Jealousy is a strange transformer of character. –Sherlock Holmes (aka A.C. Doyle)
Still… Today most of us share an awareness that profound changes are taking place in our society, in our world, and that children reflect, promote, and bear the intended and unintended consequences of these changes. Given this, most of us also agree that ‘Character Matters’ (think: Moral Lives).
The collective wisdom of the ages attempts to teach us that Character Matters a great deal. In both ‘Classical’ and ‘Scriptural’ Cultures – the civilizations that have been, and continue to be, so deeply formative of our own Culture – folks understood that there is a direct association between the moral character of the person and the moral character of the Culture/Society. Cultures/Societies are simply individuals and relationships writ large. Our moral character is essential to decency, order, justice, mercy, compassion, and caring within public life. Where moral character became corrupted so did the Culture/Society.
Moral Character AND Social Welfare were consequential in both biblical and classical civilizations – the two civilizations that are the tap roots of our own Culture/Society. The wisdom writer of Proverbs (29:2) reminds us: ‘When the righteous are in power, the people rejoice, but they groan when the wicked hold office.’
The ancient Greek philosophers were also clear: There is a direct connection between individual moral character and our collective well-being. For example: In the Republic Plato held up moral character as the defining qualification of the ruling class. This was for a simple reason: Rulers rooted in and nurtured by a moral character were ‘most likely to devote their lives to doing what they judged to be in the interest of the community.’ Social dis-integration and social dis-ease was inevitable if rulers failed in the development and in the sustaining of their moral character.
Plato noted – and reminds us even today – that ‘the community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of the laws and state, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.’
This powerful scriptural-philosophic legacy impacted and framed the Enlightenment Intellectuals. This powerful triad directly impacted our Nation’s Founders and hence our Nation. One of the Enlightenment’s impactful voices was that of the French philosopher, Montesquieu. Montesquieu reiterated the case to us when he observed that ‘the corruption of each government almost always begins with that of its principles.’ Nowhere is this truer than in a democratic regime.
The essential ingredient for a democracy, Montesquieu noted, is virtue. Montesquieu noted (and reminds us today) that: ‘When virtue ceases, ambition enters those hearts that can admit it and avarice enters them all.’
Consider our American Revolutionary Founders…
Is there no virtue among us? –James Madison
