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<\/a><\/p>\nA \u201cvalue\u201d is something that someone treasures or considers to be important.\u00a0 \u201cVirtue\u201d comes from a word meaning strength or power.<\/p>\n
A moral value<\/em>\u00a0refers to an ethical principle that we especially desire or appreciate.\u00a0 A moral virtue\u00a0<\/em>refers to the strength of character or the power to follow an ethical principle.<\/p>\n There are also other kinds of virtue<\/a>, including for intellectual attainments <\/a>and for sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Louis Markos, a humanities professor at Houston Baptist University, has published a new book entitled\u00a0The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes<\/a> [paid link].\u00a0 T<\/em><\/span>he Federalist<\/em> has printed an excerpt with the title\u00a0\u00a0How to Stop Schools from Replacing True Virtue with Leftist Virtue Signaling.<\/a><\/p>\n Markos says that he used to believe that the problem in American education is that schools have stopped teaching virtue.\u00a0 But he has come to realize that that schools are<\/em> teaching moral principles; namely, what he calls the \u201cfive pseudo-virtues\u201d of\u00a0tolerance, inclusivism, egalitarianism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism.<\/p>\n These are not necessarily bad in themselves, but they are actually not so much virtues as values.\u00a0 \u201cThese five virtues \u2014 which I will henceforth call values since they are man-made and culture-bound rather than eternal and cross-cultural \u2014 have never stood at the center of morality.\u201d<\/p>\n Markos, who has also written on this subject in his book\u00a0On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis<\/span><\/a>, contrasts these relatively passive and subjective values with the Seven Virtues of classical and Christian thought:\u00a0 \u201cThese seven are composed of the four classical (or cardinal) virtues of courage (fortitude), self-control (temperance), wisdom (prudence), and justice, and the three Christian (or theological) virtues of faith, hope, and love (charity).\u201d<\/p>\n I would add that the \u201ccardinal virtues\u201d\u2013also called the natural virtues\u2013were thought by Christian thinkers to be within the capacity of all human beings, including the pagans, who exalted them highly.\u00a0 Though we speak of them as moral principles themselves, they are also what is required to obey the moral principles, such as we have in the Ten Commandments.\u00a0 Cultivating the virtue of self-control can help us refrain from committing adultery, giving vent to our anger by killing, and surrendering to our passion for our neighbor\u2019s property by stealing.\u00a0 A sense of justice can help us to honor our parents and to not commit false witness.\u00a0 Courage enables us to defy peer pressure and physical dangers to do what is right.\u00a0 Thus, the virtues have to do not with meriting salvation but with learning the external First Use of the Law in education and character formation.<\/p>\n The \u201ctheological virtues\u201d\u2013also called the spiritual virtues\u2013cannot be found among the pagans but are intrinsically Christian:\u00a0 faith, hope, and love.\u00a0 (You will hardly find them in pagan authors.)\u00a0 They are virtues on a profound level because they actually empower us to follow, at least to some degree, God\u2019s commands.\u00a0 Faith bears fruit in good works.\u00a0 Love motivates us not to kill, steal, or otherwise harm our neighbors, but rather to help them.\u00a0 The spiritual virtues grow out of the Gospel.<\/p>\n We would do well to recover this vocabulary and these concepts.\u00a0 Otherwise, we will just engage in controversy over subjective \u201cvalues\u201d that no one can resolve and never manage to achieve actual moral education, either in ourselves or in our children.<\/p>\n The Natural Virtues\u2013courage, self-control, wisdom, and justice\u2013are not religious, as such, though religion supports them.\u00a0 These\u00a0 can be taught in public schools.\u00a0 Learning to control oneself is a valuable lesson for anyone.\u00a0 Learning the principles of justice is essential for good citizenship and meaningful political engagement.\u00a0 Wisdom\u2013which encompasses prudence, practicality, and thinking our actions through\u2013is a survival skill.\u00a0 Courage is something we all admire and can be taught to emulate.<\/p>\n The key is to make these virtues appear to young people as attractive and admirable.\u00a0 This was traditionally the task of literature, of stories<\/em>, with heroes we yearn to emulate, as Marcos demonstrates in his books.\u00a0 The task is to learn to value (subjectively) what is good (objectively).<\/p>\n These Natural Virtues will make our young people and our society more successful.\u00a0 But they will also make them aware of their failures to live up to their own ideals, even their own \u201cvalues.\u201d<\/p>\n At that point, the church can step in with the Gospel, which brings to life the Spiritual Virtues\u2013faith, hope, and love\u2013that bring forgiveness and inner transformation.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image:\u00a0The painting\u00a0David Garrick Between Tragedy, with labels inspired by the print \u201cL\u2019Homme entre le Vice et la Vertu<\/a>\u201d\u00a0from FallingGravity, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n