A Republic of Virtue

Auto-generated captions from the recording, lightly edited for names. Select a timestamp to jump to that moment in the video.

0:00 Good to see everybody. We have uh a lot of people that I've seen before, a lot of new faces. It's always good to come together for something like this. I think it doesn't happen enough and it's part of our mission at Meriwether Academy to create more experiences like this. Uh my name is Warren. I started this around a year ago. We're a cultural and educational nonprofit. And I think that we're all here for different reasons, but also kind of the same reason. Some of us are here because we want to make some friends, build a community. Some of us really like Thomas Aquinas and we want here for the content. Uh some of us are here for the meatloaf, you know, and the wine. And that's okay. But I think what ties us all together is that we're looking out into the world and we feel like something's off and we're trying to figure out what it is and we want to live in a beautiful culture and at times it doesn't seem

1:05 like it is. So we see things like this and these are attractive to us because our souls aspire to something nice. Um so that's what we're here to do. We're here to create these experiences. Uh we do these men's events. We have a book club that we run. We're launching a chapter in Chattanooga here in a few weeks. Uh and ultimately what we're going to do is build schools for boys across the United States. Um and we'll be raising money for that and we can talk about that one-on-one if you guys are interested in participating in that project. Our speaker tonight, he's the co-founder of the Catholic Studies Academy, an adjunct professor of philosophy at Belmont University, and he's the author of Logos Letter, a scholar in Thomas Aquinas, and he's coming this evening to give us a talk on Thomas Aquinas and particularly his ideas on citizenship and our duty for the common good. So, if you please put your hands together for Dr. Benjamin Smith. I'm very honored to be here. This is an almost ideal setting for somebody who uh

2:09 has cut their teeth on philosophy for many many years. I was blessed to get to start studying philosophy in uh a high school, right? I had a went to a private prep school and in that prep school, we actually had a high school philosophy class. Uh so I I very much uh identify with and support Warren's desire to work in the area of education, right? uh that's a great area where we can actually serve as uh citizens and contribute to the common good. So I'm going to uh start tonight um by reading just a little bit and then the rest of the time I will uh comment and lecture start with the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas points out an interesting feature of classical political thought namely that the well-known cardinal virtues prudence justice temperance and fortitude are also known as the civic virtues. In fact, he states that these different names really point to the same reality.

3:11 In his view, the virtues prepare one to be an effective citizen and enjoy a certain kind of happiness, namely civic happiness. This seemingly modest interpretation of Aquinas actually implies a rather significant view on the interconnectedness of virtue, politics, and human flourishing. In pursuit of Thomas's line of thought here, I want to defend and explain the following thesis. If you were in class, I'd tell you to write this down, but we're not. So, just commit it to memory if you can. Virtue and human flourishing are essentially connected to political life and especially to the service of the common good. I'll repeat that. Virtue and human flourishing are essentially not accidentally essentially connected to political life and especially the service of the common good. Put to put it another way political life is part of human flourishing.

4:15 We should not think of politics as the dirty business we do on the side and of our flourishing as in this other category or department. Right? That's the way Aquinas thinks of this. This will require us to rethink political community a little bit, maybe from our uh common way of doing things. I know that for many of us from the south, the phrase damn government, right? It's hard to know that those actually aren't one phrase, right? I understand that, right? But there is a higher and better way of looking at things I think that Aquinas can share with us. Um this requires say to rethink some polit about political community and also our understanding of happiness right or human flourishing. This is far different than what we might think. All right. So to defend my thesis here which again is that uh human uh that virtue and human flourishing are essentially connected to political life and service to the common good. In order to defend that, I'm going to begin like a good scholastic as Thomas would want

5:19 us to do with a definition. Right? So, of course, imagine that many of you uh are capable of uh rehearsing what Aristotle says is the definition of man, right? Man, he says, of course, famously, is a rational animal. It's our classical uh definition of the human being. But of course, Aristole, the great logician and Thomas following him recognizes that not every definition is an essential definition. In addition to an essential definition, we also have definitions by property or by accident or things of that nature. Right? And so a second definition, it's not as quite as essential as the first, but still very closely related is that man is a political animal. To put it in a slightly different way, man is naturally inclined to political life. And the evidence for this is all around

6:19 us. Wherever you find human beings emerging from mere survival, they often do so by coming together into groups. This is just an anthropological fact, right? We come together in groups, right? Uh we're able to help each other, right? You just think about being in the woods by yourself. Have you ever been lost in the woods by yourself for more than 10 minutes? I have. It's terrible. The woods look totally different there, right? Instead of a romantic and interesting and beautiful place to explore, it looks like a savage wilderness wanting to kill you, right? That's what it and to our ancestors, that's kind of what it was, right? How do we get out of that state? We get out of that state through human cooperation, through coming together, right? forming tribes, forming villages, forming communities. If you're by yourself in the woods and you break your ankle, that might just be it, right? If on the other hand, you're part of a clan, right? Part of a tribe and you broke break your ankle, somebody might take care of you

7:22 for a little while, right? So, what Aristotle and Thomas both saw, right? Um and I think it's very key and actually kind of the foundation of classical political thought which I would contrast with certain later forms of political thought. Um what Thomas and Aristotle saw is that uh there is a way in which we are naturally bound up with political community. All right. Political community is not a curse. It's a blessing. Um now why is that? you could say, right? And then I think there are a lot of things you could say when we come together uh as human beings past sort of a tri, you know, just a family, right? We can start to do things like maybe just from an economic point of view, talk about the division of labor, right? The division of labor improves our ability to do what? to be productive and to produce a wide variety of goods such that once you go far enough in the division of labor, you're able to have

8:22 people like philosophers and poets and priests, right, and so forth who don't have to maybe dedicate all their time to only survival. Civilization, right, is built when we come together, right, and cooperate. Uh that's one way of thinking about why we're naturally comp uh inclined towards political life. That's recognizing all the problems that there are and all the contentiousness that goes with political life, but we're still can't do without it. We're still naturally inclined towards it. A second reason to think about would be of course be security, right? You may be a very fine shot, right? uh with a 300 6 or an AR-15 or whatever is your weapon of choice. But as fine as you are just as a as an individual, your ability to secure your person and more importantly the well-being of your family, right, is going to be pretty remote. You know, maybe you're a very fine shot. Maybe you have a military background, but still, you know, 20 or 30 bad guys show up, you're probably toast, right? um security right is another reason and

9:30 third Aristotle points out justice that is law right the ability to uh construct a robust system and understanding of law and justice only emerges when we have enough people to come together provide the resources for law enforcement as well as a culture and uh and set of laws that can adjudicate relationships between each other. So there are three reasons right why we're naturally inclined right to political life um altogether they come to this we're naturally inclined to political life because right uh political life is where human beings flourish right that we're un we're not used to thinking about this right but Aristotle says very clearly that the only people who can flourish outside the only humans kind of that can flourish outside of a political community are gods and beasts, right? Men, human beings, right, flourish within political community for the reasons, right, that I've already

10:33 stated. Now, of course, those those elements aren't enough, right, on their own, right, to make human flourishing happen, but they're necessary conditions, right, they guard and they inspire, right, the possibility of human flourishing. We can especially add here just as a last comment in terms of arts and education, right? If you're alone in the woods of Alaska, you're not going to be reading Shakespeare, right? You're not going to be composing poetry. You might sacrifice to the gods, right? You got enough time, right? If you're a pagan, right? If you're Christian, you'll pray to God, right? But you see the point, right? Your your ability to develop culture is going to be very con uh restricted, right? And as as in terms of that higher development of the human being would also be uh restricted. So we are naturally political. This is a little bit different than the liberal tradition that we've sort of inherited where we think about political community as primarily being a matter of contract, right? We step out of nature, right? And

11:36 we create a political immunity by contracting with one another, right? In order to remedy the defects of nature, right? That's not Aristotle and Thomas' way of viewing politics, right? Political community is part of perfecting nature, right? And developing nature, if that's so, we need to get a clear view, right? Uh in terms of what exactly political community is, especially relative to the individual. Now, from what I've already said, we can imply uh infer a couple of things about political community. Thomas adopts Aristotle's definition of the political community is this. The political community is the perfect community. You're like, "Wait a second, really perfect." Okay, I don't mean pristine, okay? I don't mean morally uh pure. What Aquinas means by perfect community is a community that's complete for living the good life, right? A community that has sufficient

12:36 resources, right? For developing justice, security, right? a wide spectrum of goods and services, arts and education, right? On our own as individuals, we can't really do that outside of a broader context, right, of community. So in that sense, right, the human being needs the community, right? He needs to be part of, right, uh this community of resources, justice and learning. In that sense, the individual is compared to the political whole as an imperfect part to a perfect whole. I'll put it a different way, an incomplete part to a complete whole. The again, the political community has the resources it needs for human flourishing. I, as an individual, do not. I might have scraps or parts here and there, right? especially maybe I brought up in a good family but even the ability to be a good

13:38 family right that to some degree depends on living in a good community right so um in that sense right when we think about the political community we should think about it as the complete community interesting he compares the complete community to two others the village and the family right he says that the family is a great good right it is a it is the most natural community is the community sufficient for life, right? It's a community sufficient for rudimentary education and a minimal sort of set of resources. Obviously, we're talking about the generation, the literal generation of human life, right? In terms of procreation. At the same time, he recognizes that the family is limited, right? He says that the potter familious as great as he is the father of the family he is not in himself sufficient to bring his sons to completion right he plays he plays a necessary role

14:40 everybody understand that necessary role but there needs to be more right uh in the community to bring the citizen to uh or the person to completion in addition we have the village which goes beyond the family so it's not about the generation right of life but sort of a rudimentary development of goods and services. But eventually we go beyond the village, beyond the tribe to something like in ancient Greece a polus political uh uh you know the uh citystate right or in Christian Europe you know the kingdom where you have right all the things you need for political community. So that tells us some about the relationship between the two right to really understand political community deeply though we need to understand what it is in terms of its goal. Aristotle teaches us right that uh when we really want to understand something we need to understand it in virtue of its goal its purpose right you think about studying the eye right the way in which we under can come to understand

15:45 the eye and the parts of the eye is through thinking about what the end or goal of seeing similar with respect to the heart like from a cardiological point of view right we can think about the heart in terms of a pump right as its end of circulating blood and oxygen through the body. So what is the end of the political community? Well, we've already said one thing. The end of the political community is what? Human flourishing. It's the community that is complete towards that end. Right? But secondly, and just as importantly, it's the common good rather than the individual good. Right? Or I should say in addition to I said that wrongly first. It's the common good in addition to and more than the individual good. Is that communist? I don't think so. Right. I wouldn't follow Thomas if that's what I thought. Okay. What he means here by the common good is what you know you might find is sort of the general welfare, right? The declaration of independence or the United States Constitution, right? Things like that, right? The idea here is the or the in ancient Rome the resuba, the public

16:49 thing, right? the business right of the uh the public or the people. The main idea here is that uh the political community doesn't exist for your individual good but exist for the common good of the whole rather than just the individual good of the park. Now what do I mean by that? Let's let's do some uh examples. If you're on a football team, right? Is the goal of the football team your individual honors, prestige or stats? No. All right. The goal of the football team is what? Victory. That's right. Winning. Right. And if that means that you need to be a decoy for that whole game and never get a pass thrown to you, you will do that. Did you not achieve your goal? No. You achieved your goal. You just didn't achieve your individual goal. You chose you achieved your common good right that is the good you share with the team which is victory right and that's a

17:51 sweet right achievement right when you achieve it okay um more importantly let's say uh and and much more u and Thomas would be very straightforward in this matter uh what about in military matters right what is the the common good of the army right the common good of the army is again victim victory right the various parts are organized around achieving that right now sometime individual generals officers and so forth will seek their own individual glory right sometimes that works out sometimes it doesn't right but the way the military is organized is organized around that great common achievement of victory in political matters what does this mean in political matters this means that we are uh that the the the polus right the kingdom is ordered towards achieving um what Thomas Quin would call you know human flourishing but for the whole right now when I say

18:58 for the whole I don't say equally okay very important distinction but that virtue and human flourishing and the goods that go along with that like family friendship a modocum of resources is that all of those things come together in the concern of the ruler or the citizens in their uh striving right for the common good of the whole. Right? Now, really importantly, that doesn't mean it's not your good. The common good is not an alien good. It's not the good of a of the government. Again, it's your good. It's just the good you share with others. And if you really think about it, those are actually the best goods in life, right? I'm gonna just let you think about that uh yourself, right? That the common goods we pursue, those goods we share with others are actually some of the best goods. Why is it that the common good should be uh pursued right more than the individual? No. So not against the

20:02 individual but more because the common um basically because the political community is a complete whole compared to what the incomplete part that is the individual. So in so far as we should uh p pursue and prefer the perfect to the imperfect we should pursue the common good more than the individual good. Right? Think about this for a second. If you only pursue the individual good, what sense is there in the sacrifice of the soldier? Right? Was the soldier a fool? That's a good question to ask yourself. Aquinas would say no. The soldier was not a fool, right? Because even though he hazarded his individual good, right, his life, he's not suicide, right? But he's, you know, he's hazarding his individual good. He nevertheless does so for his higher good. That is the good he shares with others, right? The flourishing of the community. What does this all have to do with virtue and the virtuous man? Well, I

21:08 hope it should be evident, right? Need a five minutes to wrap up. Okay. Okay. So with respect to um the virtuous man, the virtuous man of course uh you know in Aquinas is going to be the person who exercises those four cardinal virtues, the great virtues, right? Everybody should know the cardinal virtues, right? You know, you should know them for yourself and expect the same of others, right? Especially other men, right? that that is uh prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. These are called cardinal virtues because they're like hinges upon which the good life turns. Cardinal is related to the Latin term for hinge. Kind of a weird etmology, right? And so as that that door depends on the hinges in order to swing, so the good life depends upon the cardinal virtues in order to operate. You need to be wise. You need to not be

22:12 a fool. Right? So, we're not wisdom in sort of like the proverb sense, right? Practical wisdom, right? You need to be just in order to do well in life. Give others what they what they deserve, right? You need to be temperate. You should have desires, right? Thomas isn't a Buddhist. He doesn't want to kill desire, right? But that that desire should be rightly ordered. And then finally, fortitude. We should be able to endure feelings of pain and fear in accordance with virtue in right reason. That's the heart of the flourishing life for a human being. To do that through life until your dad is living well in Thomas's view. Now, of course, Thomas as a Christian theologian has a broader vision that goes beyond that view, right? But it's not against that view. Does that make sense? Right? So he takes that view. This is in Thomas's work. This is called the complimentarity of nature and grace. Right? This low this

23:15 level of flourishing. We're talking as a natural level of flourishing. Of course, Thomas thinks there's a higher version, but these these there's a level here, but there's a consistency as well. So how should the virtuous man regard political community? Should he regard political community as a burden? Should he regard political community as a mere instrument to his own power or wealth or survival? Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting survival, right? There's nothing wrong with a certain amount of prosperity, those sorts of things. At the same time, right, Thomas would see those as what? Individual goods. Right? If you're a virtuous man, you want to do what's just, right? And in terms of the way he thinks about it, right, we owe injustice or through justice um a higher duty to the common good of the polus or the political community than to our individual good,

24:22 right? In part, that's because the common good deserves it. It's just a higher and better good, right? It benefits and blesses the many and it's the good of a perfect whole compared to an imperfect part. So a major way in which virtue and human flourishing are attached right to political life is through the virtue of justice. If you want to be just then you need to serve your community and serve its common good. If you fail to be just then you will fail to flourish. That's the way Aquinas sees it, right? Justice is an integral part of being a flourishing man, right? Being an excellent man. You know, the Greek term in the back of this, the the Latin term is flitas, right? Uh happiness, right? The Greek term behind that is your dimea, right? Which I like is to interpret as something like excellence. Okay? If you want to be truly excellent as a human being,

25:23 you need to practice the virtue of justice. And the virtue of justice should dispose you to love the common good more than your individual good. There's a second virtue I want to talk about here which is uh uh connected to justice and this is especially Thomas's insight and it's the virtue of pietas or piety right this is a virtue close to my heart I'll tell be honest okay piety is almost sort of a forgotten virtue as soon as you hear the word piety of course you think of religious devotion right and I understand that and py in a way includes that sort of thing but py is more than religious devotion. Right? Piety, this is a great definition for chias. Piety is uh the habit that inclines us to render to what we owe to our sources. Again, it's the habit we have within us to uh that inclines us to render what we

26:26 owe to our sources. And what are our great sources? God, family, and country. Right? Now, if that doesn't stir your your your ethos a little bit, you know, I don't know what does. Okay. The god, right, the transcendent, the source of being, your parents, your family, your ancestors, right? Who have given you a heritage and life and then also your patria, your country, right? We don't think about the country in that terms very much, right? But the country is a source of our being. It doesn't replace God or our parents of course but it's the setting right um the United States of America for all its good for all its bad right is right the context from which my existence and who I am flow and so I owe to that right uh a certain difference and honor one of the biggest controversies I ever got into on social media which I'm not on very often but I did get on it this time is I mentioned something and there was an article that

27:30 was just heartbreaking ing to read about adults who um there's a there's a term for it I'm going to forget but in a certain sense permanently and purposefully separate from their parents right have you heard of this phenomena right it's a growing phenomena right it's awful right it's against every tradition every moral code right and I said in there you know I sort of as a response because people were talking about was an article in the times you know I said in there well you know we owe a certain difference to our parents right? A certain gratitude to our our our parents because of our being. People thought that was the most outrageous thing they'd ever heard, right? They're like, I don't owe anything to something I don't choose. Isn't that a very modern way of thinking, right? And a contemptable way of thinking, right? We owe there are things we owe to certain sources and we didn't choose them. And I would actually argue the opposite, right? that those great unchosen obligations are actually the obligations right which inform us more deeply right and enrich life more

28:35 deeply than just or only the chosen ones I'll put it that way so two sources for connecting common good your love of the common good for in your own city justice and piety right I'll wrap up with just a couple of practical things the ordinary means by which you carry this out is by obeying just laws. Okay? Be a good obedient citizen. Do the obvious. Don't be a criminal, right? You know, that's obvious. But don't be a criminal. Now, that also means don't be a criminal in a white collar way, right? Don't be a thug. Yes. Okay. But also, don't be a liar. Don't be a fraud. Don't be somebody who's fraudulent. I had the sad experience myself of actually knowing somebody personally who was a con man. Has anybody ever actually known a con man? A con man who went to jail. Right. I I did. Right. It was terrible experience, right? I thought I was a good charact judge of character. Apparently not, right? Because this guy was a complete con man, right? And he and he defrauded friends of mine. Don't so white collar or blue collar, right? Don't be a thug. Don't be uh a fraud.

29:41 Do your part. Whatever that part is, be a good accountant according to the the rules of accountancy, right? Good. Be a good police officer according to the rules of being a police officer. All those sorts of things. Third and this is very applicable to us. Be a great father, right? The the your role as potter familas, right? You to think of yourself that way, right? Is essential, right, to the well-being of your family, the well-being of your boys, and the well-being of the state. Okay? It's your role is holding other men accountable and most of all holding your sons accountable. Right? um that is an essential role in political community. Second, in this tonight, what we're doing is very much along these lines. Form friendships, right? Find other virtuous men and come together with them, right? You know, encourage each other, hold each other accountable, give each other ideas, cooperate together

30:42 both in professional life, but also in family life and other ways, right? education, right? Attend closely to the education of your children, but also build up the education of all, right? And again, that goes to, I think, Warren's project. And then finally, uh, just at a practical level, there's a lot more to say, right? But at a practical level, you need to to be somebody without being um, you know, you don't have to be o over the top about it all the time, but you need to be known as a man of piety. Nobody's going to know to use that word, okay? But the a man who honors his ancestors, honors his family, honors his country, and honors God, right? And you need to exemplify that in your own sort of behavior and speech. Well, there's a lot to think about there. Sorry, so for gave you a lot, right, of things, but the main strain here is to think about is this, right? We need to think about political life in

31:42 service to the common good as part of our own flourishing. Right? We will flourish. Part of our duty, right, as virtuous men is to serve the common good of our political community, right? And that can be done in a variety of ways, but that's part of our own flourishing, right? So we shouldn't look at political life as something that gets in the way of our personal growth and flourishing but rather as an arena right in which we can pursue right that virtue. Thanks for listening.