The Decline of ‘Virtue’ — Crooked Timber: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In Greek that would have been The Seven Virtues of Highly Effective People. Or The Seven Habits of Highly Virtuous People. Or even: The Seven Virtues of Highly Virtuous People. In virtue of what virtues can I become virtuous (three distinct senses of virtue elbowing in the same phrase)? How can I succeed, get ahead in business. How is excellence achieved?
The very fact that it’s not clear how best to translate the title of this popular self-help book into ancient Greek helps us see why Meno is so interested in the question of whether it can be taught, practiced, or maybe you are just born with it. I emphasize to students that Meno should therefore be a very intuitive sort of guy. He’s the guy who makes money giving inspirational, self-help speeches. He is asking the same question that everyone asks when they walk by the self-help/success book section. ‘Can this stuff really work?’ The great thing about the dialogue, in my opinion, is the way it collides this sort of approach with a very different one, via all the geometry stuff. I really like Meno. Philosophers, even philosophers who write about ‘virtue ethics’, don’t spend enough time considering the sort of approach exemplified by The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Plato is better than a lot of contemporary discussions in this regard. (He’s also crazy, of course. I know that.)
My question for you. I figured I might as well do a little research into the decline of ‘virtue’. That is, exactly how, when and why did the word become faintly ridiculous. Was it truly the Victorians, as I have always suspected, who turned it into a euphemism for proper lady sex, with the result that it is now totally unusable for ordinary purposes. Because all euphemisms get ruined for other purposes. And because we think the Victorians were particularly absurd on the subject of lady sex? Who can help me track the decline of this word?
Another interesting case – which I have to discuss in connection with Meno – is ‘continence’. Obviously the root is ‘containment’. Continents are landmasses that hold together. A ‘continent’ person is a person who has integrity, a properly put-together, held-together personality. But of course it’s impossible to use the word any more except in relation to diapers. Take this line from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus: “The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate/ To justice, continence and nobility”. The conjunction of ‘seat’ with both ‘virtue’ and ‘continence’ is just a Beavis and Butthead joke waiting to happen.
So we have evolved newer, cleaner idioms for continence. We say things like ‘losing my shit’ and ‘I’ve got my shit together’. Plausibly, ‘having your shit together’ is standard English for ‘the virtue of virtues’. As Fountains of Wayne teach in their speech on virtue...
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