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In Praise of Virtue
Skull:
--- Quote from: Skull on April 26, 2021, 07:40:07 pm ---Can virtue be taught? Russell Kirk says not from "ideological preaching" for sure:
https://kirkcenter.org/kirk-essays/virtue-can-it-be-taught/
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Kirk begins his essay...
--- Quote ---Are there men and women in America today possessed of virtue sufficient to withstand and repel the
forces of disorder? Or have we, as a people, grown too fond of creature-comforts and a fancied
security to venture our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in any cause at all? “The superior man
thinks always of virtue,” Confucius told his disciples; “the common man thinks of comfort.” Such
considerations in recent years have raised up again that old word “virtue,” which in the first half of this
century had sunk almost out of sight.
I venture first to offer you a renewed apprehension of what “virtue” means; and then to suggest how far
it may be possible to restore an active virtue in our public and our private life. If we lack virtue, we will
not long continue to enjoy comfort—not in an age when Giant Ideology and Giant Envy swagger balefully
about the world.
The concept of virtue, like most other concepts that have endured and remain worthy of praise, has
come down to us from the Greeks and the Hebrews. In its classical signification, “virtue” means the
power of anything to accomplish its specific function; a property capable of producing certain effects;
strength, force, potency. Thus one refers to the “deadly virtue” of the hemlock. Thus also the word
“virtue” implies a mysterious energetic power, as in the Gospel According to Saint Mark: “Jesus,
immediately knowing that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, ‘Who
touched my clothes?’” Was it, we may ask, that virtue of Jesus which left its mark upon the Shroud of Turin?
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Absalom:
--- Quote from: Skull on April 26, 2021, 11:09:28 pm ---Pascal also knew the importance of 'knowing thyself':
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Indeed, Blaise Pascal, a Man w/the temperament of the great Scholastics preceding him.
He deserved far better from his contemporaries but France was sadly heading for intellectual
revolution which then played out across most of the World; and hardly for the better.
Absalom:
Skull, as it's late, we should leave all of this till later, yet permit a closing comment.
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I purposely left unsaid my reasoning behind the corrosive impact of Materialism on
Culture/Society, which is simply this.
Beyond any pious and sanctimonious notions of betterment, the core impact of
Materialism on Humanity has been to promote destructive Greed, a realty on daily
display throughout the World for at least two centuries.
Consequently, more and more Plain people are realizing the terrible morass we have
created for ourselves and are grasping how we arrived at this nadir!!!
Skull:
--- Quote ---To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.
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Isaac Watts (d.1748)
Skull:
--- Quote ---The supreme aim of all religions is to teach men how to live; and the learning and the living are religion itself. The purification of the human heart, the building up of a blameless life, and the perfecting of the soul, these are the great underlying and enduring factors in all religions and creeds the world over. That which is vital in every religion is the striving after, and the practice of, Goodness; all things else are accretions, superfluities, illusions. Goodness — and by Goodness I mean sinlessness — is the beautiful and imperishable form of Religion, but creeds and religions are the perishable garments, woven of the threads of opinion, in which men clothe it. One after another religions come and go, but Religion, being Life itself, endures forever. Let men cease to quarrel over the garments and strive to perceive the universality and beauty of the indwelling form; thus will they become wedded to it, will become one with the supreme Goodness. Religion is Goodness; Goodness is Religion.
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James Allen (d.1912)
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