Beautiful essay. I thought of Pip and Joe in Great Expectations as an excellent literary illustration of the distinction between material and moral virtue.
These themes of status and success and morality are ones I'm deeply interested in exploring.
This is very interesting. I think "virtue" is a lost word in our age. Unfortunately so. Yet, I also think it deserves a thorough analysis. It is usually tied to classical morality, but I think this is an incomplete way of looking at it. Virtue is broader than morality, and it *is* tied to excellence.
It seems to me tied to our notion of being. What we perceive as the essence of being is that which we tie to the virtuous. Older societies had a different view of virtue. The very root of the term "vir"(man) associated with the particular notion of what was deemed valuable(virility) is worthy of great note. This seems to me to be Nietzsche's point. There seems indeed to be a turn from the notion of excellence from a warrior, viril sense, into a moral sense with Christianity. This is tied to a notion of being itself. The heroes of old who went forth in courage into great adventures are replaced by the heroes of Christianity which are the saints and martyrs.
But this is also, and maybe this will not be liked but it seems to be truthful and completes the analysis, tied to Divinity and the sacred. Excellence of being is tied to what is one's notion of the higher forms of being. And that will depend on what one perceives as the ultimate or purer mode of being and the value it reflects. Divine beings were those whose very being were of a given nature "higher" than that of mortals and which embodied some form of superiority in their innate nature, they were more excellent and were closer to the ultimate value(essence) of existence.
It tells much of a man who he worships, what he deems sacred, what he perceives as excellent. It also tells much of modern society that it worships material things. And therefore to participate more in Existence we must participate in material things and climb higher. Yet, the example of the turn into the moral, is also to question.
Is Existence accessible beyond the subject? It seems to me a more unvirtuous act to place virtue beyond subjectivity than to be cowardly. It is, first of all, just false by principle, but also it's self-debasing. If it is done as a general matter, it is also effacing of the worth of all subjects. One cannot simply hold the orientation of one's being beyond the relation of the subject to that value. And how to make this orientation of one's life not be improper? For starters, it seems to me all such notion entails a form of worship and religiosity. Virtue itself is a matter of religiosity(the object needs not be personal and so is not a theology, but it is on principle a subordination to the sacred, a bowing down to the object of virtue).
Much can be said here, and I do share Nietzsche's critique here. The bowing down of one's own freedom and entire existence to an external impersonal object seems just a barely veiled form of totemism. This is where the concept of Love is fundamental. If I deliver my own existence and wish to take it beyond myself, I must first recognize that this is an act of the self, and free. This cannot be commanded by any external reality because the subject is still a subject. So, in order for this act of virtue be a proper act, it must not destroy the subject. The subject must persist a subject in this act of worship, and not become an object for the external. But if the act of service and worship is always other-oriented, how can this be? Only if the act of service and worship can be returned to the self: a mutual act of recognition and service. But if the other can deny me my own subjective and objectivize me(like when I decide to always obey an other person), why would this not be enslaving? There must be a higher intermediary Other who cannot fail to recognize my own subjectivity even when the other subjects objectivize me. This can only be done by a transcendental subjectivity of personal excellence who can never objectivize me and, this be the only true act of virtue that doesn't objectivize myself and so can be properly an act of proper orientation and service for subjects.
Beautiful essay. I thought of Pip and Joe in Great Expectations as an excellent literary illustration of the distinction between material and moral virtue.
These themes of status and success and morality are ones I'm deeply interested in exploring.
This is very interesting. I think "virtue" is a lost word in our age. Unfortunately so. Yet, I also think it deserves a thorough analysis. It is usually tied to classical morality, but I think this is an incomplete way of looking at it. Virtue is broader than morality, and it *is* tied to excellence.
It seems to me tied to our notion of being. What we perceive as the essence of being is that which we tie to the virtuous. Older societies had a different view of virtue. The very root of the term "vir"(man) associated with the particular notion of what was deemed valuable(virility) is worthy of great note. This seems to me to be Nietzsche's point. There seems indeed to be a turn from the notion of excellence from a warrior, viril sense, into a moral sense with Christianity. This is tied to a notion of being itself. The heroes of old who went forth in courage into great adventures are replaced by the heroes of Christianity which are the saints and martyrs.
But this is also, and maybe this will not be liked but it seems to be truthful and completes the analysis, tied to Divinity and the sacred. Excellence of being is tied to what is one's notion of the higher forms of being. And that will depend on what one perceives as the ultimate or purer mode of being and the value it reflects. Divine beings were those whose very being were of a given nature "higher" than that of mortals and which embodied some form of superiority in their innate nature, they were more excellent and were closer to the ultimate value(essence) of existence.
It tells much of a man who he worships, what he deems sacred, what he perceives as excellent. It also tells much of modern society that it worships material things. And therefore to participate more in Existence we must participate in material things and climb higher. Yet, the example of the turn into the moral, is also to question.
Is Existence accessible beyond the subject? It seems to me a more unvirtuous act to place virtue beyond subjectivity than to be cowardly. It is, first of all, just false by principle, but also it's self-debasing. If it is done as a general matter, it is also effacing of the worth of all subjects. One cannot simply hold the orientation of one's being beyond the relation of the subject to that value. And how to make this orientation of one's life not be improper? For starters, it seems to me all such notion entails a form of worship and religiosity. Virtue itself is a matter of religiosity(the object needs not be personal and so is not a theology, but it is on principle a subordination to the sacred, a bowing down to the object of virtue).
Much can be said here, and I do share Nietzsche's critique here. The bowing down of one's own freedom and entire existence to an external impersonal object seems just a barely veiled form of totemism. This is where the concept of Love is fundamental. If I deliver my own existence and wish to take it beyond myself, I must first recognize that this is an act of the self, and free. This cannot be commanded by any external reality because the subject is still a subject. So, in order for this act of virtue be a proper act, it must not destroy the subject. The subject must persist a subject in this act of worship, and not become an object for the external. But if the act of service and worship is always other-oriented, how can this be? Only if the act of service and worship can be returned to the self: a mutual act of recognition and service. But if the other can deny me my own subjective and objectivize me(like when I decide to always obey an other person), why would this not be enslaving? There must be a higher intermediary Other who cannot fail to recognize my own subjectivity even when the other subjects objectivize me. This can only be done by a transcendental subjectivity of personal excellence who can never objectivize me and, this be the only true act of virtue that doesn't objectivize myself and so can be properly an act of proper orientation and service for subjects.