By Selwyn Duke
It’s a shame, and a sign of the times, that we mostly hear the term “virtue” via that misbegotten newer term “virtue-signaling.” Oh, the critique the latter denotes is absolutely valid, but packaging matters. (Thus do I use “value-signaling” instead.) Illustrating why was a reader reaction to one of my articles years ago, in which I mentioned virtue.
“No, no,” the man essentially said (I’m paraphrasing), “talking about that is how you end up with virtue-signaling!”
Clearly and sadly, the fellow’s only acquaintance with “virtue” was through that guilt-by-association pejorative. He apparently had no idea that it references, to define it properly, that “set of objectively good moral habits.” He’d perhaps no inkling that the virtues began being discovered millennia ago and that Greek philosopher Aristotle started systematizing them. He’d perhaps no clue that the Founding Fathers emphasized virtue, warning that it was a prerequisite for liberty. And he certainly hadn’t the foggiest notion that no nation can truly be civilized without virtue imbuing its people.
Bringing this all-important issue to the fore is the recent death of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, author of 1981’s After Virtue. Most people haven’t heard of him, and that’s a shame. Because, as one writer put it a week ago, MacIntyre “has died, but his philosophy of virtue should be resurrected.”
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