The Virtuous Mean

THE VIRTUOUS MEAN

The “Rational” Mean

A lot of people don’t understand this today but the difference between a moral virtue and a vice of excess/defect is not a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. That is, if you’re initiated into the world of virtue and vice, and are familiar with the distinctions between “moral virtues” and “intellectual virtues”, and “virtue” more generally, then you know that a virtue is always the “mean” between two poles of vices: vices of excess, and vices of defect. Because of this, and our familiarity with “mean” as it’s applied to statistics (mathematics) as the quantitative middle point between two different quantitative points, …and our living in a world of philosophical logical positivism (read the late Pope B16’s Regensburg Address to get an amazing breakdown of logical positivism and the history of philosophy in the West)…, we are inclined to think that the virtuous mean is also a quantitative middle point between two extremes.

It's not. The virtuous mean is a “rational mean”, not a mathematical mean…

What does this mean?

For example, most people think that the difference between courage (the virtue) and rashness (the relative vice of excess of courage) is that you’re “overly courageous”—meaning you attack difficult things too often. Or to use another example, they think the difference between the virtue of studiousness and the excess vice of curiosity is that you “study too much”. Or to use a third example, they think the difference between the virtue of [healthy] conscience and the vice of scrupulosity is that you scrutinize yourself too much, or too often. All of these are wrong: the vice of excess is because the given activity (attacking difficult things; applying your mind to learning; scrutinizing our actions according to the moral law) is applied to the wrong things, in principle. That is, the distinction is one of reason, not of quantity. Rashness is a vice of attacking things that are unworthy to attack—it’s being “courageous” about securing your own vanity; it’s fighting for a degraded cause; it’s fighting for the wrong reasons. Similarly, the vice of curiosity is not that you “study too much”, it’s that you study trivial things; things that don’t bear on your moral and spiritual life (the principle which ought to occupy the majority of your voluntary intellectual exertion); it’s even that, when you do study morality, you conveniently avoid the topics that are hardest and most pressing in your life. The vice of scrupulosity is not that you scrutinize too many things, or you’re too critical with yourself, it’s a defect in reason—it's that you scrutinize venial things under the aspect of wrongly believing them to be mortal (most people have no idea what the principle of distinction between mortal and venial sin is—I’m writing a book on this right now, according to what St. Thomas teaches…keep an eye out for that coming in the near future); it’s an OCD that emerges around scrutinizing yourself precisely because you are unable to differentiate the application of the moral law to your actions along proper principles; you are without principle in your method of self-scrutiny and so your self-scrutiny wreaks terror on you and becomes the vice of scrupulosity.

Here's an absolute gem of a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas perfectly describing the principle of the rational mean like what I’ve just laid out:

“But in moral virtues, what is common to all is that they are in the mean. And the very fact that some reach the maximum [note: maximum here is referring to a situation like that in which two people are courageous and virtuous, but one person is more courageous, and “maximum” refers to the person who is “most courageous”] belongs in them to the nature of the mean, insofar as they reach the maximum according to the rule of reason; just as a brave man reaches the greatest dangers according to reason, namely when he should, as he should, and for what reason he should. But superfluous and diminished are understood not according to the quantity of a thing, but by comparison with the rule of reason; as for example, it would be superfluous if he were to involve himself in dangers when he should not, or for what reason he should not; but diminished if he did not involve himself when and how he should.” (DeVirt:1:13ad5*)

So virtue is a mean. But it’s not a quantitative mean; it’s a rational mean. The key to developing virtue, then, is figuring out what the rational mean consists in among different types of actions we do & things we pursue.

Arrogance vs. Confidence

Let us now apply this to a further case that is particularly relevant to our modern world: the difference between “arrogance” and “confidence”.

The relationship between arrogance and confidence is not one of “excessive confidence”, it’s being confident in the wrong things. It’s not that arrogance is just “more confidence” and confidence is “less arrogance”. Arrogance and confidence both have to do with how we view ourselves positively (that is, what do we base our positive view on), but they do so under two different aspects.

Arrogance is based on thinking you will succeed at a thing just because you are the one doing it, regardless of what you do. You think that it’s you yourself that will make you successful. Your positive view of what the result will be springs from your positive view of the mere presence of your own being.

Confidence is based on thinking two things: one, that it matters what you do/don’t do; and two, that you believe you can do the things that will be successful and avoid the things that would be unsuccessful.

So Arrogance is about the specialness of yourself—you don’t think it matters what you do… For example, if you love someone, you think that no matter what you do (whether you drink, or cheat on them, or lie to them, etc.) that you deserve to have their respect and that you have license to do whatever you want… Similarly, you think that when you pursue something you will be successful because you are pursuing it and you are special.

Confidence is about recognition of the difference between good and bad; it’s recognizing that if you are not focused/careful or don’t act with integrity that you will fail and that it will be your fault… For example, if you love someone, you think that it’s possible for you to ruin that love if you do not act well (be sober, honest, faithful, etc.). Confidence, then, will be believing that you have what it takes to do difficult and good things and that you can participate in a great love as a result… The confident person starts a venture not knowing that the venture will succeed, but knowing that they have a skill set that can facilitate their venture’s success and that they’re going to do everything they can to help the thing succeed.

Confidence is always healthy; arrogance is unhealthy.

Errors in Confidence

When a confident person becomes arrogant it’s because they start to apply their instinct toward “confidence” toward something they don’t have ability/mastery in. They start ascribe their success in a different- unrelated- domain to a domain that they don’t have mastery/virtue in.

There is one more division worth noting, because we often ascribe our own specialness to the work/things that we do. So in reality the arrogant person is often arrogant not merely because they believe their presence will make them great at something—they believe they’re good at whatever they do. The arrogant individual lacks a sense of competency and desists from proper self-scrutiny. They may even scrutinize themselves, but it’s in irrelevant ways.

Finding the Rational Mean

When trying to discern the rational mean in a given vice-virtue-vice combo, you’re looking for something that can be distinguished in principle. It’s possible that you even distinguish a different principle from some saint or philosopher that came before you. That doesn’t disqualify it—if it’s a relevant distinction, it becomes another aspect under which the vice-virtue-vice pair can be understood.

Things in this life are rarely one dimensional. The obscurity of our rational intellects requires that we understand things under different aspects to come to a fuller comprehension of the thing itself. When we learn about God, we see the different things God does under different aspects (say, His “omnipotence” from His “omniscience” from His “omnibenevolence”). Technically, God is one and undivided. But when His action “distends” across time, it is seen doing different things under different aspects. From eternity, however, He is doing only one “simple” act.

Now a saint philosopher’s aspect under which they distinguish a given vice-virtue-vice pair may be more profound, because it more precisely encapsulates the essence of that virtue, and thereby facilitates the growth in it more perfectly—but so long as you don’t know what St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine said about a given virtue; or to the degree you’re considering a mode/object of action that they didn’t write on (say, the virtue of “exercise”), then it’s up to you to formulate a rational principle that can distinguish the virtue from its vices.

One of the most important things we can do in the life of virtue is internalize this most crucial distinction. The virtue is not the mathematical mean between two vices, but the rational mean. Distinguishing the points of rational differentiation between genres of acts will help you rapidly grow in virtue, and even help you begin to understand the material of sin…… +

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* DeVirt:1:13ad5 = St. Thomas’s work “Quaestiones disputate de virtutibus” (Disputation on the Virtues), Question 1, Article 13, reply to objection 5… Article 13 deals with the question of “whether virtue consists in a mean”, and I’d recommend to everyone to read the body of that article (the “response”), it’s so good… (if you can’t read latin, use the “google translate” feature in chrome (or a similar feature in another browser) to have the text sufficiently translated into english.)