Tag: Josef Pieper

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The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 2: Fortitude & Temperance

The objects of virtue are defined by prudence and justice. By objects, I mean, the things we are to pursue, such as a relationship with God, a loving family, and scientific discovery. However, knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. There are many hardships and dangers in pursuing the best. This requires fortitude. There are many good things that distract us from the best. This requires temperance.

These are the four cardinal or principle virtues required in the excellent or virtuous person. Josef Pieper has written a helpful explanation of these four virtues for our time in consultation with ancient philosophy, Christian theology, and modern philosophers. In this post, I am considering his discussion of fortitude and temperance. You can read my post on prudence and justice here.

Fortitude
What are you willing to die for? This is the chief question of fortitude. It’s one every single one of us should consider. Preparing for death prepares us to live. As Josef Pieper says, “Fortitude that does not reach down into the depths of the willingness to die is spoiled at its root and devoid of effective power. . . . Readiness to die is therefore one of the foundations of Christian life” (117). This does not mean that death or suffering are valued in and of themselves. Pieper explains, “The brave man suffers injury not for its own sake, but rather as a means to preserve or to acquire a deeper more essential intactness” (119). The flip side is a desperate attempt to keep one’s life at all costs, “All neuroses seem to have as a common symptom an egocentric anxiety, a tense and self-centered concern for security, the inability to ‘let go’; in short, that kind of love for one’s own life that leads straight to the loss of life” (134). Consequently, careful consideration of what is worth living and dying for is at the root of our well-being. Continue reading “The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 2: Fortitude & Temperance”

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The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 1: Prudence & Justice

Introduction
The tradition of the four cardinal virtues was already old when Plato wrote about it in his Symposium. This ancient wisdom contained three aspects. Fist, morality was about a person’s character, the type of person he was, as well as the rules he followed. Second, the goal of morality was not merely following rules but to be a person of excellence, which is the meaning of the word “virtue.” Third, a virtuous act requires four key virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

In his book, The Four Cardinal Virtues, the Catholic theologian Josef Pieper explains the meaning of these four virtues. He does this in interaction with the ancient philosophers, Christian theologians, and modern philosophers. The result is a unique and helpful discussion of these four categories. Pieper believed that such a discussion was extremely fruitful. He said, “we may well turn to the ‘wisdom of the ancients’ in our human quest to understand reality, for that wisdom contains a truly inexhaustible contemporaneity” (xii). In this article, I want to summarize and highlight his discussion of the virtues of prudence and justice. Continue reading “The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 1: Prudence & Justice”

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7 Quotes that Invite You to Read Josef Pieper

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) was a Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher from Elte, Westphalia, Germany. He imbibed the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas but thought deeply about the rest of the Western tradition, ancient and modern (read a little more about him here). I have found his work a particularly helpful guide to thinking deeply and clearly about what it means to live rightly as a human being. His most famous work is Leisure: the Basis of Culture. If you want to get a sense of the breadth of his work, An Anthology, which he compiled at the end of his life, is a great place to start.

If you want to think about how to live well as a Christian in this time, Pieper’s works are full of wisdom. Pieper’s works are also concise. All of them are short volumes. The chapters are also short. You can usually read a chapter in one short sitting. They stir the heart and the mind and challenge us to be what God has called us to be. Here are 7 quotes that invite you to read Josef Pieper.

1. The key question of our time that our prosperity should make us ask: What is life for? “After we have accomplished, with an admirable amount of intelligence and hard work, all that is necessary, after we have provided for the basic needs of life, produced the essential foodstuff, protected the realm of life itself—after all this, what is the meaning of the life itself that we have made possible? How do we define a truly human life?” (Anthology, 111).

2. Prudence or wisdom is the pre-eminent virtue: “The pre-eminence of prudence means that realization of the good presupposes knowledge of reality. He alone can do good who knows what things are like and what their situation is. . . . Realization of the good presupposes that our actions are appropriate to the real situation, that is to the concrete realities which form the ‘environment’ of a concrete human action; and that we therefore take this concrete reality seriously, with clear-eyed objectivity” (The Four Cardinal Virtues, 10). Continue reading “7 Quotes that Invite You to Read Josef Pieper”

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To Be Brave Is Not the Same As to Have No Fear

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) was a Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher from Elte, Westphalia, Germany. He imbibed the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas but thought deeply about the rest of the Western tradition, ancient and modern (read a little more about him here). I have found his work a particularly helpful guide to thinking deeply and clearly about what it means to live rightly as a human being. His most famous work is Leisure: the Basis of Culture. If you want to get a sense of the breadth of his work, An Anthology, which he compiled at the end of his life is a great place to start.

In his book, The Four Cardinal Virtues, he describes the four virtues that the ancients considered basic to any good and virtuous life: wisdom, justice, courage (which he calls fortitude here), and temperance or self-control. In this scary time, I think we need very clear thinking about courage and fear. I found these few paragraphs a really good summary of the best I have read on the subject in the Western tradition:

To be brave is not the same as to have no fear. Indeed, fortitude actually rules out a certain kind of fearlessness that is based upon a false appraisal and evaluation of reality. Such fearlessness is either blind or deaf to real danger, or else is the result of a perversion of love. For fear and love depend on each other, and he who loves falsely, fears falsely. One who has lost the will to live does not fear death. But this indifference to life is far removed from genuine fortitude, it is, indeed, an inversion of the natural order. Fortitude recognizes, acknowledges, and maintains the natural order of things. The brave man is not deluded; he sees that the injury he suffers is an evil. He does not undervalue and falsify reality; he “likes the taste” of reality as it is, real; he does not love death nor does he despise life. Fortitude presupposes in a certain sense that a man is afraid of evil; its essence lies not in knowing no fear, but in not allowing oneself to be forced into evil by fear, or to be kept by fear from the realization of good. Continue reading “To Be Brave Is Not the Same As to Have No Fear”

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