My Fifth Value

Over the years I’ve become aware that at a certain stage of life for most of us, some ideas and controlling metaphors begin to “settle in,” and one finds them reappearing in varying incarnations.  One of those themes that keeps popping up in my life is the notion of paradox, which has been an integral part of my thinking for more than forty years.  It has become one of my Values, which calls for some explanation. My introduction of it on the “Home” page of this blog site makes the point of my fascination with this concept of two statements or ideas that seem to be self-exclusive, inconsistent—”on the one hand, on the other hand”—but which, on reflection, may come together to provide a glimpse into the truth of things.

The fifth piece I posted to this blog site over four years ago offered some reflections on paradox, an idea that has reappeared here from time to time over the years, as well as in other writings and presentations. And so I will shamelessly borrow from that early post as well as from other sources of my writings.

• This notion is something I first learned from Harry Emerson Fosdick who spoke in his book, Living Under Tension, of mature Christian living as learning to “live under the ceaseless tension of opposites.” Ronald Hepburn’s book, Christianity and Paradox, which I read in a graduate seminar in the early 60s, replanted this termite in my brain, nourished and stimulated by the persistent reminders of all those either/ors we need to hold together—teaching and learning, theory and practice, self and other, personal and public, intellect and feeling—and you can grow the list yourself. Perhaps most poignantly, the late John Claypool—in an address I was privileged to hear—argued that the “challenge of maturity” is learning to live with paradox: learning not to absolutize one side of a matter at the expense of all others.
• An example of the way this can “pop up” in unexpected ways happened when I twice played the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in the 1980s and 90s.  In this musical theatre’s substantive plot and authentic historical context, I was fascinated by this character’s frequent reflections on his life and family dilemmas embraced by the phrases “on the one hand” and “on the other hand,” and how he struggled to find a “middle ground” that did not require choosing “either/or”—the quandary of the paradoxical “on the stage.” 
• The importance of the theme of paradox came home to me “on-stage” again, playing the role of Niels Bohr in the play, Copenhagen, which reimagines the historic and mysterious meeting in 1941 between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. I don’t pretend to understand the mathematics or the finer points of physics, but the story was a reminder of the way these old friends had revolutionized atomic physics in the 1920s, which had been a part of my research and teaching in the philosophy of science.  It also connected to my longtime fascination with the “wave-particle duality” that quantum mechanics introduced into our understanding of the physical universe at its most fundamental level—sometimes it behaves like particles, sometimes like waves and, as Bohr said, experiments can show one or the other but not both at the same time.  Yet sacrificing either characteristic at the expense of the other impoverishes our understanding of matter.  As my major professor in graduate school used to say, “We treat matter like a particle on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, like a wave on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and on Sunday we go to church and pray about it.” So if even at the heart of material reality, we must embrace the paradoxical joining of apparent opposites, why should we be surprised that at the macro-level of our lives, we must do the same?
• Parker Palmer, in his book, The Courage to Teach, contends that in our tendency to “see everything as this or that, plus or minus, on or off, black or white, we fragment reality into an endless series of either-ors—we think the world apart.  While affirming and respecting the power of analysis “on the one hand,” he urges us, “on the other hand,” to imagine what it would be like to “think the world together,” not to abandon logic, but to develop “the capacity for connectedness.”

To bring this over-extended rambling to an overdue conclusion, Palmer also notes that our “equal and opposite needs for solitude and community constitutes a great paradox.”  Without community, solitude degenerates from rich inwardness to loneliness and isolation, while community without solitude is reduced from a fabric of relationships into a mere “buzzing” crowd.  Somehow in this world, in our world, we must find a way to live in the tension that affirms the diversity of solitude within community rather than the diversity of solitude instead of community. Once again, in the acknowledgement of paradox, “to think the world together.”

My Sixth Value

While this is highly oversimplified, one major ethical theory (Deontological Ethics) argues that in making a moral choice, the ACT itself is right or wrong, while another (Utilitarian Ethics) states that it is the CONSEQUENCES of the act that are right or wrong. On the other hand, Virtue-based Ethical Theory emphasizes the AGENT, the person making the ethical choice.  In this case, one cannot always decide ahead of time what is right or wrong.  Each person and each situation is unique. And so, finally, the sixth and final value I will offer is Virtue-based Ethics.

Plato and Aristotle, the great Greek philosophers, represent this point of view.  Both of them believed that the capacity for reason is what most clearly distinguishes us from all other living things.  So the excellence of humans lies in developing our skill for practicing the art of being human. 

• Plato used a graphic image comparing the human person (he uses “soul”) to a chariot, pulled by a white horse (representing our passions and emotions) and a dark horse (representing our appetites and physical urges).  The driver of the chariot is called Reason, which struggles to keep control—to keep us in balance.
• Aristotle’s best-known image is his description of what he calls the Golden Mean.  He argued that every situation has a right action, found by reason, that represents a mid-point between excess (too much) and deficiency (too little).  For example, when facing danger, to be overly fearful is cowardice; to fear too little is to be stupidly foolhardy; the “mean” is courage.  But the mean is unique to every situation and person.  My responsibility is to do the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, for the right reasons.  And this is something I must learn to do—if I’m going to hit the middle of the target, I have to know myself.  If, for example, I know I tend to be shy and retiring, I’d better aim at being self-assertive; if I tend to “run over” people, I’d better aim more toward being reserved.

A final example of virtue ethics is called contextualism.  In this ethic, like Plato and Aristotle, there is a principle used in making all ethical decisions that must be applied individually to each situation.  That guideline is concern for the well-being of others.  One of the best-know versions of contextualism is found in Joseph Fletcher’s book, Situation Ethics.  Since I covered this in the 2^nd post of my World View blogs, I will try to be brief.

My own version of virtue-based ethics—which I owe to its ancient Greek originators and most obviously to Fletcher—employs the three Greek terms he uses and begins under his general category of Sophia, (wisdom), meaning the rules and principles of one’s society, which we should follow most of the time. I must confront my moral choices armed with what I inevitably possess and do not wish to disown—

• the wisdom of the past,
• the rules of my culture,
• the investigations of science,
• the guidance to be found in the basic teachings of Jesus,
• and the shared values gleaned from other religions,

all seen through the filter (or poured through the funnel) of what I have acknowledged to be my prime principle and value—the supreme worth of human personality.

My own version of these “rules and principles” are usually sufficient and should be followed most of the time. But I must be prepared to break a “rule”—and I have done so—if my “loving concern” (Agape) for this human person seems best served by doing so, in this unique situation (Kairos).

As you can see, “virtue ethics” carries no guarantees.  One is called upon to act according to a clear principle, but the application of that principle in a unique set of circumstances becomes the responsibility of the person making the choice. And that’s the reason, using Fletchers example, even each of the Ten Commandments needs to be followed by the word, “usually.”

None of us can avoid situations that are heavy with moral significance.  We face them every day and, one way or another, we choose.  Sometimes we know what our principles and values are and we act in harmony with them.  Sometimes, perhaps, we think we know the right thing to do, but we don’t do it.  And sometimes, the choice is so hard that we haven’t a clue what we should do! Whatever we do, we are both building and advertising the structure of our own character. I have obviously chosen my own ethical approach and I try to embrace it in my life, my behavior, and my decisions, but I must confess that I’ve not always been happy with my consistency in doing so. None of us can change the past, but we can always try “to do it better.” May it be so, for you and for me!

And thus endeth this impossibly long set of posts on my Principles and my Values. I hope—for any who have read and “stuck with” this series—that you have found something useful, stimulating, or disturbing enough to have made it worth your time. Please accept my gratitude and my hope for grace and peace to you!