On Virtue

 The first philosophical text I read was Plato’s Republic in PHL201 at Portland State a little over a year ago. PHL201 serves as an introduction to the realm of difficult philosophical texts, something that I was not prepared for. If you’ve ever read Descartes, Rousseau, or Plato, you’d expect that I’d be a bit let down as a new philosophy major expecting to discuss “the meaning of life,” and other stereotypical topics of the like. My critique of the Republic was quite harsh, and I’ve not cracked it open since. Plato’s dialogic style doesn’t do much for me. Sure, the way that the text unfolds is somewhat like a drama, a story that mirrors the topics discussed within; and each paragraph can be broken down to reveal true unparalleled literary genius… perhaps these things are only enjoyed by people smarter than I. I found his style to be drawn out, repetitive, and frankly a waste of paper. I feel similarly about his philosophical claims; few withstood the scientific revolution. Some examples; the Timaean model (Timaeus), learning through immortality of the soul (Meno), and the immortality of the soul (again) (Phaedo).

Cynical old-man intro aside, I believe some of what he writes in the Republic has some validity. For most of my philosophical career, I believed very strongly that logic was the only way to reach a conclusion about something in life. If it wasn’t falsifiable, then it should be discarded. Within the last month or so, having broken into Heidegger’s work, my belief has changed somewhat; what is of at least equal importance to logic in philosophy is feeling (particularly in personal applications, less so in scholarly settings). I have a feeling that feeling is a particularly human thing to do; at least, there are traits of feeling that are unique to us. Human feeling is translated into conscious terms, into words and definitions and symbols, things we can use to communicate our feelings to one another. In this instance, I use feeling in less of an emotional context and rather in the less translatable context, which I deem to be a “hunch,” or what some might call a “gut feeling.” Logically, religion doesn’t really make sense. It’s not falsifiable, and once removed from it, looking back in on the world of religion is quite disconcerting. More on that in a future essay, perhaps. But when people ask me now why I don’t believe in God, I don’t say, “because it doesn’t make sense,” rather I say, “because it doesn’t feel right.” Religious people don’t tend to believe in God because it’s logically sound/valid (perhaps in the instance of Pascal’s wager), but rather because it feels right.

“Where word breaks off no thing may be”

-Stefan George, The Word

Well, I have this hunch about Plato’s take on virtue. That, regardless of what the rest of society thinks of you and what material value you may have, it is always better to be virtuous than bad. Virtue is another term that’s very difficult to define, somewhere in which I believe word breaks off… but in this case, I believe that virtue may still be. Again, what it means to be virtuous and good is strictly a hunch. Everybody seems to know what it means without being able to produce a non-circular definition of the word, me included. Plato tried to put it to word in Meno, but I don’t believe he gives a satisfactory account of what virtue is. Yet, in this work, Plato’s character (Socrates) agreed with his interlocutor that in order to explore virtue, we must first acknowledge that it is something to be desired, even though we don’t know what it is. 

So, all those words said, the takeaway is to consider what being virtuous feels like to you, and ask yourself, “would I rather be virtuous, or not virtuous?” I have a feeling that, should you be privileged enough to die on a deathbed surrounded by relatives, one of your regrets will most certainly not be being virtuous.