Last Week in Virtue: Atheists, Good Pagans and the Scandal of Hypocrisy

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Pope Francis in his homily at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta on February 23, 2017.

This post marks the first of a new occasional series, “Last Week in Virtue.”

“But what is scandal? Scandal is saying one thing and doing another; it is a double life, a double life. A totally double life: ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this association and that one; but my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my workers a just wage, I exploit people, I am dirty in my business, I launder money…’ A double life. And so many Christians are like this, and these people scandalize others. How many times have we heard – all of us, around the neighbourhood and elsewhere – ‘but to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist.’ It is that, scandal. You destroy. You beat down. And this happens every day, it’s enough to see the news on TV, or to read the papers. In the papers there are so many scandals, and there is also the great publicity of the scandals. And with the scandals there is destruction.” –Pope Francis homily, February 23, 2017 (Link)

 

On February 23 Pope Francis gave a homily that received widespread media attention, not so much for its message—a fairly traditional one about the sin of hypocrisy—but because the media seized on the Pope’s assertion that even an atheist was better than an observant Catholic leading a “double,” or hypocritical, life. Daniel Burke’s headline, at CNN, promptly declared, “Pope suggests it’s better to be an atheist than a bad Christian.” Burke discussed the Pope’s idea of scandal, noting that scandal is a particularly sensitive word for the Catholic Church. But the headline to his article shows the Pope’s notion of scandal eclipsed here by what the news media saw as a shout out to virtuous atheists.

 

UPI concurred, “Pope: ‘Better to be an atheist’ than a Christian living a ‘double life.’”  The Huffington Post followed: “Pope Francis Slams Hypocrite Christians, Suggests Atheists Are Better.”

 

Even some Catholic publications found the atheism angle too tempting to resist: Crux, an online newsletter, trumpeted “Pope says better an atheist than a Catholic living a double life.”

 

In emphasizing the atheism story, the media in many ways replicated the very sense of scandal that the Pope decried in his homily, with headlines repeating over and over that the Pope would rather have a world full of good atheists than vicious Catholics. Looking closely at the Pope’s words shows that his concern in this case is as much on the shame of the public spectacle of Catholic hypocrisy as it is on celebrating virtuous nonbelievers: “How many times have we heard—all of us, around the neighborhood and elsewhere—‘but to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist.’”

 

The news clearly liked the second part of his sentence better than the first part, but the emphasis in his speech is not on the virtue of atheism, but the terrible destructiveness of the scandal of hypocrisy, and how this kind of publicity, this kind of circulation of these images of Christians as vile hypocrites, destroys trust and faith. “You destroy. You beat down.”

 

We all know whenever one of these stories about Christian hypocrisy circulates, he says, that everybody looks at it and says, Better to be an atheist than one of “those” hypocritical Christians. We all understand, he is saying, that hypocrisy is a terrible sin, and we all would agree that an atheist without hypocrisy is better than a so-called believer who claims to believe in Christian charity while acting in a way that harms and exploits vulnerable people. The stress here is on the harm caused by the hypocrite, and on the news stories that emphasize that these kinds of so-called Christians—powerful Catholics who pretend to have generosity while actually treating others with great cruelty– are everywhere.

 

In one sense, then, the Pope wants to remind the hypocrite to return to a virtuous life by pointing out that their salvation is anything but assured. He wants to confront the sinner squarely with the sin—the fault of scandal lies with the hypocrite, not the news. He expands on the dishonesty of hypocrisy to show that it also includes the destructiveness of bad example and public scandal. At the same time, he uses the example of the atheist to remind listeners that good actions matter more than identity. A virtuous life might make a good person—even an earnest atheist—more fit for salvation than a person who goes to church regularly but steals wages from their employees.

 

Why is this notion of the virtuous atheist so attractive?

 

The virtuous atheist here seems a lot like the old trope of the virtuous pagan, whose fate preoccupied medieval scholars concerned with the salvation of those outside the Church, especially the ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish writers they admired. Traditionally virtuous pagans fell roughly into two categories: those who had been offered Christian salvation and turned it down, and those who never had the opportunity to convert because of factors like chronology or geography. [1] To medieval scholars, it seemed patently unfair that the eminent philosophers, poets, and Old Testament scholars and patriarchs they studied should be automatically damned. They dreamed up various solutions, such as Christ descending to hell to baptize good people who had somehow ended up there, Limbos that resembled Paradise where good pagans might be housed until the Last Judgment, and the idea, championed by Thomas Aquinas and others, that following a virtuous life might lead a good person—even an atheist—to faith and salvation.

 

It may be that some journalists mistakenly believed that the Pope was acknowledging that a good life and afterlife could be had completely and forever outside the Church, which he wasn’t. The virtuous pagan doesn’t get to remain outside the Church forever, but at some point is expected to be led by virtue to Catholic conversion. This belief was seen last week in Vatican news sources that stressed this aspect of the Pope’s homily, such as Vatican Radio’s “Pope: Don’t put off conversion, give up a double life.”

 

However, it is not a stretch to say the Pope remains more concerned with doing good in the world than he is with the particulars of Church affiliation. According to Catholic Online, Francis explained himself, “The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart, do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can… “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ, all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!” We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

 

In this diverse and secular age, there is something particularly appealing about the idea that it is the virtuous life that matters most, that it reveals its own truth regardless of religious faith. The Pope’s example of the virtuous atheist as better than the sinful Catholic appealed to the media last week because it emphasized that cultivating virtue is more important than membership, association, or influence. Not all of us can be powerful, rich, or politically well-connected, but each of us can try to be good. The stamp of religious membership might indicate that a good person stands before you, but it also might be true that the person who sets themselves up as a Christian paragon is a liar. By suggesting that virtuous action matters more than religious affiliation, wealth, or political power, the Pope appealed to a public weary of moral posturing and hungry for more discussion of how we all might cultivate genuine character, real compassion, and true moral direction by striving to be good in the world.

 

[1] Cindy L. Vitto, The Virtuous Pagan In Middle English Literature, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 79, No. 5 (1989), pp. 1-100; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1006545

 


Jaime Hovey is Associate Program Director for Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life.

 

Christian Virtues as Animal Virtues?

Rev. Prof. Michael Sherwin OP, one of our faculty for our 2016 Summer Session “Virtue & Happiness”, gave this talk February 16, 2017, at Blackfriars, Oxford as part of “The Aquinas Seminar: Agency in Human Beings & Other Animals”.

 

[CFA] Virtue, Skill and Practical Reason

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University of Cape Town. Photo from  http://studiesabroad.com/programs/country/south_africa/city/cape_town/viewUniversity.

We’re happy to post this call for abstracts from one of our Summer Session 2016 participants, philosopher Tom Angier.

Virtue, Skill and Practical Reason

 

Keynote Speakers:

Prof. Julia Annas (University of Arizona)

Prof. Michael Thompson (University of Pittsburgh)

Prof. Rachel Barney (University of Toronto)

 

Aristotle drew an analogy between the acquisition of virtue and the acquisition of various skills such as archery and playing the lute. Since that time there has been substantial debate on how seriously one should take that analogy. In Intelligent Virtue (2011) Julia Annas has made a powerful case for taking that analogy very seriously, whereas others are more cautious.

 

This conference aims to bring together philosophers working in the virtue tradition, in particular those working in ancient and moral philosophy, to discuss the complex relationships between skill and virtue. There appears to be a consensus that the acquisition of virtue is part of the broader acquisition of practical reasonableness, but there the consensus ends.

 

High quality abstracts are invited in any area of virtue theory, including but not limited to virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. Papers can have a historical focus, or they can be organised thematically. Papers from a non-Western perspective are welcome.

 

The conference will be held from Friday 25th to Sunday 27th August 2017 at the spectacular University of Cape Town, and there will be ample opportunities for sight-seeing.

 

Invited speakers

 

Profs Sergio Tenenbaum and James Allen (University of Toronto), Sarah Stroud (University of McGill), John Hacker-Wright (University of Guelph).

 

Submissions

Please email an abstract of between 300 and 500 words, to by Friday 31st March 2017.

Additional information

You will have 30/40 minutes for the paper presentation followed by a 30/20 minutes discussion. We regret we cannot cover expenses for accepted speakers. We are planning a published volume containing selected papers from the conference.

Organisers

 

Dr Tom Angier (University of Cape Town) and Dr Richard Hamilton (University of Notre Dame, Australia).

For further information, please contact:

 

 

 

Candace Vogler to Give Annual Aquinas Lecture & Colloquium Talk at Blackfriars

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Our Principal Investigator Candace Vogler is presenting at Blackfriars, St Giles, Oxford in early March.

Annual Aquinas Lecture

Thursday 2nd March 2017

“The Intellectual Animal” will be the 2017 Aquinas Lecture, delivered on Thursday 2 March at 5pm in the Aula at Blackfriars, by Prof Candace Vogler, David B and Clara E Stern Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, and Principal Investigator on “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life”.

If you wish to attend, please inform:

Link

220px-Blackfriars_Oxford.jpegAquinas and Newman on Conscience

Saturday 4th March 2017

Freedom of Conscience is a right widely promoted, and widely withheld. If, as Elizabeth Anscombe remarked, “a man’s conscience may tell him to do the vilest things,” how absolute are its rights? Do we need to clarify what conscience is, and how it follows from our creation in God’s image, if we are to state its duties, privileges and limitations, and cherish it without idolizing it?

Candace Vogler will give the talk “Aquinas on Synderesis”

Link

 

Tolstoy on Love and Self-Transcendence

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Leo Tolstoy, 1862

In his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy explores questions about happiness and the meaning of life with brutal honesty and realism. Tolstoy’s harrowing account of one man’s confrontation with his own mortality helps us to see that even the most selfish and shallow life still contains within it the inherent potential for redemption through self-transcendent, sacrificial love.


The story’s protagonist is Ivan, a late nineteenth century Russian bureaucrat who strives, above all else, to live a “decorous and pleasant life”—a life of material comfort that is, at least to the greatest extent he can manage, insulated from hardship or suffering.  We read that Ivan is “capable, cheerful, and sociable” as well as “playful, witty, good-humored and bon enfant.”  He is industrious in his well-appointed role as a public prosecutor and content to do “his duty,” but Tolstoy cautions us that Ivan understands duty not in the moralist’s sense, but in accordance with what members of the Russian haute bourgeoisie perceive as good, proper, and decent.  It is their standards that Ivan has internalized and their approval and validation that he seeks.  By this measure, even at a young age, Ivan is succeeding in living well, and this brings him great satisfaction.

As a young man Ivan falls in love with “the most attractive, intelligent, brilliant girl,” Preskovia, who was also a member of his social class and consequently shared his general outlook.  Ivan married her both because he loves her (at least as he loves anything –he finds her company “agreeable”) but also because she is met with the approval of his social circle.  But the demands of marriage and family life soon lose their charms for Ivan, as he learns that domesticity does not always (or perhaps even very often) fit his ideals of agreeableness; thus he quickly finds it essential “to shut himself off from such interferences” to his personal well being.  To avoid the trials that typically attend family life, Ivan throws himself into his work, where he takes particular delight in the power and honors the position affords him.  Of this darker aspect of Ivan’s pleasure seeking, Tolstoy writes:

The awareness of his power, the power he had to ruin anyone he chose to ruin, the importance and even the outward dignity of his entrance into the courtroom and his meetings with subordinates, his success with both superiors and subordinates, and—above all—the mastery with which, as he felt, he carried out his duties—all this gave him pleasure, and alongside chats with his colleagues, dinners, and whist [cards], it was what filled up his life.  So, on the whole, the life of Ivan Ilyich went on as he felt it ought to, that is pleasantly and decorously. (p. 169)

In this way, we learn, seventeen agreeable years of Ivan’s life pass.

But then Ivan reaches a point of perceived stagnation in his career, and feels that his talents are being neglected.  He sees that he is being passed over for promotions that he both desires and feels he alone deserves, and he feels forgotten and wronged by his colleagues.  He sets off for Petersburg with a single aim: to get a position that carries a significant raise.  Through luck he succeeds, attaining a position in a new ministry “two grades higher than his colleagues.”  At this achievement, all his hard feelings are forgotten, and he is “perfectly happy.” Ivan takes particular pleasure in his awareness that he is now the envy of many colleagues who previously ignored him, and who now must grovel before him.

The newfound happiness Ivan experiences on the occasion of his promotion allows him to resume pleasant relations with his wife.  Having a new influx of money, they take on the task of securing a much larger apartment they can decorate together.  Ivan throws himself into this task with determination and joy, making every detail very elegant and comme il faut.  He particularly relishes his thoughts of how impressed his friends will be once his vision of a finely appointed home is completely realized.

At this point in the narrative Ivan truly believes he is happy and living just as he should. Although his life is devoid of love and shot through with motives of pride, vanity, and greed, as far as he can see everything is very good. And yet Ivan stands on the precipice of existential despair. For his agreeable existence is about to be disrupted by a mysterious ailment, which will open up horizons of suffering and torments previously unimaginable to him.

Ivan’s troubles begin with bouts of nausea, and a mysterious pain on the left side of his stomach, which only grows worse over time.  His condition casts a pall over his otherwise happy mood, and makes him unable to find pleasure in his normal routines.  Just as quickly as their reconciliation had come about, relations between Ivan and Preskovia begin to unravel; they take to quarrelling often as Ivan finds that the easy and agreeable feelings he longs for have vanished. Soon enough, a mutual hatred grows between them.

Despite the fact that he is seeing all the most famous doctors and taking his medicines punctiliously, Ivan can see that his condition is worsening.  He begins to realize the gravity of his situation, and despair descends upon him.  After a month of trying to convince himself that he is improving and will recover, Ivan realizes that he is dying.  And yet he is unable to comprehend or reconcile himself to this fact; in fact, he actively works to hide from the grim reality.  Of Ivan’s internal struggle with the truth, Tolstoy writes:

“He couldn’t understand it, and tried to banish this thought as false, wrong, and morbid, and put other thoughts in its place, correct thoughts and healthy ones.  And this thought—and not only the thought but what seemed to be the reality—kept coming back and standing there before him.  And he called up a succession of other thoughts to displace this one, hoping to find support in them. He tried to return to his old thought patterns, which had once shielded him from death. But strangely enough, everything that had once screened away, hidden, or abolished the awareness of death now failed to produce that effect.” (p. 188)

Ivan finds himself in unchartered psychological territory, as neither work, cards, or his fine home can any longer distract him from the unbearable truth.  He finds himself all alone, face to face with it, though there was nothing to do “but stare at it and shudder.”  He must confront and reconcile himself to death, but finds he is unable.

And so his life becomes a torment to him.  Ivan is particularly aggrieved by the fact that no one around him—his colleagues, his doctors, his family—will acknowledge reality.  They all perpetrate the “lie” that he is merely ill; worse still, they force him to participate in this lie.  And so Ivan is deprived of the pity he feels is owed to him.  Ivan wants desperately to be “caressed, and kissed, and wept over” even though he knows such behavior does not befit a man of his age and social stature.  Instead he is merely prodded and poked by his doctors, cajoled by his wife, and ostracized by his so-called friends.

Ivan begins to enter a phase where his sufferings take on new dimensions: fear, helplessness, loneliness, and doubt.  In particular, Ivan begins to doubt that his life had been anything more than a trivial and dubious mistake.  He begins to worry that he never perceived reality clearly, and that what he thought was life was really death:

“It’s as if I had been going downhill, while imagining that I was climbing uphill.  That’s what it was.  In society’s eyes I was going uphill, and at exactly the same pace life was vanishing from under me.” (p. 202)

But once again, while Ivan knows the truth in his heart, he is still unable to reconcile himself to it. He struggles and fights back against it:

“‘Perhaps I didn’t live as I should have done?’… ‘But how can it have been wrong, when I did everything properly?’ he said to himself, instantly dismissing as completely impossible this one and only solution to the whole riddle of life and death.” (p. 202)

Ivan’s struggle to accept the truth, “that everything had been a huge and terrible deception which had shut out both life and death” (p. 206) is his final torment, the cause of an internal struggle that sends him into a fit of madness during which he screams uninterrupted for three days.  Tolstoy describes his inner ordeal as follows:

“For those three days, during which time did not exist for him, he struggled in that black sack into which some invisible, invincible force was thrusting him.  He fought as a man condemned to death fights in the arms of the executioner, knowing that he could not save himself; and minute by minute he felt that, despite all his struggles, he was drawing nearer and nearer to the thing that horrified him.  He felt that his torment lay both in the fact that he was being thrust into that black hole, and even more so in the fact that he could not get into it.  And what prevented him from getting into it was his awareness that his life had been a good one.  It was this justification of his own life that held him back, not letting him go forward, and tormenting him more than anything.” (p. 207-8)

The struggle ends when Ivan has a sudden revelation: his life really was a worthless mistake, but it could now “be put right.” But how? Ivan does not have a clear answer until Vasya enters the room, kisses his hand, and bursts into tears; soon after Preskovia, who is also weeping, enters as well. For the first time Ivan sees what they need from him and lovingly responds. He realizes that to let himself die he needs to cease justifying his own life.  And so, instead of continuing to try to reassure himself, he asks them for forgiveness for his failures.  And with that gesture, suddenly,

“it was clear to him that the thing that had been oppressing him, and not letting him go, was now releasing him all at once, from two sides, from ten sides, from every side. He was sorry for them, and he must do what is needed so that they should not be hurt.” (p.209)

At last Ivan sees how to put things right: he can, and will, for the first time in his life, put the needs of others before his own. And with that final act of love and reconciliation, Ivan conquers death—the spiritual death of being trapped inside the prison of the self—and in so doing redeems his pathetic life.  For it was that same selfishness that had him locked in an ongoing struggle with truth that was preventing him from the possibility of a happy death.  Of Ivan’s final moments, Tolstoy writes that he searches for death but cannot find it: “Instead of death there was light.”  By embracing the truth of sacrificial love for others, Ivan is released from his suffering and dies in a condition hitherto unknown to him—not a state of agreeable pleasure, but immense joy.

Click here to see the translation used in this reading.


Jennifer A. Frey is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and Principal Investigator with Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.

Multilingual exposure improves children’s social abilities

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Note: This piece first appeared in the New York Times on March 11, 2016, as “The Superior Social Skills of Bilinguals”.

Being bilingual has some obvious advantages. Learning more than one language enables new conversations and new experiences. But in recent years, psychology researchers have demonstrated some less obvious advantages of bilingualism, too. For instance, bilingual children may enjoy certain cognitive benefits, such as improved executive function — which is critical for problem solving and other mentally demanding activities.

 

Now, two new studies demonstrate that multilingual exposure improves not only children’s cognitive skills but also their social abilities.

 

One study from my developmental psychology lab — conducted in collaboration with the psychologists Boaz Keysar, Zoe Liberman and Samantha Fan at the University of Chicago, and published last year in the journal Psychological Science — shows that multilingual children can be better at communication than monolingual children.

 

We took a group of children in the United States, ages 4 to 6, from different linguistic backgrounds, and presented them with a situation in which they had to consider someone else’s perspective to understand her meaning. For example, an adult said to the child: “Ooh, a small car! Can you move the small car for me?” Children could see three cars — small, medium and large — but were in position to observe that the adult could not see the smallest car. Since the adult could see only the medium and large cars, when she said “small” car, she must be referring to the child’s “medium.”

 

We found that bilingual children were better than monolingual children at this task. If you think about it, this makes intuitive sense. Interpreting someone’s utterance often requires attending not just to its content, but also to the surrounding context. What does a speaker know or not know? What did she intend to convey? Children in multilingual environments have social experiences that provide routine practice in considering the perspectives of others: They have to think about who speaks which language to whom, who understands which content, and the times and places in which different languages are spoken.

 

Interestingly, we also found that children who were effectively monolingual yet regularly exposed to another language — for example, those who had grandparents who spoke another language — were just as talented as the bilingual children at this task. It seems that being raised in an environment in which multiple languages are spoken, rather than being bilingual per se, is the driving factor.

 

You might wonder whether our findings could be explained as just another instance of the greater cognitive skills that bilingual children have been observed to have. We wondered that, too. So we gave all the children a standard cognitive test of executive function. We found that bilingual children performed better than monolingual children, but that the kids who were effectively monolingual yet regularly exposed to another language did not. These “exposure” children performed like monolinguals on the cognitive task, but like bilinguals on the communication task. Something other than cognitive skills — something more “social” — must explain their facility in adopting another’s perspective.
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In a follow-up study, forthcoming in the journal Developmental Science, my colleagues and I examined the effects of multilingual exposure on even younger children: 14- to 16-month-old babies, who are hardly speaking at all. In this study, led by Zoe Liberman and in collaboration with Professor Keysar and the psychologist Amanda Woodward, babies were shown two versions of the same object, such as a banana, one of which was visible to both the infant and an adult, the other visible to the baby yet hidden from the adult’s view. When the adult asked the baby for “the banana,” the baby might hand her either object — both were bananas, after all — yet if the baby understood the social context, he would reach more often for the banana that the adult could see.

 

We found that babies in monolingual environments reached equally often for the two bananas. Babies in multilingual environments, including those who were exposed to a second language only minimally, already understood the importance of adopting another’s perspective for communication: They reached more often for the banana that the adult could see.

 

Multilingual exposure, it seems, facilitates the basic skills of interpersonal understanding. Of course, becoming fully bilingual or multilingual is not always easy or possible for everyone. But the social advantage we have identified appears to emerge from merely being raised in an environment in which multiple languages are experienced, not from being bilingual per se. This is potentially good news for parents who are not bilingual themselves, yet who want their children to enjoy some of the benefits of multilingualism.


Katherine Kinzler is an associate professor of psychology and human development at Cornell University, and scholar with the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life.

Lumen Christi Institute Events – Winter 2017

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Founded in 1997 by Catholic Scholars at the University of Chicago, The Lumen Christi Institute brings together thoughtful Catholics and others interested in the Catholic tradition and makes available to them the wisdom of the Catholic spiritual, intellectual, and cultural heritage. Lumen Christi is a partner with our project and we’re pleased to share their  upcoming events for Spring 2017.

Thursday, February 16, 4:30pm-6:00pm

with Sarah Byers (Boston College)
“What does it Mean to Say the Son of God is ‘Consubstantial’ with the Father? New Insights into Augustine’s Debt to Aristotle” 

Harper Memorial Library 130: 1116 East 59th Street
Cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy 
Register here.

Friday, February 17, 2:00pm-5:00pm
with Sarah Byers (Boston College)

Master Class: Augustine on Human Freedom and Divine Grace: What is Really Going on in the ‘Conversion Scene’ in Augustine’s Confessions?”

Gavin House: 1220 E 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
Open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies of the readings will be made available online to all participants. 
Register here.
Thursday, February 23, 4:30-6:00pm
Lecture by Celia Deane-Drummond (Notre Dame) 
“Tracing our Shared Deep History: Evolutionary Anthropology and Theo-Drama” 
Social Sciences, Room 122: 1126 E 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
Register here.