Just as we don't speak much about civic duty today, we don't talk a lot about virtue in today's culture. Our loss of both concepts is unfortunate. Developing a sense of civic duty and personal virtue were considered essential aspects of cultivating one's character during the Age of Enlightenment. A well developed sense of the duty and responsibilities one has to society, the community, and the groups with whom you are a member assured that citizens helped their communities grow and prosper. Just look at all the public work Franklin undertook as part of his civic duty, everything from establishing the first circulation library in Philadelphia, to starting a fire house, to developing a stove, to acting as an diplomat, to starting the abolitionist society...the list goes on longer than I have here, and I don't want to get away from my main point. Those in the Age of Enlightenment saw "giving back" and "doing one's duty" as essential aspects of living the good life. After all, if everyone doesn't invest their time, energy, and thought ("life, liberty, and sacred honor") in helping their communities and governments thrive, then as Franklin said in the "Speech to the Constitutional Convention," which you read last week, we get the despotic government we deserve.
However, an essential component to developing a sense of one's civic duty and responsibilities is developing one's own character and, hence, ability to serve. Without taking the time to improve your self, then you aren't and can't be in a position to "give back." This is there the concept of virtue comes in. Virtue is the opposite of vice. Virtue is a quality of character or ability which promotes your own well-being and that of others. Being hard working is a good example of a virtue. Western thought has traditionally put the most value on the so-called Cardinal Virtues--temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice. However, as Franklin's list in the Autobiography and Jefferson's list of moral virtues in his letter to Peter Carr demonstrate, people differ on the virtues they value. For a more comprehensive list of virtues, visit the wikipedia article on virtues.
Where those of the Age of Enlightenment, like Franklin and Jefferson, differed from those who came before was in the belief that we all started off as "blank slates," and our moral character--defined by a combination of our sense of civic duty and personal virtues--was a product of our education. They based this thinking on the work of the philosopher John Locke, especially his book, "Essay Concerning Human Understanding." Locke's notion that we are in control of our own characters and can choose to build and exercise (or destroy) and aspect of our character thought education and the experiences we choose to repeat was revolutionary , and it has become the basis of modern education. Aristotle said that one's character is built up from that which we repeated choose to do, but the Enlightenment took Aristotle one further, and they argued that we had no character before we began to experience and that God gave man reason so s/he can choose to cultivate the character of one's choice. Self-help was born, and we're still trying to figure out the methods which work and which don't for acquiring virtue, avoiding vice, and--hence--living the good life.
Over the next several weeks, I want you to experience self-help from the perspective of our founders and the Age of Enlightenment. This week, I want you to begin by constructing a list of between ten and fifteen virtues which you believe would best promote your own well-being and that of society. For each virtue, I want you--like Franklin--to write a precept or short, clear definition of what each virtue means to you. You might get some help on this by looking at the list of virtues written by Franklin and following the links to the wikipedia articles on individual virtues found in the general wikipedia article. You might also take a look a list called the "Habits of Mind." Developed by Author Costa, these "Habits of Mind" can be thought of as the necessary virtues of those who want to become critical and creative thinkers. Indeed, many of the learning outcomes for this course were developed out of Costa's Habits of Mind.
Once you have developed your "Short List of the Virtues Necessary for Well-Being and Living the Good Life," choose the one on which you need the most help to fully develop. In your blog entry for this week, explain what it as about this virtue and your relationship to it which made it your choice on which to work.
In making your choice, remember: Enlightenment thinkers believed you could actively form your own character. Religion might help in this quest, but it wasn't considered a necessity. For many in the Enlightenment, like Franklin, your could develop your own character by cultivating personal virtue, but only by focusing your faculties of attention, reason, and will on developing individual virtues. This was a fairly radical idea, though it had much in common with the classical Greek and Roman thought on which it was built. It was very different from the Calvinist belief of the Puritans that your character was a function of God's will, not your own, and if you were a good person or not was a function of God having decided you were good or not. According to Calvinist thought, if God didn't save you, you lived your life totally depraved, and society and authority in the form of the church and civil law had a responsibility to control our natural tendency toward sin and dissipation.
Figuring out Rational Methods to cultivate one's character was a very, very Enlightened way of thinking about the self. It's one reason that diaries, journals, and autobiographies as genres developed and became so popular in the age of Enlightenment, that is, because it was at this point in our history that our own memories, insights and observations about the world, and our ability to create both personal and social progress came to be valued. This is where we came to believe in "Self-Help." Indeed, just as our founders applied the belief that Social Contract based on self-evident facts, free minds, evidence, and reasoned debate could create a better society in which to live, they also believed that Reason and Rational, self-control of one's behavior and experiences could produce a better self. Before moving on, note how different Enlightenment ideas about personal development is from Romantic ideas of a Self which is a produce of personal genius, sensibility, passion, and cultivated taste
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