Abstract
The term ‘quadrivium’ is purely my own, and I am employing it as a designation for what I discern as fundamental human concerns – which for me renders them automatically ‘pagan’ interests as well. These concerns are what shape and motivate our activities, and implicitly they call forth standards of behavior that delineate what we might choose to do in attempting to live life rightly and appropriately. Consequently, I am seeking here to suggest a code of norms as a formulation of applied ethics. This code that is herewith discussed in the present chapter concerns our human desires for freedom, comfort, health and specifically honor but more broadly what I prefer to designate as worship. I will begin with freedom under which the consideration includes political freedoms and personal freedoms as well as pagan freedoms. But it is important I feel to make clear that my discernment of the core concerns and/or values of life derives from my own life experiences as well as more than 30 years of encounter with contemporary pagan communities and pagan substrata in non-European societies. This and the following chapter reflect my personal reflections both as a person who identifies as pagan and one who has sought active relationships with other pagans.
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Notes
- 1.
Another way to consider freedom is to distinguish between positive freedom (Plato, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel) having to do with self-determination and autonomy, on the one hand, and negative freedom (Bentham, Hobbes, Locke and Hume) referring to the situation in which a person is free from the interference or coercion of others. Positive freedom is the liberty for something, the ability to do what one chooses. Negative freedom is freedom from constraint, intimidation or prevention by others.
- 2.
We seek naturally to be free from discomfort, from pain, from disease as well as from error, dishonor, emptiness and stinginess. Each of the quadrivium or heptatheonic values may be understood as an expression or instance of freedom itself. The virtues, thereby, are the aim for anyone who seeks autonomous independence as part of a life of happiness or general well-being. And the virtues are best cultivated by the free agent – someone not burdened by upset, infirmity and/or disgrace and certainly someone not subject to the rule or control of another.
- 3.
We have already noted that both Plato and Aristotle, let alone Nietzsche and many others, had little regard for democracy itself – most seeing that rule by the mediocre leads to a more pernicious form of tyranny and inevitably the worst possible outcome. The property-less many are seen to be too small-minded and limited by a sense of envy and desire for revenge that precludes the wise decision that is required from democracy and on which it is dependent if democracy were to succeed as a viable process of political decision-making. Within the philosophical tradition, it is John Locke who is perhaps most connected with liberal democracy. Like Aristotle and Cicero, Locke believes in the ownership of private property as a vitally important natural right. He also subscribes to the social contract theory by which human beings, facing the inevitability of disputes between themselves, allegedly agree to submission to legislative and executive authority over themselves for the protection of their natural rights – including those to property. By arguing that civil law is valid only if enacted by majority vote of a citizenry in which each individual has guaranteed equal rights in the determination process, Locke is arguing for the legitimacy of democratic government.
There are difficulties with some of Locke’s assumptions – both the principle that a person has exclusive rights to his own person and to the product of his own labor, and the doctrine of tacit consent, namely, that “every man, that hath any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government” (Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government 8.119 – Locke 1690). As MacIntyre (1998: 159) elucidates, this doctrine is important because it is the one on which every modern state rests – every state “which claims to be democratic, but which like every state wishes to coerce its citizens.” Aristotle’s pragmatic solution to any equal deadlock between property owners and non-property owners in the democratic process is to award the final decision to the former since they have more at stake. Cicero (On Duties 2.24.85; Grant 1971: 169) insists that a liberal government is one that guarantees each of its citizens the security of property ownership: “They must ensure that poor men are not swindled because they are poor. But they must equally guarantee that rich men are not prevented, by envious prejudice, from keeping [or recovering] what is theirs.” The issue of property, therefore, becomes central to the very notion of democracy, and the ethical implications of this issue are manifold.
- 4.
MacIntyre (1998: 204).
- 5.
For the ‘false god’, see York (2010: 78f). Bron Taylor considers ‘trust in military might’ as an instance (personal communication on 10 March 2014).
- 6.
The reifying of the nation-state is a major instance of the ‘false idolatry’ of the negative idol. It disallows people to seek balanced understandings: to weigh wrong-doings against them against those that they themselves might have committed on others. Chauvinism is itself an incarcerator because it renders the chauvinist blind and unable to participate in the freedom that comes with the wider scope of understanding. The over-glorification of the state, rather than seeing the polity as simply a vehicle for moving towards our well-being and as the ad hoc protector of our cultural legacies, is among the greatest of threats to the freedom of expression. For instance, United States Senator Dianne Feinstein, in defense of the proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw and prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag, says, “I strongly believe that the American flag holds a unique position in our society as the most important and universally recognized symbol that unites us as a nation. The flag – as a symbol of our nationhood – can and should be respected and protected from attack” (Email sent 25 May 2005 to the mother of Trinlay Tulku Rinpoche). This, however, is idolatry senso negativo and one that curtails the freedom of self-expression even if and when we might not agree with what is being expressed.
- 7.
Accordingly, the Dominionist seeks to produce a generation of biblically trained politicians whose first task is to eliminate religious choice and freedom. Adulterers, homosexuals, witches, idolaters, heretics and blasphemers are to be executed – either by stoning to death or by being burned alive.
- 8.
Gun laws prohibiting the unrestricted right to possess fire-arms, however, are more ambiguous. The United States does not have them; most European countries do. The issue rests on the right to self-defense. European paternalism argues that allowing people to own guns makes its citizens more exposed to their abuse. Americans, backed by the powerful gun and rifle lobby, have steadfastly refused to surrender this right. Certainly the number of deaths in Europe that can be attributed to unlawful use of fire-arms is significantly lower than that in the United States, but the question is between state paternalism, on the one hand, and the freedom of the individual, on the other.
- 9.
In the “Editor’s Letter” to the re-founded issue of The Liberal magazine, Ben Ramm explains: “It is our wish to rehabilitate the term ‘liberal’, sullied after a century which deemed liberalism at best unfashionable, at worst unlawful; and to affirm the vision of our predecessors in their first editorial: to see ‘the mind of man exhibiting powers of its own, and at the same time helping to carry on the best interests of human nature’” (The Liberal [Independent Preview Edition] IV April/May 2005: 1).
- 10.
McGraw (2003: passim).
- 11.
I have focused here on the polity itself and not upon the greater concerns of the atmosphere, the oceans and the commons as they are or are not addressed via the Westphalian nation-state system that has come to predominate our planet today. In the terrapolitan focus of Daniel Deudney (1998: 303), “the central basis of political association must be the Earth (terra) and its requirements.” For the deep ecology of social philosophy, see further Bron Taylor’s “Deep Ecology and its Social Philosophy: A Critique” in Katz et al. (2000: 269–299).
- 12.
If we look at the etymologies behind our various terms for freedom, we gain some further insight into the dynamics that are involved. For ‘liberty’ itself, from the Latin liber, there is little new that is forthcoming; the Latin term derives from a root that has always signified being free. ‘Autonomy’, by contrast, places the emphasis squarely on the self, on ‘self-rule’ and the freedom to make one’s own decisions. ‘Independence’, likewise, suggests ‘not dependent’ – self-sufficiency. ‘Freedom’, however, derives from a root that betokens ‘love, desire’ (*prâi-). Cognate are such terms as ‘Priapus’, ‘Freya’, ‘Freyr’ and ‘Frigg’/‘Frija’ and German Friede ‘peace’: Watkins (1969: 1536), Pokorny (1959: 844), York (1995: 539, 588). Watkins (ibid. See also York 1995: 588) derives the word ‘free’ from the Germanic *frijaz that denotes ‘beloved’ – more widely, ‘belonging to the loved ones’, that is, either the gods or one’s family. The ultimate suggestion is that one who is *frijaz is one who is ‘not in bondage’, i.e., ‘free’. In other words, freedom is understood as being safely among one’s loved ones, at home, not in prison, and/or under the happy protection of the gods (eudaimonia).
Among the Romans, the personification of liber occurs as both a male Liber and a female Libera. Cicero (De natura deorum 2.62.24) refers to Liber and Libera as the children (liberi) of the earth-mother. The term liber may have been originally an epithet belonging to Jupiter in his capacity as creative force. See York (1986: 77). For Iovi Libero et Iunoni Reginae in Aventino, see the Fasti Fratres Arvales under 1 September. On the festival of the Liberalia (17 March), adolescent boys were given the toga of manhood – signifying freedom from childhood and the emancipation of adulthood. The identification of Liber with the Greek Dionysus suggests further the freedom that comes with intoxication.
- 13.
A person may be free to be comfortable or, vice versa, free from discomfort. A person may enjoy the freedom of health, that is, to be free from illness and disability. One might be free to indulge in the pursuit of pleasure, to be productive or to be generous. In other words, one might be free from pain and meaningless boredom, from waste and stagnation, and from miserly stinginess and the greed of hoarding.
- 14.
Grayling (2003: 54), in discussing the general contempt by the Cynics for conventional goods, contrasts this with the attitude of the Stoics who treat the ‘indifferents’ as “dispensable adjuncts to the good life” but ones that conform to our natural instincts toward “the comfort or happiness that health and a measure of material comfort bring.”
- 15.
Our English word, comfort, is traced through the Middle English comforten to the Old French comforter – itself a derivative of the Late Latin confortare with the meaning ‘to strengthen’.
- 16.
See Morris (1969: 266). Watkins (1969: 1509 & 1513) considers the possibility of the Latin fortis deriving from either *bhergh- ‘high’ with derivatives referring to hills and hill-forts, or *dher-, extended form *dhergh-, with the meaning ‘to hold firmly, support’ and such other cognate derivatives as ‘firmament’, ‘farm’, ‘affirm’ and ‘dharma’. See further, Pokorny (1959: 140 & 252f) who supports the *bhergh-/bhereĝh- etymology.
- 17.
Whitney’s article, “Show your Independence on the 4th; Burn a Flag,” was forwarded to me on the 6th of July 2005 by a Canadian friend. Living in Washington state, Whitney can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com. Indirectly alluding to Nietzsche, he cites Albert Einstein as saying, “The flag is proof than man is still a herd animal.”
- 18.
As a personification, the deity that perhaps most encapsulates plain comfort per se is the Roman abstraction of Felicitas. [For Felicitas, according to the Fasti Antiates Ministrorum, a Capitoline temple to the goddess was founded on the Kalends of July (York 1986: 137). The reconstruction of a fragment from the Fasti Antiates Maiores suggests the temple might have been dedicated to ‘Juno in Felicitas’. Other calendars mention a temple to Felicitas being consecrated on 12 August (ibid. p. 150).] If, however, we become concerned with the deification of the essence of comfort, namely, strength or force, the appropriate deity is the Greco-Roman Heracles/Hercules. Hercules typifies a pagan route to deification par excellence. As a representation of the human individual with his various sins of excess (e.g., lust, gluttony, short-temper, etc.), it is through his sheer strength and perseverance that the profoundly human Heracles/Hercules attains apotheosis and a place among the gods. As an expression of comfort, Hercules conveys the very complexity that underlies the concept. [Temples to Hercules receive dedication dates of 12 August (York 1986: 150) as well as the Ides of August (ibid. pp 35, 154). Sulla dedicated a temple to Hercules on 4 June (York 1986: 255). The Roman Hercules’ major shrine was the ara maxima in the Forum Boarium. See further Hercules’ association with the winter solstice (ibid. 198).]
- 19.
Another Greco-Roman figure who achieves apotheosis besides Heracles/Hercules is the divine physician Asclepius/Aesculapius. Son of Apollo, he is slain by Zeus for transgressing the boundaries between mortal and immortal when he restores the deceased to life. However, his own capabilities as healer are such that his father is able to persuade Zeus to turn his son into the god of medicine. Among the Greeks, the direct personification of health per se is Asclepius’ daughter, Hygeia. The Epidaurian Aesculapius was established in Rome in 239 bce as a result of the Sibylline oracle. According to the Fasti Antiates Maiores and Fasti Praenestini, the temple of Aesculapius was founded 2 years later on the Tiber island (in insula Tiberina). See York (1986: 203, 257).
- 20.
Note Kris Dierickx in Burggraeve et al. (2003: 180): “By the beginning of the twenty-first century, health has become one of humanity’s highest priorities. Sociological research has shown that happiness turns out to be primarily a result of good health.” Nevertheless, Dierickx distinguishes health as virtue from health as a value and norm (pp. 182f).
- 21.
Our word for health derives from an Indo-European root, *kailo-, signifying ‘whole, uninjured, of good omen’. Beside ‘health’, cognate terms that derive from the same radical stem include ‘whole’, ‘hale’, ‘wholesome’, ‘heal’, ‘holy’ and ‘hallow’: Watkins (1969: 1520).
- 22.
Salus derives from the root *sol- ‘whole’ that has also given rise to Greek holos ‘whole’, Latin sollus ‘whole, entire, unbroken’, sollemnis ‘celebrated at fixed dates, established, religious, solemn’ and salvus ‘whole, safe, healthy, uninjured’, and English solid: Watkins (1992: 2125); Pokorny (1959: 979). The Romans personified health as the goddess Salus: York (1986: 149, 251). Salus, originally a personification of prosperity in general, became identified with the Greek Hygeia. She is the equivalent of the Sabine goddess Strenia, patroness of the new year wishes for prosperity and happiness.
- 23.
Please note that I am not employing worship simply in the sense of religious devotion and especially not in the sense of beseeching the gods for favors. While this last might be considered by some as what religions are about, it is at best only what some religions are about. Worship for many denotes the formal expression of reverence, and while I acknowledge ritual as embodying its ceremonial aspect, I conceive worship informally as the pursuits of pleasure, productivity and generosity. Honor or honoring is the underlying distinction of all worship – both formal and informal. Consequently, one may apprehend pleasure as honoring the gift of life, production as honoring the earth process itself, and generosity as honoring the other.
- 24.
For the Romans, honor and virtue go together as the proverbial horse and carriage. As deities, Honos and Virtus were invariably linked and received a temple dedicated on 17 July: York (1986: 142f). Other temples or shrines were dedicated to the pair on the 12th of August (150). Fowler (1971: 446) lists Honos and Virtus among the public virtues of Rome – along with Fides, Pax and Pudor. He attributes the temple to Honos as the consequence of either the battle of Clastidium or the taking of Syracuse. As we have already seen, Virtus is originally the personification of valor and manly strength, while Honos is one of those rare concepts that simply appears without the benefit of etymological pedigree or possibility of analysis. With Virtus understood as a goddess and Honos as a god – in fact, a rare masculine personification among the more usual register of female abstractions, we have a female-male coupling that echoes the festival reflections for the month of July as a whole. July, like every month, comprises the Kalends sacred to Juno and the Ides sacred to Jupiter, but there are also the Poplifugia (5 July to Jupiter) and the Nonae Caprotina (7 July to Juno of the wild fig tree) and the double Lucaria (19 and 21 July) conjecturally sacred to Jupiter and Juno. The month concludes with the Neptunalia (23 July to the god Neptunus) and the Furrinalia (25 July to the goddess Furrina). See York (1986 passim). Consequently, we are permitted to conclude that, for the Romans at least, honor and virtue are understood as male-female equivalents.
- 25.
The question was phrased as follows: “I am working on a chapter about virtue and honour. Richard has been asking for examples of honourable people. So if you can, could you name for me some people you might classify as virtuous and/or honourable however you conceive this quality to be? You need not put much thought into this; just list those who first pop into your thoughts. Please no more than ten per person. One is sufficient as well. I would appreciate your input. It would help me a lot.”
- 26.
One person named instead such colleagues familiar to her as Brian Bocking, Peggy Morgan and Robert Samuel. Another friend named her niece who is bravely battling cancer and has a family of three young children to raise.
- 27.
Don Hill, a friend living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and who has been recognized by the CDC in Atlanta as one of the longest HIV/Aids survivors, considered only himself since his experience has led him to trust no one: “I trust no one I meet now, see and hear the hurt being done each other due to gay self hate. Because I refuse to play the sick game feel disassociated from them. Outside of the gay (ha ha) scene I trust and beleive [sic.] no one either -self centered greed and corruption everywhere which leads to hurtful actions which leads to hate.” (personal communication 30.7.5).
- 28.
Personal communication (31.7.5). Prof. Griffin also mentions to me that the theologian Paul Tillich kept a large collection of pornography. She concludes that a virtuous or honorable person is one (1) who does her or his utmost to live in accordance with her or his principles, (2) who keeps her or his word to the extent that this is humanly possible, and (3) whose principles include wanting for others the greatest possible good without defining it for them. Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Thorley elucidates: “One certainly thinks of people like Mandela, or Gandhi, but both earlier in their careers, before the idealisation began, were real shits” (personal communication 1.8.5).
- 29.
Penny Jarvis says, “Overtly pious people like Ruskin and Mother Teresa are distinctly dodgy” (personal communication 1.8.5). However, Kirstine Munk finds Mother Teresa “too boring (forgive me!) in the sense that she is too perfect” (personal communication 10.8.5).
- 30.
William Bloom (Holistic Partnerships) names David Spangler, Thich Nhat Hahn, Cicely Saunders and Dorothy Maclean. Other names I received include the Buddha, Ma Jaya Bhagavati (Kashi Ashram), Oscar Schindler, the family that helped the family of Anne Frank, all those who had the courage to hide refugees from the Nazis, Doctors Without Borders (Medicins Sans Frontiers), Horatio Nelson, Albert Schweitzer, Florence Nightengale, Adam Smith, David Hume, Basil Hume, Molly Ivins, Catholic Social Activist Dorothy Day, John Peel, David Attenborough, Des Kennedy (former Jesuit priest, now Gestalt therapist), novelist/journalist Jeannette Winterson, law professor Anita Hill, Berkeley lawyer Henry Elson, Scott Ritter, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (Austro-Hungarian physician), Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Subcommandante Marcos (of the Chiapas Indian struggle with the Mexican government), Mohammed Ali, Archbishop Tutu, Walter Cronkite, Kenyan Pulitzer Prize winner Wangari Maathai, Indian ecofeminist Vandana Shiva, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, Marlene Dietrich, Starhawk and Aleister Crowley. Maureen Sharma (Mullaly International Inc.) includes Bill Gates in her list for both his local and global generosity. Dr. Kenneth Jay Wilson gives among the names he furnishes those of Thomas Moore, Susan B. Anthony, Colonel Claus von Staffenberg, holocaust survivor Elie Wiessel and Afghan resistance fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud (communication 30.7.5). Friends Stephan Michaud and Koen Peters in The Netherlands pass on Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama for Queen Beatrix, her late husband Claus Von Amsberg, choreographer Hans van Maanen, and Maarten Toonder (from the ‘Bommel Strip’) (communication 31.7.5). Elisabeth Arweck (Journal of Contemporary Religion) was unable to name a person living or dead and suggested instead the fictional hero from Robert Goddard’s novel Past Caring. Other fictional examples that I received were some of the characters in Jane Austen’s novels (Irene Earis) and, suggested by Rosalind Newton, Charles Darnay (Tale of Two Cities), the Jimmy Stewart character in It’s a Wonderful Life, and the President in Dave. Politicians that were suggested include the late Senator Barbara Jordan (Texas), Senator Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island), Senator Robert Byrd, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adelai Stevenson, Tony Benn, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell (“before Bush ruined him”). The following Catholic saints were also put forth: Francis of Assisi, Martin, Agnes of Rome, Vincent de Paul and Santiago Hernandez Doa Slieva. Anne Hecate Gould, mother of Trinlay Tulku Rinpoche, mentioned “All the Karmapas and the Tibetan Saints … Everyone else’s Saints …” along with Alfred Einstein, Joseph Campbell, Buckminster Fuller, Gandhi, Lao Tzu, Martin Luther King Jr. and Herodotus (“yet a bit of a gossip”) (personal communication 2.8.5). And finally, among the classicists, I received the names of Socrates, Diogenes, Solon, Herodotus and Cicero.
- 31.
Cinema and television editor Toni Morgan called this being engagé with the world: “I think it’s a quality that only applies to a person who is active in this very screwed up world we live in which is why I think I didn’t include Gandhi and others like him” (personal communication 30.7.5).
- 32.
In this connection, singer Mary Alterator (6.8.5) has the following train of thought in response to my question: “I have been thinking about it and in the fame game world we drown ourselves in I think it is really hard to move [beyond] virtual honour cause I assume for your list you need only think about people we read and write about. Not close and personal friends, who for the most part I would volunteer all their names. I hereby suggest Bob Geldorf. He really wants change and the attempt he is making to raise awareness and the voice that he uses to try and the will to really make a difference is more than honorable in this ravaged and sad time of man and woman kind we find ourselves distractedly living amongst.”
- 33.
As Dr. Anthony Thorley expresses this subjectivity, “honour and virtue depend on your position or perspective of the person, whole or part, then or now” (personal communication 1.8.5).
- 34.
Cicero. 45 bce: passim.
- 35.
Cicero, On Duties 2.8.31 (Grant 1971: 136).
- 36.
Cicero, Laelius: On Friendship 21.81 (Grant 1971: 217).
- 37.
For instance, Celia Gunn (31.7.5): “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know how anyone can deem any public icon, such as Gandhi, as virtuous or honourable, without the personal knowing.” Likewise, Rowan Fairgrove (2.8.5) claims: “I still don’t have enough personal information to speak about ‘world leaders’ but I could believe that the Dalai Lama is virtuous and honourable. Amongst politicians I could say I think Dennis Kucinich is virtuous and honourable. But it is hard to know for sure without personal experience.” She wishes in general to nominate “many amongst family, friends, covenmates and trad-mates” but then continues: “Then the lives of the people I intersect with in the interfaith movement intruded and I realized that I know many virtuous and honourable people.” In this important area, Fairgrove proceeds to name “The Rev. Canon Charles Gibbs who is the Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative. Deborah Moldow of the World Peace Prayer Society. Dr. Dave Randle of Utah URI and Global Healing. Dr. Yehuda Stolov of the Interfaith Encounter Association in Jeruselem. Rev. Dr. Bill Rankin of the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance. Elana Rozenman of the Women’s Interfaith Encounter CC in Jerusalem. Yoland Trevino of the Indigenous MCC who recently became chair of the URI Global Council. Helen Spector of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Elder Don Frew, National Interfaith Representative of Covenant of the Goddess and emeritus member of the URI Global Council.”
- 38.
Drama teacher and author, Phoebe Wray, writes to me on 31.7.5 the following: “If by ‘honorable’ you mean people who seem to strive for honesty in their public utterances and back that up with the way they live their lives, then I would add Maya Angelou. … [Intregrity] must be a part of the label, too, and the above-mentioned [Mandela, Tutu, Walter Cronkite] have that. If we’re speaking of dead people, I nominate the early twentieth century actress Minnie Maddern Fiske. I am defeated trying to find a Virtuous Person. I looked up ‘virtue’ in my Oxford American Dictionary and discover it means ‘Behavior showing high moral standards.’ I thought of two [people] who fit BOTH categories. One is our mutual acquaintance Alice O Howell, the other is my dear friend and surrogate son Harry Hart-Browne who lives on a hillside in Southern California.” This distinction between virtue and honor was expressed by others as well. For instance, Toni Morgan believed that “for me, honour is the quality I admire the most. I also think it’s innate. I know people who have no interest in being honorable and, consequently, could never be even if they decided to change. I think if you are honorable you are, by definition, virtuous. I’m not crazy about the ‘v’ word” (30.7.5). She added later: “Virtue or being virtuous … oddly enough, and probably as a consequence of the world we live in, has a rather negative connotation for me. As I said, if you are honorable you are by definition virtuous. But if you are simply virtuous you are probably just a bit self-righteous and smug. This is simply semantics … the world changes and the definitions of words begin to change as well” (31.7.5).
- 39.
Mika Lassander (University of Finland, Open University) makes the following observations: “But in [people like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Ken Saro-Wiwa] virtue and honour are linked with political activism and publicity. Could this lead to confusion in the measure of virtue and honour? Would Ken Saro-Wiwa be on the list had he been known only for his poems? Is honour equal to social activism/idealism? Is virtue equal to following uncompromisingly those (social/political) ideals? I think that it is difficult to classify any widely recognized people as honourable and/or virtuous because in order to be recognized they must be known for something i.e. political/religious/social activism – or are there people who are REALLY recognized just for their virtue/honour? The cynic in me says that [is] not likely.” (personal communication 1.8.5).
- 40.
In his reply to my question, writer Tom Badyna prefaces his response with his belief that “the most honorable among us, like the greatest forgers, are necessarily unknown” (personal communication 31.7.5).
- 41.
In Mortimer Adler’s words (1985: 135), happiness is part of the quest “to discharge our moral obligation to seek whatever is really good for us and nothing else unless it is something, such as an innocuous apparent good, that does not interfere with our obtaining all the real goods we need … life, liberty, … the protection of health, a sufficient measure of wealth, and other real goods that individuals cannot obtain solely by their own efforts.”
- 42.
In nominating her father, Phyllis Meiners (Meinerworks Consulting & Publications) argues that “at the ripe age of 90 [he] is kind and gentle to his family, looking after their cares and woes, patient in understanding their personal difficulties, and eager to temper hostilities which remain among them” (Personal communication 30.7.5). In this estimation, we see kindness, temperance and understanding as recognizable facets of honor. Toni Morgan (loc. cit.) continued on the quality of being engagé: “So what do I mean when I call a person honorable … I need to think more about this. But for now … a belief that man’s inhumanity to man is wrong and a tremendous desire to right that wrong if even on a small level (like Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity) … a recognition of the tremendous wealth that exists in the world and a desire to at least share it in a more equitable manner. A respect for the earth itself and consequently the knowledge that that wealth came from the earth and the intelligence of man … I would say that an honorable man would be the man that actually feels a physical pain from seeing others suffer. And not to alleviate his own pain but to alleviate that of others will use his own intelligence and strength in spite of the consequences to himself … to right wrong. As he sees it. An honorable man is not a perfect man. Find me one of those if you can. He has to be, as I said, completely engaged with this world. Mistakes will be made. They will be recognized by him but he will continue. Can’t help it.”
- 43.
This notion is echoed by Kirstine Munk (loc. cit.). While I do not agree with her assessment that Mother Teresa was “too perfect,” she elaborates: “I think that perhaps a person can be too virtuous and honorable. A flawless person is somehow out from the category ‘virtuous human beings’, because as a human being it is difficult to relate to them properly. But Tutu always shares his mistakes with us and besides he is said to be a terrible driver. Blixen sold her soul to the devil and had syphilis and [financial] troubles. They are not perfect. They are virtuous to us *because* of their humanness as much as because they enact particular human ideals.”
- 44.
However, for Shirley Eastham, the humanness of the honorable person mitigates their position and places them more into an ‘heroic’ category. She puts this as follows: “Did you want the qualities that make them virtuous and honourable in my mind, or is the list enough? There are more who mostly were v and h [virtuous and honorable] but had some sticky life situations that created compromises they struggled with. The reality of those compromises sort of take[s] them out of the v and h category but maybe put[s] them in a ‘heroic’ category. It is also possible I just don’t know enough about everyone. I am presuming you mean people I know, not saints, martyrs, leaders, etc.” She nominated her sister Joan, her father, her aunt Molly and my mother, Myrth Brooks York.
- 45.
Considering Lord Nelson, Anthony Thorley (loc. cit.) makes the following comments: “I’ve been reading a lot lately about Horatio Nelson (as its nearly 200 years since Trafalgar) and he is interesting because as a professional sailor (aged 12–47 in the Royal navy) he was exemplary, and acknowledged by even his post-Trafalgar enemies as being peerless as an ideal sailor, leader, tactician and hero. His concern for his captains, and the ordinary seaman, his concern with fairness and justice and his very real kindness, generosity and compassion both in and out of battle make him a real candidate for a man of honour and virtue – but only as a Vice Admiral.
“As a man in his private life he was publicly dishonourable to his wife (whom he left abandoned in Bath) and unvirtuous as he publicly lived with Lady Emma Hamilton and was the public father of her their child, Horatia. So England was torn between their virtuous and honorable Admiral of their Fleet, the man who gave his life at Trafalgar and ensured 100 years of naval dominance and the foreign trade certainty that ensured the British Empire, and the scandalous and most public dishonour of an affair and a bastard daughter.”
- 46.
Astrologer and cineaste Darrelyn Gunzberg echoes some of my thoughts here. In considering the Dalai Lama, she says: “Honourable people… well, the Dalai Lama springs to mind. He is true to himself and his beliefs and in so doing, holds to his honour in the sense of adherence to what is right. So Nelson Mandela falls into this category, also. In doing what they believe is right and true – without impinging upon the rights of others – these people also gain our respect. This is different, of course, from a suicide bomber who is also doing what they think is right and true but in so doing, destroys the lives of others to achieve it. Olympic champions gain honour through winning a race but it is the actions they take afterwards which truly make them honourable. So maybe Kelly Holmes fits this category – using one’s place to help others in need. Bob Geldorf also fits this. Taking yourself out of the picture enough so that ego does not intervene but allowing your name and rank to carry you along a pathway which alleviates the distress of others. Jamie Oliver probably fit this also with his ‘School Dinners’ TV programme which changed government policy” (personal communication 2.8.5).
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Irene Earis (University of Lampeter) sifted her thoughts accordingly: “What a curiously difficult question you’ve asked about virtue and honour. At first I thought it would be easy to find examples, but I have come up with only one in the end after a process of elimination according to my own strict rules. I decided that honourable behaviour involved acting by the standards of inner truth even when it would be simpler or at least quite possible to behave with more material self-interest.
“The person who then sprang to mind was Krishnamurti who … was groomed by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater in the Theosophical Society to be a messiah or World Teacher but then in 1929 severed his ties with the organisations they had set up for him. It would have been much easier for him to accept the role they had prepared, but instead he said he did not want followers and that ‘Truth is a pathless land’ and that all religions and spiritual paths just created new cages. As far as I know he kept to this for the rest of his life. One might argue, of course, that his own feelings of being trapped into a false position formed the basis of his later philosophy of freedom, but nevertheless a dishonourable person might simply have continued in the role he had been given and gone on enjoying the adulation, fame and material comfort presented to him” (personal communication 2.8.5).
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Caroline Robertson, Westbury Music, defines an honorable person as “someone who follows a plan, like a destiny, resolutely through the years; someone with magnanimity and yet humility” (personal communication 3.8.5). Homeopath and multi-tasker Caroline Pike considers “People who work tirelessly without ego or greed” to be those who are honorable (personal communication 3.8.5). The examples supplied are: Pattie Smith, Nelson Mandela, David Loxley (companion of the druid order), homoeopath Janice Micallef and Susie Shearer. Romuvan elder Jonas Trinkunas (personal communication 5.8.5) nominated two illustrious Lithuanians, namely, Grand Duke Gediminas (1275–1341) and the philosopher Vydunas (1868–1953). The former established the tradition of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius as a universal city in which all religions have equal rights. He was a magnificent example of tolerance and enlightenment – declaring that “Pagans, Catholics and Orthodox Christians worship essentially the same divinity, albeit in different forms.” Although Gediminas guaranteed religious freedom to all his subjects, he tenaciously defended Lithuania against the Christian crusaders who sought to convert his nation by force. Trinkunas added, “His example showed that paganism could be a tolerant religious system,” while Vydunas, in his turn, declared morality to be the highest virtue in a culture – seeing Baltic culture in particular as belonging to a “universal ethics and morality.”
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Nevertheless, I wish to include mention of the nominees suggested off the top of her head by contemporary pagan leader Selena Fox (Circle Sanctuary), namely, Joe Raymond (Colorado) of the Guardians of the Sacred Circle, Deborah Ann Light (New York) of the Covenant of the Goddess and the Crones Cradle Conserve (Florida) and Kerr Cuhulain of Canada. The last, according to Fox, “includes Honor as part of the code for the Officers of Avalon, an international organization of Pagan police officers and those involved in emergency services” (personal communication 2.8.5). Among Fox’s suggestion, I know personally only Deborah Ann Light but can vouchsafe in this case her sterling character in terms of wisdom, courage, perspective, temperance, humility, dedication, perseverance, vitality, generosity and overall dignity. Perhaps from this example alone we have as fine an example of a person of honor as is possible. The Neo-pagan ethos consists of one sole principle that frequently goes by the name of the Wiccan Rede, namely, ‘An ye harm none, do what ye will’. While the ostensible thrust of this ‘credo’ is the libertarianism of freedom, it is couched in the same fundamental respect for others that we can discern behind most people’s understanding of honor. I suspect that Ms. Light has cut few corners in her swathe through life – appreciating all to the kind of fullness that would do any pagan proud, but at the same time – perhaps even as the underlying tenor of her joie de vivre, she has pursued all with intelligence, sensitivity and respect that we can only understand as honor.
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While mentioned also to me by parapsycologist, Dr. Serena Roney-Dougal, as well as Professor Wendy Griffin, I am indebted for the information that follows to Dr. Bron Taylor (University of Florida, Gainesville) who forwarded to me a 4.8.5 article by Samwel Rambaya and Makena Memeu on Maathai from the The Standard of Nairobi, Kenya. Ranked in 2005 by Forbes magazine as number 68 among the world’s 100 most powerful women, Maathai had become the Kenyan Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources as well as Africa’s first woman Nobel laureate. Before this, however, and as the person who launched the tree-planting movement in Kenya, she had been beaten and imprisoned. Maathai was not pagan but a practicing Catholic, though in a personal communication (10.3.14), Taylor informs me that “she came to hold her Christianity more at arms length and was much or more a pagan than a Christian by the time she died.” Nevertheless, she is a fine example of the dedication and courage that often characterizes a person of honor. According to Beliefnet, an American religious publication, she proposed that Easter Monday be dedicated to tree planting as part of the celebration of Christ’s conquest of death. Maathai said, “If we could make that Monday a day of regeneration, revival, of being reborn, of finding salvation by restoring the Earth, it would be a great celebration of Christ’s resurrection.” She added, “I always say somebody had to go into the forest, cut a tree, and chop it up for Jesus to be crucified. What a celebration of his conquering [death] it would be if we were to plant trees on Easter Monday thanks giving.”
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Upon further inquiry on my part, I received the following elucidation from Badyna on 13.8.5: “Assuming that the assassination itself does not exclude the possibility of honor or virtue, I was so taken with G. Bresci’s actions because he acted with the real possibility, even likelihood, that not only would no one ever know that he had done the grand deed, but that the last taste of him had by his friends and family would be one of acrimony and bitterness. Indeed, leaving behind the sore feelings was part of the very honorableness of his actions – so as to incriminate none of them. He had to consider the possibility that he would fail, that the king’s guards would toss him nameless into a dungeon. As it was, well, you know… It was, to me, an act of honor untainted by its own glory.”
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Personal communication 31.7.5.
- 53.
Badyna includes Charles Darwin “not only for the famous incident with the letter from Alfred Wallace, but also, again, for his character in general” – pointing out that Robert Wright used Darwin’s life as the model for his The Moral Animal. Others mentioned by Badyna are the baseball player and fighter pilot Ted Williams who once “asked for a pay cut after a season not up to his own standards, … Joe Hill and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn… Maybe Eugene Debs.” Then, too, there is Lafcadio Hearn (an innate sense of honor) and George Jackson, one of the Soledad brothers (a rigorous sense of honor).
- 54.
For instance, Albert Hoffman, the Swiss discoverer of lysergic acid-25, is loved by the psychonautic community less for the LSD product as he is for his honesty and integrity. I had the great privilege to tell him this once during a 1998 conference in Amsterdam.
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York, M. (2016). The Pagan Quadrivium . In: Pagan Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18923-9_9
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