Virtues and the Intellectual Life

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There has been at times a tension in Christianity between an “active” and a “contemplative” life. This distinction was particularly prescient in medieval debates regarding the conduct of Christian life. Oftentimes, the contemplative life was recognized as superior and the active life was considered an acceptable, albeit lesser path.

Today the pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction with an emphasis on action for the marginalized, working for justice, aiding the poor, experiencing God in the world etc. Contemplation, intellectual pursuits, etc. tend to be seen as so much superfluous hairsplitting as necessary as re-arraigning deck chairs on the Titanic. However, there is a third option which recognizes the need for both activity and contemplation for a well-rounded Christian life. This path is not altogether new, and I think it can be seen in both pre-Christian and early Christian writers. I wish to sketch this third way presently and hopefully demonstrate some of what it has to offer.

Contemplation and Activity in the Ancient World

In Plato’s dialogue The Symposium he introduces a character named Diotima. The focus of the discussion is on the nature of love and beauty. Through this character Plato sketched what he took to be a hierarchical order in reality. This sketch of reality is well known within philosophy as “Diotima’s Ladder.”

Diotima begins constructing her image by noting that a lover first “devotes himself to beautiful bodies.”[1] The lover starts loving and admiring only one beautiful body. However, the lover soon realizes that there are many beautiful bodies and not just one. So, he/she proceeds to love and admire beauty wherever it is to be found in a body. Loving one body pales in comparison to loving all of the beautiful bodies.

But on deeper reflection the lover will realize that the beauty of the soul and the mind are superior to that of the body. In this the lover will start to see the beauty in knowledge and the pursuits of the mind. He/she will realize that in seeking the beauty that is of the soul, namely knowledge, he/she will be able to see the “great sea of beauty,”[2] which will allow him/her to “give birth to glorious and beautiful ideas…in unstinting love of wisdom.”[3] Diotima describes this wisdom or knowledge of beauty as something that “always is and neither comes to be nor passes away.”[4]

Contemplation Can Point to the Virtues

Knowledge of beauty comprises in understanding Beauty Itself, by which every beautiful thing is beautiful.  This knowledge is the standard by which we can judge and measure all of the beautiful things of this world. It itself does not undergo change or corruption, but the beautiful things which are mere images do. Diotima also says that the lovers who have attained a vision of the Beautiful Itself by seeking knowledge and wisdom have “given birth to true virtue”[5] within their souls.

We can see, then, that for Diotima the pursuit of beauty leads us from what is lower to what is highest. Each step represents a rung in the ladder of the order of being. The further up we go, the closer we are to true beauty. But this journey is not merely an intellectual ascent. As the lover sees beauty in purer and purer forms, he/she beings to cultivate virtue and to see things in their proper order. To gaze upon the Beautiful Itself then does not just merely require a rigorous intellectual desire but the desire to cultivate one’s soul in virtue and to order one’s entire life towards what is eternal and unchanging, using Beauty as one’s guide and standard.

Augustine on Contemplation and Activity

St. Augustine knew Platonic philosophy very well. It is very plausible that he would have been familiar with this general scheme. However, he made some important contributions to it.

Unlike Diotima, Augustine gives us, or at least gestures in the direction of, an explanation for the unity of the many eternal and unchangeable truths found in contemplation. Diotima assures us that desiring beauty will help us to “give birth” to many good and beautiful ideas. But, she never explains how this is done. She also maintains that the pursuit of beauty will make one virtuous. But again, Plato does not given a clear explanation for this. Augustine, on the other hand, tells us that the virtues are the “rules of wisdom.”

Wisdom, Virtue, Contemplation and Action

To be truly virtuous or to judge well is to act and judge wisely because the virtues consist of ordering our life properly and understanding in accordance with the highest good. In this sense, Augustine says, we are like little unique images of wisdom itself when we think and act this way. But, a clearer explanation of the unity of unchangeable truths isn’t the only difference Augustine has with Plato.

We are not just unique images of wisdom, though; we are also uniquely ordered to it as our fulfillment. As we have seen, Augustine calls virtues the rules of wisdom. The virtues themselves are nothing other than habits that order our lives towards wisdom. As Augustine says, “… we all want to be happy…no one can be happy without wisdom.”[6] Later on he continues “The happy life is joy based on truth. This joy is grounded in you, O God, who are truth…”[7]  Augustine identifies truth with wisdom and wisdom with God Himself. Therefore, when we progress through the argument, Augustine shows us that our lives do not make sense and cannot be ultimately fulfilled without Him.

Virtue as the Connection Between Contemplation and Activity

However, given that virtue is essential to this account and virtues are nothing other than rightly ordered actions built up by habit over time, it follows that fruitful contemplation of God cannot occur unless we are acting rightly. We cannot merely say “Lord, Lord” within our hearts we must also profess it with our actions in our own lives. At the same time this sincere virtuous activity will draw us to contemplation and reflection precisely because virtue will lead us to see the beauty of right action and this beauty will tend to draw us deeper into itself.

Can we not think of times in our own lives where we ourselves or someone close to us has done good things whether it be feeding the poor, donating time to charity etc. Has this not sparked within us gratitude, prayer, reflection? Did that not impel us to further action? If so, then we must continue the work and the contemplation. If not then we must reexamine ourselves, our thoughts ,and our actions for prayer and work, as contemplation and activity ought to go hand in hand.

 

[1] Plato, Symposium, trans. Alexander Nehmas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis; Hackett Publishing, 1997), 210a . The following two paragraphs will be a summary of what can be found in Plato, Symposium, 210a-212c.

[2] Plato, Symposium, 210d.

[3] Ibid., 210e.

[4] Ibid., 211a.

[5] Ibid., 212b.

[6] Augustine, Choice of the Will, 48.

[7] Ibid., X. xxiii. (33).

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3 thoughts on “Virtues and the Intellectual Life”

  1. Pingback: MONDAY EDITION – Big Pulpit

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