Virtue is morality extended beyond a moment, decontextualized, and systematically and practically applied to one’s life until the moment of moral decision is erased by an instictive and reflexive moral action, an act of moral behavior performed without forethought or afterthought. Virtue is moral behavior without choice; morality so ingrained as to become nearly cellular and inescapable. Or so I am told.
Thus, it seems, virtue is the end result of the ardous labor of moral choice reduction. Like an especially flavorful sauce, the choice of morality is slowly simmered out of the equation until only the heavy essence of moral behavior remains. Without the burden of choice, virtuous behaviors arise from a deeply ingrained internal space within a person, a part which believes so strongly in the moral righteousness of his or her behavior that that behavior is performed without thought or consideration of other options. The vituous doesn’t ask, “What is the right thing to do here?” The virtuous simply does the right thing immediately and without hesitation, secure in the knowledge that there simply was not the option of behaving any other way. Or so I am to understand.
This being the case, woe is the virtous. May I never be burdened with virtue (a label I am unlikely to be saddled with in any case.). A life lived under the unbearable yoke of knowing without question seems a tyrrannical and oppressed life. In order to be virtous, a moral system would need to be self established, a system by which the morality of any given situation can be assessed and the right decisions made. We all must have these systems, for without them the determination of the correct course of action would be unknowable to us. In any situation where a moral decision is necessary, the options must each be run through the system, the options internally ranked on the scale of moral rightousness, and the action performed. In any of these situations, failing to act morally is either a failure of the moral system, or a failure to behave in keeping with the moral standards set by the system. In any case, the presentation of options to the moral systems excludes that person from having behaved virtously, as the virtous is beyond the need of moral systems and decision-making. The virtous has so ingrained the moral system that the correct course of action is no more chosen than we choose to obey the laws of physics, or succumb to gravity.
And herein lies the crux of the problem. Virtue removes choice, it puts a period at the end of the moral sentence and draws irrevocable conclusions about right and wrong. Whenever conclusions are drawn, the concluder then stops questioing, stops thinking if maybe there isn’t a better system, a more just system. The virtous cannot ask questions of his or her moral system any longer, for it has been so long assumed infallible that moral decisions are pure muscle memory. How can such a thing not be foolish, even dangrous to pursue? Liken, for a moment, making firm and irrevocable decisions about right and wrong to building the foundation of a home out of toothpicks. These toothpicks mimic the individual pieces of our belief system, thousands of toothpicks each representing an experience or decision that led to a conclusion that ultimately leads to a dozen more. While the heaped up bundle of thousands of toothpicks may look sturdy, may even hold up the house and feel firm and unyielding, these toothpicks are hardly the sturdy beams we assume them to be. Upon closer examination, it is obvious that the foundation of our home is frail, tiny, insignificant. The removal of a single strand of wood can upset the delicate balance of so many more, and the sturdy foundation of our beliefs can come crashing down. If, however, we realize early on that our beliefs are not truths, but guesses and approximations, we are less likely to so heavily rely on any one of them, but instead will have fashioned our home in such a way that it may exist independent of any one of these miniscule building blocks. Virtue, is a house built on toothpicks, inflexible and therefore dangerously unsteady.
