is not a virtue like any other.