Mastering the Vices
MASTERING THE VICES
When I teach my students about virtue, unlike most of my contemporaries, I don’t start with the cardinal virtues—I start with the capital vices (i.e. The Seven Deadly Sins/Vices). The fundamental reason for why I do this is because vices are irrational and virtues are rational. That means that if you haven’t learned about good or bad habits, your default will be to form bad habits. I teach them about vice so that they can be more practically prepared to actually build virtue. The alternative—that you’ll just learn about virtue and be good—is accordingly shortsighted, naive, and potentially negligent, by my estimation. The real lesson we need is instruction in vice and its distinctions with virtue. From there we can investigate virtue and grow accordingly.
Habits
Virtues/Vices are habits that lead to good or bad acts, respectively. Habits have two elements: a mindset, or disposition of reason, and actions done repeatedly. All habits have those two elements, but vices and virtues differ in how the order, or sequence, by which they acquire those two elements progresses. Vices spring from repeated acts that lead to a vicious mindset; virtues spring from a mindset that leads to repeated virtuous acts. Put a way that is one layer deeper: vices are moved by desires that lead to acts that lead to a mindset; virtues are moved by a mindset that leads to acts that leads to a perfected desire.
The Capital Vices
The Capital Vices are Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony and Lust. They’re all “inordinate”—that is, out of order with right reason. They all spring from a different desire (not to suffer). They all lead to different mindsets. Here’s a chart that will help you make sense of them:
Pride: An inordinate desire for one’s own excellence (greatness).
Envy: A (inordinate) hatred of other’s goods that you don’t have.
Wrath: An inordinate desire for revenge.
Sloth: A (inordinate) sorrow over difficult goods.
Greed: An inordinate desire for money or material goods.
Gluttony: An inordinate desire for the pleasures of food/drugs.
Lust: An inordinate desire for the pleasure of sex.
“Right Reason”
We’ve said that each of the vices are “inordinate”, that is, out of line with right reason. The question to answer then eventually becomes, “what is right reason”…?
While “right reason” is another way of saying “prudence”, and prudence is developed by forming the moral virtues of temperance and fortitude along with the intellectual virtues of understanding, wisdom, and science—that is a process that takes a long time. What we’re really concerned with here is how we can determine what makes each of these respective vices inordinate…
Pride pertains to self-excellence, and is inordinate as to its cause, its operation, or its non-operation. The prideful individual takes credit as the cause of their own excellence where they aren’t (i.e. they fail to refer their excellence to God as its proper cause), they neglect to give credit to others appropriately, or they take credit for something they didn’t do at all.
Envy pertains to others, indirectly, hating the goods that others have that you don’t have. In that way it springs from selfishness, but consummates in a hatred of others—not because of some evil they’ve done, which would be an appropriate (ordinate) object of hate, but because they have some good that you don’t.
Wrath pertains to others, directly, and amounts to desiring vengeance whenever you’ve suffered at the hands of another, neglecting to refer justice to the appropriate members of society administering justice (legal authorities) and seeking to return harm for harm even where it was just & legitimate that you were harmed in the first place.
Sloth pertains to a sorrow in your own soul over things you shouldn’t be sorrowful over—namely, spiritual goods that, although difficult to attain and lack external and superficial rewards for attaining, are worth pursuing, and come with divine assistance (grace) in pursuing them.
Greed pertains to a desire for money beyond the purpose of money, which is to be a value of exchange for legitimate work (labor) done. When people want money for its own sake, regardless of work done, or seek monetary reward for products that require minimal labor to create, or arbitrary constriction on their competition to secure their productive exclusivity, they are entrenching the vice of greed in their soul.
Material goods are desired inordinately when they are desired beyond their need or use; not to serve their respective purposes, or where their same purpose is already sufficiently fulfilled by a similar material good already possessed.
Gluttony pertains to a desire for pleasure in matters of food/drugs. It is a desire for bodily pleasures pertaining to the digestive system, that is for the good of yourself; whereas lust springs from a desire for bodily pleasures pertaining to the reproductive faculty, which is for the good of the species. This is why both food and drugs fall under the auspices of gluttony—they both have to do with pleasures gained for yourself based on the digestion and distribution of chemicals/nutrients through the brain/body.
Disregarding the purpose of food (nourishment) and going after pleasure in food, informs gluttony. Using drugs/alcohol recreationally, for the sake of pleasure, is always inordinate, which amounts to making the sensational experience of pleasure in your brain your goal, undermining the relationship of ones brain to their being, wherein the brain is meant to serve the being—not the being serve the brain.
Lust pertains to a desire for pleasure in matters of sex. It is a desire for bodily pleasure pertaining to the reproductive faculty, which is ordained to the good of the species. To disregard the purpose of sex (life; children) and use it for pleasure is inordinate, and thus vicious. Properly speaking, its inordination consists in using sex singularly for the end of pleasure—cutting off or disqualifying the possibility of life from coming from it.
Overcoming Vice
The first step in overcoming vice, then, is to recognize that vices do not need to be learned in order to be acquired—they simply have to be ignored and they will grow all on their own. The next step is learning what they are, and why they’re wrong. From here we have our initial preparation to begin to overcome them.
In a world of rampant vice, there’s likely nothing more valuable to learn about and learn well than the topic of vices. If we are going to guard ourselves against the immense spiritual warfare we face today, we are going to have to master the vices that principally afflict us. Each of us will be called to put on the whole armor of God…
“For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) +