Dialogue ~ 37

The ancient Greeks admired the traits of virtue, excellence, goodness and valour and personified them into a goddess or spirit (daimona) called Arete. Her sister was Homonoia (oneness of mind, concord, unanimity), possibly also associated with the Theban goddess Harmonia (harmony). Their mother was Praxidike (Praxidice) who was the exacter of justice. Of the concept of virtue, Cicero said, “it was nothing else than a nature perfected in itself and brought to the highest. There is therefore a similitude between man and God.”

The Roman general and statesman Scipio Africanus brought the concept of ‘studia humanitas’ or ‘humanities’ to Rome. Cicero developed the humanitas and described it as a style of thinking which could elevate a person’s moral as well as cultural standing. Marcus Aurelius, in his ‘Meditations’ elaborated on the qualities believed to be the virtues of humanitas, namely that of modesty, self-control, manliness, beneficence, practicality, generosity, rationality, tolerance and obedience to the dictates of nature.

One of Scipio’s opponents in Rome was the senator and historian Marcus Cato (Cato the Censor, the Elder and the Wise). Cato tried to preserve Rome’s ancestral customs and to protect them from Hellenistic influences.

The ‘mos maiorum’ (customs/principles/habits of the Elders/ancestors) was an unwritten code (as opposed to written law) which pervaded through private, political and military life and it provided for a sense of traditionalism and social norms. The pressure to uphold one’s obligations was moral in that it was founded on the principles of respecting the cultural norms and of ‘doing the right thing’.

In Rome, the household was patriarchal and as much as this functioned as a model for order and integrity, so too did the network of social relationships which existed between patron (benefactor, sponsor) and client (beneficiary). In the midst of territorial conquests and when the patrons became governors of whole communities, the model of what had constituted the social norm became less traditional than it did precedent.

Writing this has given me pause to consider whether the practice of religious ministry as well as of nations who have set out (and continue) to impart their values upon others have unwittingly and unknowingly taken leave from a prior ethos? Perhaps values exist as that which is imbued or embedded within a society and are non-transferable? Is it conceivable that it is the social norms which evolve over time and not people; yet this is complex in that one’s sense of identity is interwoven with the community in which one lives. Still, this is interesting to consider from the perspective of how the concept of morality is able to evolve and one’s truth does not.

In the midst of the early phase of the Roman Empire’s imperialism, the historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus observed that “All new that is done contrary to the usage and customs of our ancestors, seems not to be right”.

It would be many years later that Lord Acton (1834-1902) remarked, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…”.

If the departing from one’s cultural norms and traditions instils a sense that ‘something is not right’ as Suetonius had observed, and if that which is denoted as being powerful in a material sense of the word is inherently corruptive, does it suggest that the contemporary Western world's pursuit of excellence or goodness is also divergent from one’s truth?

Whilst Cicero said of virtue (ergo the pursuit of Arete) that it was ‘… a nature perfected in itself and brought to the highest. There is therefore a similitude between man and God”, surely it applies that the qualities attributed to Homonoia, as ‘twin flame’ (or sister) of Arete are as valid in terms of ‘nature perfected in itself’? This is particularly so if she is representative of an ‘actuality’ of being in one’s truth of which Parmenides spoke?

Interestingly, the concept of striving for ‘excellence’ in the prevailing Western culture (particularly academia), inevitably suggests that some will succeed in the attaining of ‘goodness’ and others will not, despite any confusing rhetoric that ‘there are no losers, only of those who do not take part’. Consider for a moment how this model or social norm has become transposed with that of a market economy and of how the political narrative pursues rhetoric such as ‘they made the wrong choices in life’ (indicative of those who are down on their luck or unemployed) and/or reduces any financial provision for them, on the grounds that it is ‘the right (moral) thing to do’ (so as to incentivise people into work as if assuming that there is some failing on their part or else they would already be in work).

Has the cultural pursuit of excellence (Arete) in and of itself inevitably collapsed a window of reality into a ‘win or lose’ scenario, such that the ‘justice of Praxidike’ is being appropriated to fit the model?

How might a model of ‘nature that is perfecting in itself’ (or in the midst of an experience of its ‘becoming’) move into actuality? To return to what I wrote earlier, “power resides in the present moment only and does not gather momentum from one’s past”, how would this translate into an application of one’s will? If the will (towards an actuality of goodness) is incapable of perfecting itself through its own efforts (other than of its recycling or recreating of reality into some form of utopian image), does it follow that it should simply surrender and abandon itself into the ‘chaos or dissonance of the unknown’? Even an action such as that would be an assumption of its being precedent.

Let’s turn this scenario around (or on its head): how does the concept of the mother, as ‘justice’ (an organising element) participate in the synergy of ‘striving for excellence’ (which could also be interpreted as an inclination towards) and ‘concordance’ or harmony?