There’s a great difference between apparent virtues and true ones. .
What I call ‘apparent virtues’ are certain relatively unusual
vices that are ·extreme· opposites of other better known vices,
with the related virtues occupying a position intermediate
between the two. Because they are further from their
opposite vices than the virtues are, they are usually praised
more highly than the related virtues are. Here are some
examples.
(1) It more often happens that someone timidly
flees from danger than that someone rashly throws himself
into it; so rashness is contrasted with the vice of timidity
as if it were a virtue, and is commonly valued more highly
than true courage ,which is intermediate between timidity
and rashness.
The same mechanism is at work when
(2)someone who is over-generous is more highly praised than
one who gives liberally ·because his conduct is further from
the vice of meanness than is the virtuous conduct of the
merely liberal giver.
There is also a division within the true virtues, between
ones that arise solely from knowledge of what is right and
ones that come partly from some error. Examples of the
latter class of virtues:
goodness that is a result of naivety,
piety that comes from fear,
courage that comes from the loss of hope.
Because such virtues differ from each other, they have
different names; whereas the pure and genuine virtues that
come entirely from knowledge of what is right all have the
very same nature and are covered by the single term ‘wisdom’.
The person who is firmly and effectively resolved always to
use his reasoning powers correctly, as far as he can, and to
do whatever he knows to be best, is the person who is as
wise as his nature allows him to be. And simply because
of this wisdom, he will have justice, courage, temperance,
and all the other virtues—all interlinked in such a way that
no one of them stands out among the others. Such virtues
are far superior to the ones that owe their distinguishing
marks to some admixture of vice, but they usually receive
less praise because common people are less aware of them.The kind of wisdom I have described has two prerequisites:
•the perceptiveness of the intellect and the •disposition
of the will. If something depends on the will, anybody can
do it; but ·the same doesn’t hold for intellectual perceptions,
because· some people have much keener intellectual vision
than others. Someone who is by nature a little slow in
his thinking and ·therefore· ignorant on many points can
nevertheless be wise in his own way and thus find great
favour with God; all that is needed is for him to make a firm
and steady decision to do his utmost to acquire knowledge
of what is right, and always to pursue what he judges to
be right. Still, he won’t rise to the level of those who are
firmly resolved to act rightly and have very sharp intellects
combined with the utmost zeal for acquiring knowledge
Descartes
What I call ‘apparent virtues’ are certain relatively unusual
vices that are ·extreme· opposites of other better known vices,
with the related virtues occupying a position intermediate
between the two. Because they are further from their
opposite vices than the virtues are, they are usually praised
more highly than the related virtues are. Here are some
examples.
(1) It more often happens that someone timidly
flees from danger than that someone rashly throws himself
into it; so rashness is contrasted with the vice of timidity
as if it were a virtue, and is commonly valued more highly
than true courage ,which is intermediate between timidity
and rashness.
The same mechanism is at work when
(2)someone who is over-generous is more highly praised than
one who gives liberally ·because his conduct is further from
the vice of meanness than is the virtuous conduct of the
merely liberal giver.
There is also a division within the true virtues, between
ones that arise solely from knowledge of what is right and
ones that come partly from some error. Examples of the
latter class of virtues:
goodness that is a result of naivety,
piety that comes from fear,
courage that comes from the loss of hope.
Because such virtues differ from each other, they have
different names; whereas the pure and genuine virtues that
come entirely from knowledge of what is right all have the
very same nature and are covered by the single term ‘wisdom’.
The person who is firmly and effectively resolved always to
use his reasoning powers correctly, as far as he can, and to
do whatever he knows to be best, is the person who is as
wise as his nature allows him to be. And simply because
of this wisdom, he will have justice, courage, temperance,
and all the other virtues—all interlinked in such a way that
no one of them stands out among the others. Such virtues
are far superior to the ones that owe their distinguishing
marks to some admixture of vice, but they usually receive
less praise because common people are less aware of them.The kind of wisdom I have described has two prerequisites:
•the perceptiveness of the intellect and the •disposition
of the will. If something depends on the will, anybody can
do it; but ·the same doesn’t hold for intellectual perceptions,
because· some people have much keener intellectual vision
than others. Someone who is by nature a little slow in
his thinking and ·therefore· ignorant on many points can
nevertheless be wise in his own way and thus find great
favour with God; all that is needed is for him to make a firm
and steady decision to do his utmost to acquire knowledge
of what is right, and always to pursue what he judges to
be right. Still, he won’t rise to the level of those who are
firmly resolved to act rightly and have very sharp intellects
combined with the utmost zeal for acquiring knowledge
Descartes
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