Virtuous Humility . . . and Pride?

A month or so back, attending the ISME conference, I came across an interesting paper delivered by Kristen McPherson, a Marquette doctoral candidate with a promising project bearing on the topic of humility and pride. The natures and values -- positive or negative -- of these opposed affective states is a subject upon which many different, some mutually incompatible, viewpoints have been worked out down the centuries, and a pattern and (broadly speaking) point of progress is what I aim to write about here – a way of returning to the theme of my earlier Sunday posts prior to the blogging hiatus imposed by my summer travels: theological, specifically monastic treatments of humility as a virtue.
 
What particularly caught my attention in that ISME paper were three things: a goal, a claim, and an omission. One of the stated goals was to provide a naturalized account of pride and humility, one which would presumably draw upon the centuries of hard-earned insights and progressively developed intellectual resources of Christian thought on pride and humility but in such a way as to strip away the specifically Christian elements, arguments, appeals, concepts, so as to leave a residue or precipitate equally acceptable (even embracable, incorporable) to secularists of good faith as to committed Christians. The interesting, and to me startling claim was that we ought not only to think in terms of vicious pride, a vicious counterfeit to humility, and genuine and virtuous humility, but also in terms of virtuous pride as well.

The omission was that. . . . well as it turns out, what counted as stand-ins for the wide scope of Christian thought was . . . you guessed it: Augustine and the later, greater Thomas Aquinas. Now, I would be far from faulting diligent study of, and reliance upon, the thought of these two great Doctors, but when it comes to the matter of humility and the distinctively Christian understanding, it can only help one to read monastic as well as scholastic writers – Thomas, for one drew deeply on the wellsprings of wisdom afforded him by generations of monastic authors.

Saint Anselm on Anger (part 3)

The last two Sundays, I posted installments of serialized set of posts, part 1 and part 2 of a longer study of how anger fits into Saint Anselm's moral theory.  That study in its turn forms part of a broader-scope, ongoing set of examinations of anger (and connected topics) as understood by philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and (perhaps later) literary figures, ultimately intended to be housed in books (one of which, dealing with Aristotle on anger, I'm working on currently). Here, in this format, I work out and provide for interested readership the shorter, more preliminary studies of anger that later find their way into more systematic, academic manuscripts.

The last post on Anselm identified four Anselmian virtues bearing on anger:  patience, meekness, humility, and justice, and noted that each of these virtues was a particular habitual and dispositional structure of the human will, instantiated not only in the uses the human person chooses to make of his or her will, but even more so in  lasting affective currents of desire, fateful shaping, character, what Anselm calls will as affectio.

In order to better understand virtues, and their opposite, vices, we have to understand the will, and that requires us to understand a number of other interrelated matters.  There are good reasons why we human beings are so often mysteries to ourselves even when we think we best understand and know ourselves, and Anselm touches on this while mimetically representing what must have been a common enough occurrence in his life and teaching, begging off from giving his views and rational reflections on a divine mystery in Cur Deus Homo:

we need an analysis of ability and necessity and will and of other notions which are so interrelated that no one of them can be fully examined apart from the others. . . . For an ignorance of these notions produces certain difficulties which become easy to deal with as a result of understanding these notions.

Anselm's Similitude: The Monk as a Coin

One of my favorite similitudes of Saint Anselm, found in the De Similitudinibus/ De humanibus moribus, likens a monk to a coin (denarius).  It turns out not to be an entirely novel metaphor spun out of Anselm 's so fruitful imagination and capacities for developing apt analogies -- the twentieth chapter of John Cassian's First Conference with Abbot Moses (a text well known to monks like Anselm) records a structurally similar analogy to a coin.

In that text, however, it is "thoughts  which arise in our hearts" which are to be tested for their qualities, each examined for its "origin and cause and author."  We are to assay the metal, to discern whether it is genuine gold, or just a copper denarius covered over with gold.  We are also to determine whether it bears the image of the right king, rather than an usurper.  And, we are to test whether it carries the proper heft, or whether it is under weight.

Anselm transposes the metaphor metonymically from the thoughts of the person to the person him or herself, producing a somewhat new similitude.  The three qualities of purity, weight, and bearing the proper mark are incorporated, but take on new meanings, which Anselm explores as he works out the analogy.  One interesting difference is that in Cassian's trope, the pure coin is a gold one, not the copper denarius, while Anselm's pure coin is precisely that.  A later chapter takes up and further develops the coin likeness, and so I include its translation here as well.

De Similitudinibus, Chapter 90. A similitude between a monk and a denarius

Again, we should see from something similar, what should be in a perfect monk. There are three things in any good denarius, that should be in any good monk. For indeed a good denarius should be of pure copper, weigh the right amount, and be marked by a legitimate mint. But if one of these should be lacking, it would not be able to serve as money. For, in order for it to serve as money, it has to have these three things together.

John Cassian on Anger, Revisited

In a previous blog post, discussing the great monastic author John Cassian's very interesting views on anger (and by the way, recently saw an excellent piece on John Cassian and Church Tradition), I ended by setting out a paradox

If a person is entirely responsible for their own anger, if seeing things rightly and making progress depends on grasping this very truth that one cannot displace the blame for one's anger onto another, onto the towards whom one feels angry -- doesn't that go for me too?  Why isn't my neighbor also entirely responsible for his own anger?  Does not his or her responsibility absolve me then of mine?  Going further, if there is some responsibility still on my side, well then, what of God, if He made me angry -- or certainly made people angry with Him as recorded in Scripture?  Would not that line of reasoning make God also responsible?

As typically the case with  paradoxes, more resides beneath the surface than appears at first glance.  One can twist this plaint in two different directions: a horizontal one,  remaining on the same, human level; and, a vertical one, looking upwards, bringing God in for argument.  This latter, one should point out, can go two ways as well: one might point to Scripture's instances and examples of divine anger, and ask:  look, if it's all right for God to be angry -- and He's God after all -- why not me?  Alternately, one might also find fault with the way God has managed matters, the providential ordering by which He arranges the world, one so complex, flexible, and yet inescapable that even human free will is able to be incorporated within it.

John Cassian on Anger (part 1 of 2)

John Cassian is of the lesser-well-known but historically influential theorists who stakes out an interesting and (to some) attractive position on anger.  An important 5th Century monastic Father (particularly in the West), Cassian traveled from his home in the Latin-speaking West to take vows in a monastery at Bethlehem, and then with permission (and accompanied by his fellow monk and childhood friend Germanus) traveled to monasteries in Egypt to study their ways of life through observation and conferences with abbots.  Back in the West, settling at Marseilles, he set down the fruits of this experience and his reflections in two works: the systematic Institutions, which sets out the practices, insights, rules of the eastern monks, adapting them to a new European milieu and climate; and the more topically organized (still, in sections fairly systematic)  Conferences, reconstructions and recollections of his discussions with the abbots of the East.

Cassian's works played a very important role in the development of Western monasticism.  Since monasteries, institutions oriented by a common and deliberate way of life, were spiritual, cultural, intellectual, and often political centers, the influence of what we might call "Cassian's doctrine" could be more widely extended than just to monks who read him or who heard his books read, e.g. during their common meals (The Rule of Saint Benedict recommends Cassian by name for this).

The centrality of themes of monastic practice and community raises an important issue.  Should we assume that the ethical standpoint Cassian reports on and elaborates is one solely for monks?  Are his insights only for those on the path of perfection, retired from the world and its cares, closer to God than us laypeople living -- and getting angry -- in the midst of things?  He does have several things quite relevant to say bearing on such worries, revealing to us that the human heart, beset by the temptation to and habits of anger remains just as much of a battleground for monks and hermits as it is for clergy and laity.

Ethics of Anger

About a week ago, one the local Cumberland County Library branches emailed me to ask whether I might be willing to give some sort of talk an evening in January, something dealing with Philosophy, perhaps, the librarian suggested, a talk about Ethics.  Always ready to squeeze another gig between already plotted engagements, even more to scribe in fresh ink on a virgin calendar (at least virtually), I immediately agreed.  Engaging a group of non-academics, people unaffiliated with the university, but intellectually active, curious, questioning, is both challenging and rewarding.  I have come to take a double view of philosophical topics.

On the one hand, there are matters of the mind which possess their own intrinsic worth and beauty, and this often renders them complex and not immediately accessible (often inexplicable, even unintelligible to my philosophical colleagues).  There is no popularizing these, no "bringing philosophy down from the heavens to earth" for such matters.  The mind and the heart must make the step by step difficult climb to reach them, must puzzle the concepts open, unfold the ideas portion by portion, before uncovering the prize.

On the other hand, there are many other matters philosophy and philosophers grapple with that ordinary plain people who have something on the ball ought to be able not only to understand without any disciplinary preparation or training, but also to enjoy, to delight in thinking about and understanding.  Aristotle begins one of his most difficult works, the Metaphysics, observing that "all human beings by nature desire knowing" (or "to know" or "knowledge", depending on how you want to translate it).  If to us academics, this seems a starting point rendered patently untrue by our experience, how much of that is due to that natural inborn human desire being stymied instead of encouraged in its development by those who are to introduce learners to a subject, to lead them deeper and deeper within, to bring them to vistas from which they can look out, their perspectives ever after altered?

I wrote back that I would mull over possible topics.  I always have four or five different irons in the fire at any given time.  Which of those would admit adaptation for a more popular lecture and discussion?  I started on the list.  Then my partner phoned and grabbing the opportunity to sound her about my proposed subjects, I started reading down the list. She stopped me after the second one.  The first one was all that was needed, it would easily draw and keep interest.  And I had not only been experiencing it, studying it, dialoguing with the great philosophers, theologians, saints and psychologists about it, I'd already written a few pieces and started on a book about it.  Just pitch the first one, she said.  It's all you need.  But it needs a sexier title.  I've got it: