The Other Side of Virtue, by Brendan Myers
Welcome to the next level of pagan writing on ethics. The Other Side of Virtue is a landmark work worthy of academic and general audiences alike.
Author Brendan Myers, a.k.a. Brendan Cathbad Myers, tackles the subject of virtue ethics in the ancient and modern world. He investigates the ethics of Heroic and Classical peoples of ancient Europe, charts the history of virtue through the Renaissance and into modern times, and advocates a modern ethics informed by ancient forms of virtue. In addition to these things, he offers a counter to passive forms of virtue, a critique of modern individualism, and a new way to understand the spiritual experience. All this he delivers in a book accessible to the general reader.
Unifying Myers' approach are two basic convictions: first, that we must find the source of our ethics in ourselves, and second, that community is also indispensabe.
The first point is rooted in the ancient Delphic maxim "Know thyself." The way we ought to act in the world is intimately related to who we are, or rather who we discover and create ourselves to be. Often when we act, it is not out of any rule-based obligation, but rather because "I am/am not the kind of person who would do that." To put it simply, ethics finds its foundation in our characters.
The second point is that community is vital. Contrary to the assumptions of modern individualism, community is essential to who we are and how we ought to act. The roles we fill, the crowds with whom we associate, and the responsibilities we take on in relationships--these things condition what we do and how we define ourselves. Therefore to fulfill the maxim "Know thyself," you must consider your social relations: friends, family, colleagues, and so on. Self-awareness is incomplete without these vital relations.
These two anchors ground Myers' virtue ethics. It is a philosophy not of rule-based obedience, but of character-based action. The emphasis falls not on the laws or commandments we follow, but rather on the qualities in which our characters may excel. These qualities are called virtues.
A virtue may be moral. For example, the four cardinal virtues of the Classical era, justice, courage, temperence, and prudence, are moral qualities. But a virtue may also be half-moral, half-aesthetic. Qualities like nobility or beauty involve such an aesthetic element. One may even excel in non-moral qualities, such as luck or strength. These various ways that a character may excel make up the kind of virtues that Myers has in mind.
This is not the same as what Myers calls the "familiar side" of virtue. We have inherited, largely from Christian tradition, a host of "passive" and "self-denying" qualities: faith, hope, charity, humility, chastity, and most of all docility. Myers claims this kind of virtue, though it may involve willpower and strength, serves to "police the passions" and "prevent anything from stirring up the delicate serenity of docilitas" (p. 3). This is not the side of virtue with which Myers is concerned, except to steer away from it.
Of greater interest is the "other side," the one discussed earlier. Here Myers invokes a more ancient and original usage, derived on the one hand from the Latin virtus, rooted in the word vir ("man"), and on the other hand from the Greek arete ("virtue" or "excellence"). In short, this usage refers to the ways in which a person's character excels. Myers' ethics is not about docility, but about excellence of character. He sums it up this way:
The 'familiar' side of virtue has to do with a predisposition to follow laws and commandments. The 'other side' asserts that who you are is much more important than the rules you follow, and at least as important as the things you do, when it comes to doing the right thing, and finding the worth in your life. (p. 6)
Myers articulates the "other side" of virtue in five segments called "movements." The First Movement is a collection of brief aphorisms, inspiring themes to play through the reader's imagination. The Second Movement begins Myers' course through history.
He begins with what he calls "Heroic" peoples: "the Celts of Ireland, Britain, and Western Europe, Germanic and Scandinavian people, the Greeks of the time of Homer, as well as the Macedonians" (p. 29). He makes heavy use of these peoples' literature, especially Beowulf, the Iliad, the Tain Bo Cuailnge, and the Eddas. With these peoples he finds the earliest European expressions of virtue. True to his philosophy, he finds the roots of virtue in the roots of identity: in storytelling, the communal feast, and the construction of homes and public buildings (especially the feast-hall). Myers then goes on to develop numerous common themes of Heroic literature. He finds honor to be the chief virtue, the one by which all others may be measured. Other virtues include loyalty, generosity, hospitality, and courage. For women he finds the same virtues also expressed, and in addition special virtues like constancy. Friendship is also a major theme, which played no small part in definining Heroic peoples' identities. Other important features of Heroic ethics are trust in Fate, a pattern of atonement for wrongdoings consisting of exile followed by a a quest and finally readmission to society, and a type of immortality through storytelling called apotheosis. The seizure of the "Last Chance," by which a person finds a way to hold to virtue even in the face of immanent death, is also a significant theme. Throughout all this, Myers gives particular attention to the way Heroic peoples learned from their social roles who they were and what they ought to do. For example, a leader was supposed to be generous to his vassals, and in return the vassals were supposed to be loyal. Individual glory was also a concern, but it was always in a context of social roles and relationships. Community defined identity in the Heroic age.
This is compared and contrasted in the Third Movement with what Myers' calls "Classical" peoples. Here he quotes Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, Plutarch, Heraclitus, Euripides, Aristotle, Plato, and Boethius. For these "civilized" peoples, honor continues to be important, but it is transformed into a semi-private quality, where honor is pursued for its own sake rather than for public praise. Public opinion is in fact called into question, so that immortality through storytelling is no longer credible. Fate is no longer trusted either, but comes to be seen rather as the fickleness of Fortune. In place of honor, fame, and Fate, the faculty of reason rises to the role of chief virtue. Through trust in reason, one may achieve the worthwhile life, eudaimonia, which for the first time is explicitly defined as happiness and human flourishing. One may also achieve a new kind of apotheosis, through aligning oneself with the divine Reason. Despite these innovations in Classical ethics, many themes continue Heroic modes. Basic virtues like courage maintain their authority, though now courage is virtuous only if deliberately chosen in service of a noble cause. The seizure of the Last Chance theme also perseveres, with a strong emphasis on doing what is noble and right even unto death. The importance of friendship is carried on by a particular emphasis on human concerns, especially the social and political. The communal dimension remains important. However, Classical peoples also move in the direction of a more individual, atomistic view, such that certain writers can claim that one doesn't need others at all to be virtuous, but that virtue rests entirely on one's own integrity.
The course of virtue's history is then interrupted by a period of "passive," law-based ethics, due largely to the influence of Christian values. Myers picks up the story again in the Fourth Movement with Renaissance thinkers who return to Classical ideas of virtue. He draws on writers such as Pico de Mirandola, Shakespeare, and Machiavelli (recall that virtues need not necessarily be moral). With the Renaissance comes the rediscovery of virtue through one's own efforts, rather than through God's grace. Reason is once again the chief virtue. The trail continues beyond the Renaissance and into the Romantic movement, with figures like Rosseau and Goethe. There we encounter a loss of faith in reason as the sole guide. Instead there is an elevation of love and passion, and a return to trust in Fate through amor fati. The chief virtues are passion and beauty. In the wake of this comes Nietzsche. His philosophy of will, power, master morality, and pride pushes human self-worth to new heights. In so doing, however, Nietzsche misses entirely the significance of community, and tumbles into self-absorption. After this tragic crescendo, Myers finishes out his history with a close look at virtue in two very modern pieces of literature: Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. With these works, Myers brings the discussion up to date and grounds virtue in familiar imagery.
What follows in the Fifth Movement is an exploration pushing the foregoing ideas into new ground. So far, Myers has presented the skeletal framework of "Know Thyself" plus the importance of community, and fleshed it out with history. Next, he asks in what kind of situation one comes to self-awareness. He finds that such knowledge arises via situations that call one's self into question. His name for these situations is "the Immensity." Three major instances of the Immensity confront us all: the Earth, insofar as we all must face this world we live in, other people, insofar as we must deal with others and all the challenges presented by society, and death, insofar as we all must inevitably face our demise. There are also less-universal instances of the Immensity. They can be small or large, but they always cause one to question one's identity, and always demand a response. In other words, they cannot be avoided or ignored. An encounter with the Immensity demands a response, and in our response we discover who we are. At the same time, we also create who we are. So encounters with the Immensity are opportunities to take responsibility for our own characters. They are chances to display and cultivate virtue.
Of course, responses can vary, and these can be called excellent in greater or lesser degrees. The excellent response is one that manifests excellences of character, virtues of the like encountered throughout history but also including responsibility, wonder, respect, sympathy, integrity, and love. More generally, an excellent response "affirms a positive reason beyond the self to live" (p. 232). By contrast, the wretched response is one that manifests weaknesses of character, and does not manage to affirm anything good in life or the world. Still worse than this is the viscious response. Myers writes:
A true vice, it seems to me, is not simply a poor response to the Immensity. It is a refusal to respond at all. It is a disposition to ignore the call of the Immensity, to deliberately block it out of your world, to willfully deny its presence. ... Such a person... ends up cutting himself off from the possibilities for self-discovery and life-enjoyment which the Immensity offers. (p. 236)
So the worst response of all is apathy, and the result is stagnation. Against this Myers upholds an ethic of aroused energy and responsible action. Virtue, rooted in character, is both revealed and created through excellent responses to the Immensity. He summarizes:
The virtues, then, can be defined as the qualities of character one needs to arouse the energy of life, use that energy to have a fruitful dialogue with the Immensity, and to find in the conversation something positive and valuable to live for. A virtue is a way to affirm the goodness of life. The creation of a life worth living, and a world worth living in, is the virtuous person's reward. (p. 233)
This, then, is Myers' virtue ethics in brief. It is an engaging philosophy, rooted in ancient values yet flowering in the modern world. As such, it is particularly appropriate to modern pagan and polytheist ways of life, but it also addresses a more universal audience. The Other Side of Virtue speaks to our times, countering modern individualism and "passive" forms of virtue while championing self-worth and community. It teaches us new things about ethics, spirit, and the spiritual experience. Finally, it sets a new standard for quality pagan writing.
At the same time, it is not without problems. There are critiques I would make, and a few things I would like to see discussed in works to come.
The foremost problem is Myers' distinction between active and passive virtue. He advocates an active response to the Immensity, as opposed to passively letting it blow you here and there with indifference. This does well to convey the energetic character of his philosophy. But a problem arises when this is distinguished against whole traditions labeled "passive." Christian virtue is dimissed out of hand. Faith, hope, and charity are disposed of in less than a page. And their proponent, Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theoreticians ever to engage virtue, is not even mentioned in Myers' tour through history. He gets a mere cameo appearance in the introduction. Why, I must ask, are faith, hope, and charity necessarily "passive?" Choose any one of the stories of the saints and it will be immediately apparent that these virtues can be quite active. Certainly the saints believed in different ideals than Myers--they staked their hopes on the next world rather than this one, and lived not for the enjoyment of this life but for the glory of the next--but that is no reason to call them passive. Myers' also levels the charge that they are "self-denying," but this makes sense only from a non-Christian perspective, and anyway does not affect the question of passivity. Certainly these virtues can be passive, just as a Heroic-age chief can be "generous" by passively letting his retainers take whatever treasures they demand. But they can also be active responses to the Immensity. Was the faith of Soren Kierkegaard a passive response to uncertainty in the world? What about the hope of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a Nazi prison? And did Mother Theresa, with all her charitable efforts, respond passively to suffering? All this amounts to a failure to genuinely engage the voices which speak for the other side of the "other side" of virtue.
Other problems with the book are fairly minor. There are numerous typographical errors, the most annoying of which casts Myers' key concept variously as the Immensity, The Immensity, or the IMMENSITY. In addition, the book opens with a sentimental invitation to read it by candlelight as a "ceremony," and closes with a thought experiment more appropriate to Rhonda Byrnes' The Secret. I prefer to think of these pages as dull, ugly bookends supporting on either side an illuminated masterpiece. The Other Side of Virtue ultimately rises above its problems.
What I would like to see engaged in the future is a fundamental problem facing any modern person wanting to live a more Heroic way of life: if Heroic peoples derived their identities from their society, how can we do the same today when our society does not share the same values? Anyone who chooses against modern individualism makes an individual choice against it. The paradox deserves exploration.
Another thing I would like to see investigated is the notion of shame, which goes along with the value of honor. Whereas law-based ethics instill guilt, character-based ethics inspire shame. This feeling, though ugly, may serve a positive role in our modern world. Can shame be an active, affirmative response to the Immensity? Can a sense of shame mediate the lack of accountability in our increasingly compartmentalized, anonymous modern world? An in-depth study is called for (The Other Side of Shame?).
Of course, these topics need not be taken up by Myers himself. If his book does its job, it will inspire other pagan authors to their own explorations of virtue--hopefully rivaling Myers'in quality and scope. And this is something that I think it can and will do. This is a book that can be taken seriously by pagans and non-pagans, academics and general readers alike. It does not simply re-present ancient lore, but also teaches us something new. And it achieves clarity without sacrificing rigor. With The Other Side of Virtue, pagan writing has found a new standard.
I'll conclude with a final quote:
You are what you do. Therefore do that which will transform you into the person you wish to be. (p. 21)
The Other Side of Virtue is now available from online vendors worldwide. Podcast talks by Myers are also available: Deo's Shadow, #39 and Ravencast, #22.