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Tag Archives: virtue

Meet Oskar Schindler

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

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Tags

Biography, drinking, European History, Fiction, Holocaust, Nazism, Oskar Schindler, Poland, Schindler's Ark, Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally, Vices, virtue

“In Poland’s deepest autumn, a tall young man in an expensive overcoat, double-breasted dinner jacket beneath it and — in the lapel of the dinner jacket — a large ornamental gold-on-black-enamel Hakenkreuz (swastika) emerged from a fashionable apartment building in Straszewskiego Street, on the edge of the ancient center of Cracow, and saw his chauffeur waiting with fuming breath by the open door of an enormous and, even in this blackened world, lustrous Adler limousine. ‘Watch the pavement, Herr Schindler,’ said the chauffeur. ‘It’s as icy as a widow’s heart.’ In observing this small winter scene, we are on safe ground. The tall young man would to the end of his days wear doublebreasted suits, would — being something of an engineer — always be gratified by large dazzling vehicles, would — though a German and at this point in history a German of some influence — always be the sort of man with whom a Polish chauffeur could safely crack a lame, comradely joke.

But it will not be possible to see the whole story under such easy character headings. For this is the story of the pragmatic triumph of good over evil, a triumph in eminently measurable, statistical, unsubtle terms… Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.

‘Virtue’ in fact is such a dangerous word that we have to rush to explain; Herr Oskar Schindler, risking his glimmering shoes on the icy pavement in this old and elegant quarter of Cracow, was not a virtuous young man in the customary sense. In this city he kept house with his German mistress and maintained a long affair with his Polish secretary. His wife, Emilie, chose to live most of the time at home in Moravia, though she sometimes came to Poland to visit him. There’s this to be said for him: that to all his women he was a well-mannered and generous lover. But under the normal interpretation of ‘virtue,’ that’s no excuse.

Likewise, he was a drinker. Some of the time he drank for the pure glow of it, at other times with associates, bureaucrats, SS men for more palpable results. Like few others, he was capable of staying canny while drinking, of keeping his head. That again, though — under the narrow interpretation of morality — has never been an excuse for carousing. And although Herr Schindler’s merit is well documented, it is a feature of his ambiguity that he worked within or, at least, on the strength of a corrupt and savage scheme, one that filled Europe with camps of varying but consistent inhumanity and created a submerged, unspoken-of nation of prisoners.”

__________

Excerpted from the intro to Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark (later retitled to Schindler’s List). When asked, years later, why he’d acted the way he did during the holocaust, Schindler apparently replied, “I could never abuse something with a human face.”

Continue on:

  • Meet Napoleon
  • Meet Thomas Jefferson’s dad
  • Meet Alexander the Great

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David Brooks: What Do We Mean When We Say Someone’s “Deep”?

10 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Speeches

≈ Comments Off on David Brooks: What Do We Mean When We Say Someone’s “Deep”?

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Aspen Ideas Festival, David Brooks, Depth, ethics, Honor, morality, Morals, speech, The Road to Character, virtue, Wisdom

David Brooks

“I think we mean that the person is capable of experiencing large and sonorous emotions… People who are deep are spiritual. They’ve come to some stable philosophical convictions about fundamental things; they’ve made firmly-rooted moral commitments.

To put it in another way: they have a built a web of unconditional love. In the realm of intellect they have a permanent philosophy about how life is. In the realm of action they have a commitment to important projects that can’t be completed in a lifetime. In the realm of morality they have a certain consistency and rigor; they’re not always perfect but there’s a sort of moral demand that pervades everything they do.

The next question is, how long does it take to get depth? When we look at people who we think have depth, we notice that it doesn’t happen all at once. The desires that lead you astray, those things are fast — lust, fear, vanity, gluttony. The things that we admire most — honesty, humility, self-control, courage — those things take some time and accumulate slowly.

It’s an ensemble of settled feelings. It’s not something that happens to people when they’re fifteen.

And these individuals often possess a certain virtue.

And the word ‘virtue’, again, it has pompous connotations. It seems stuffed-up, self-righteous. But all virtue means is that you have your loves in the right order. We all love and desire a multitude of things: love, friendship, family, popularity. We all desire money, to be good shape. And we understand whether we’ve thought about it or not that some loves are higher than other loves — that the love of family is higher than the love of money. If you’ve sold out your family to make an extra buck, you’ve done something wrong.

If the love of truth or friendship is higher than the love of popularity. If somebody tells you a secret and you blab it at a dinner party, you’ve become popular for a few minutes in that conversation, but you’ve inverted your love. And so being virtuous is not some pompous thing, it’s not some puritanical thing. It’s just having your loves in the right order.”

__________

Pulled from David Brooks’s speech at the 2014 Aspen Ideas Festival “The Road to Depth: Thinking about What Character Is”. Find these ideas elaborated in Brooks’s new book The Road to Character.

There’s more:

  • Philosopher Ronald Dworkin summarizes a way to value your life
  • Wallace Stegner summarizes his worldview
  • The walk back from the mailbox

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Theodore Roosevelt on Setting the Right Example as a Man

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Speeches

≈ Comments Off on Theodore Roosevelt on Setting the Right Example as a Man

Tags

Alfred Henry Lewis, Brother, Brother's Keeper, Christian, Christianity, Courage, ethics, Father, fatherhood, Holy Name Society, Honor, Loyalty, manhood, morality, Oyster Bay, Son, speech, Strength, Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Trust, virtue

Teddy Roosevelt

“Every man here knows the temptations that beset all of us in this world. At times any man will slip. I do not expect perfection, but I do expect genuine and sincere effort toward being decent and cleanly in thought, in word, and in deed… I expect you to be strong. I would not respect you if you were not. I do not want to see Christianity professed only by weaklings; I want to see it a moving spirit among men of strength. I do not expect you to lose one particle of your strength or courage by being decent.

There is always a tendency among very young men and among boys who are not quite young men as yet to think that to be wicked is rather smart; to think it shows that they are men. Oh, how often you see some young fellow who boasts that he is going to ‘see life,’ meaning by that that he is going to see that part of life which it is a thousandfold better should remain unseen!

I ask that every man here constitute himself his brother’s keeper by setting an example to that younger brother which will prevent him from getting such a false estimate of life. Example is the most potent of all things. If any one of you in the presence of younger boys, and especially the younger people of our own family, misbehave yourself, if you use coarse and blasphemous language before them, you can be sure that these younger people will follow your example and not your precept…

I have told you that I wanted you not only to be decent, but to be strong. These boys will not admire virtue of a merely anaemic type. They believe in courage, in manliness. They admire those who have the quality of being brave, the quality of facing life as life should be faced, the quality that must stand at the root of good citizenship in peace or in war… I want to see each man able to hold his own in the rough life outside, and also, when he is at home, a good man, unselfish in dealing with wife, or mother, or children. Remember that the preaching does not count if it is not backed up by practice. There is no good in your preaching to your boys to be brave if you run away. There is no good in your preaching to them to tell the truth if you do not… We have a right to expect that in your own homes and among your own associates you will prove by your deeds that yours is not a lip-loyalty merely; that you show in actual practice the faith that is in you.”

__________

Teddy, speaking to the Holy Name Society at Oyster Bay, New York, on August 16th, 1903.

In his original compilation of Teddy’s speeches, Alfred Henry Lewis includes with this text the following worthwhile footnote:

President Roosevelt belongs to the Dutch Reformed Church. His freedom from religious prejudice, however, never fails to stick out. He would no more dream of quarreling with a man because he was a Methodist or a Catholic than he would of quarreling with a man in the car ahead or the car behind on a railway train because of the car he saw fit to travel in. There are many churches just as there are many cars in a train; but he is as tolerant of one as of the other, since they are all going to the same place.

There’s also this old joke, which expresses, in so many words, something of Roosevelt’s point about the gap between preaching and practicing:

A man is driving his five year old to a friend’s house when another car races in front and cuts them off, nearly causing an accident. “Douchebag!” the father yells. A moment later he realizes the indiscretion, pulls over, and turns to face his son. “Your father just said a bad word,” he says. “I was angry at that driver, but that was no excuse for what I said. It was wrong. But just because I said it, it doesn’t make it right, and I don’t ever want to hear you saying it. Is that clear?” His son looks at him and says: “Too late, douchebag.”

Read on:

  • ‘The Light Has Gone Out of My Life’: Young Teddy Roosevelt in Love and Grief

Teddy Roosevely and the Rough RidersTeddy Roosevelt Riding a MooseTeddy Roosevelt

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Reinhold Niebuhr on the Redemptive Power of Forgiveness

15 Thursday May 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Philosophy, Political Philosophy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ambition, Angels in America, Chris Hedges, Communism, forgiveness, Individual, Liberalism, Love, Patience, Philosophy, political philosophy, Reinhold Niebuhr, society, Striving, The Irony of American History, Theology, Tony Kushner, virtue

Reinhold Niebuhr

“There is no simple congruity between the ideals of sensitive individuals and the moral mediocrity of even the best society. The liberal hope of a harmonious ‘adjustment’ between the individual and the community is a more vapid and less dangerous hope than the communist confidence in a frictionless society in which all individual hopes and ideals are perfectly fulfilled. The simple fact is that an individual rises indeterminately above every community of which he is a part…

There are no simple congruities in life or history. The cult of happiness erroneously assumes them. It is possible to soften the incongruities of life endlessly by the scientific conquest of nature’s caprices, and the social and political triumph over historic injustice. But all such strategies cannot finally overcome the fragmentary character of human existence. The final wisdom of life requires, not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

__________

From the conclusion of chapter III (“Happiness, Prosperity, and Virtue”) of Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History.

There’s a suggestive moment in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America during which the high-strung Louis Ironson is airing a breathless litany of complaints to the serene but naive Joe Pitt. “You believe the world is perfectible,” Pitt interrupts, “so you find it unsatisfying. You have to reconcile yourself to the world’s unperfectibility. Be in the world, not of the world.”

A thank you to reader Brenton Dickieson for recommending Irony to me (via Twitter, no less). It had been on my radar since I first heard it quoted at length by Chris Hedges in a debate a few years ago, but I wouldn’t have gotten to it so soon unless it had blipped once again on my screen. That last paragraph, with its measured repetitions and corresponding, collective incitements, is among the ten or so that I’d include in a collection on human striving and ambition. Our unyielding desire to cling to the teleological — or the belief that there is some idealized future for which present sacrifices or sins may be justified — gets us into so much trouble, as Niebuhr nods to in his initial mentioning of communism. This fact can lead you in a host of alternate directions, from nihilism to resignation to denial, but Niebuhr effortlessly dispenses with such jerks of the philosophical knee. Don’t forgo personal ambition, the great theologian reminds us; don’t give up on striving for the good society, and don’t relent on living a virtuous life. But make sure you realize and keep in mind that each of these goals has its limit — its temporal, spatial, and interpersonal limit — and that forgiveness is ultimately what redeems both the injustices of others and the inadequacies of oneself.

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Confucius, What Would Be Your Top Priority as a Ruler?

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Philosophy, Political Philosophy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Confucius, friendship, Government, knowledge, Lunyu, Philosophy, political philosophy, Ren, The Analects, virtue, Wisdom

Confucius

“Confucius said, ‘If you put the honest in positions of power and discard the dishonest, you will force the dishonest to become honest.’

Zi Lu asked about how to govern. Confucius said, ‘Lead the people and work hard for them.’

‘Is there anything else?’

‘Do not be easily discouraged.’

Zhong Gong, currently serving as chief minister to the head of the Chi family, asked about government.

Confucius said, ‘First get some officers; then grant pardon to all the petty offenses and then put virtuous and able men into positions of responsibility.’

Zi Lu said: ‘The ruler of Wei is anticipating your assistance in the administration of his state. What will be your top priority?’

Confucius said, ‘There must be a correction of his language.’

Zi Lu said, ‘Are you serious? Why is this so important?’

Confucius said, ‘You are really simple, aren’t you? A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows cautious reserve.’

‘If language is not corrected, then what is said cannot be followed. If what is said cannot be followed, then work cannot be accomplished. If work cannot be accomplished, then ritual and properties cannot be developed. If ritual and properties cannot be developed, then criminal punishments will not be appropriate. If criminal punishments are not appropriate, the people cannot make a move. Therefore, the noble man needs to have his terminology applicable to real language, and his speech must accord with his actions. The speech of the noble man cannot be indefinite.'”

__________

From parts 12 and 13 of the Analects of Confucius. (There are full versions of the text all over the internet — a good one is here.)

At the end of Book 12, as Confucius discusses friendship with his devotees, the following exchange occurs:

Fan Chi asked about the meaning of ren (Confucian virtue denoting the positive feeling a virtuous person experiences when being altruistic).

Confucius said “love others.” He asked about the meaning of “knowledge.”

The Master said, “Know others.” Fan Chi couldn’t get it.

Zi Gong asked about the way of friendship. Confucius said, “Speak to your friends honestly, and skillfully show them the right path. If you cannot, then stop. Don’t humiliate yourself.”

Which brings up some related reflections:

  • Socrates explains the significance of friendship
  • Epictetus summarizes his path to self-improvement

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Vices Are Not Crimes

12 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Political Philosophy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

crimes, justice, Law, libertarianism, Lysander Spooner, policy, political philosophy, vice, Vices Are Not Crimes, virtue

Lysander Spooner

“If, then, it became so difficult, so nearly impossible, in most cases, to determine what is, and what is not, vice; and especially if it be so difficult, in nearly all cases, to determine where virtue ends, and vice begins; and if these questions, which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be left free and open for experiment by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit: his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself, what is, to him, virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other words: what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man’s whole right, as a reasoning human being, to ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ is denied him.

We all come into the world in ignorance of ourselves, and of everything around us. By a fundamental law of our natures we are all constantly impelled by the desire of happiness, and the fear of pain… No one of us, therefore, can learn this indispensable lesson of happiness and unhappiness, of virtue and vice, for another. Each must learn it for himself.”

__________

From sections V and VI of Lysander Spooner’s 1875 text Vices Are Not Crimes.

Thanks to my good friend C. for sending this text my way. C.’s unyielding libertarianism — or is it anarcho-capitalism? — has been refreshing to return home to, especially as I’ve left the warm centrist cocoon of Washington, D.C. George Orwell said that it is not what a person thinks that’s important, but rather how he thinks; and while I don’t subscribe to the what of C.’s arguments, I’m an unabashed fan of the how. It takes real intellectual will and moral independence to mount the case that the state itself — not just a party or faction — is illegitimate, but C. does this with total energy, seriousness and rigor.

I have different ideas on the matter, and try to play the part of the good sparring partner, but I like the breath of fresh air. The challenge to re-establish first principles is always worthwhile; to enjoy the dialectic of argument is amongst the most rewarding endeavors I know.

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