Omnia praeter virtutem caduca sunt

Aristippus, discipulus Socratis, cum naufragio ad Rhodiensium litus eiectus animadvertisset figuras geometricas in arena discriptas, ad comites exclamavisse traditur: "Bene speremus; hominum enim vestigia video!" Confestim in oppidum Rhodum contendit et recta in gymnasium devenit. Ibi de philosophia disputans eiusmodi donatus est muneribus, ut non tantum omnia sibi necessaria acceperit, sed etiam iis comitibus, qui una cum eo in navi fuerant, et vestitum et cetera, quae opus essent ad victum, praestare potuerit.

Cum autem comites in suam quisque patriam reverti statuissent interrogarentque eum, quidnam vellet se domum renuntiare, eos civibus suis ita dicere iussit: eius modi possessiones et viatica liberis eorum quam celerrime oportere parari, quae etiam e naufragio una cum iis possent enatare.

Namque ea sola praesidia sunt vitae agendae, quibus neque fortuna iniqua neque publicarum rerum mutatio neve belli vastatio valet nocere.

Simili modo Theofrastus, quem discipulum Aristotelis esse constat, homines potius ad doctrinam humanitatemve quam ad pecuniam comparandam adhortans virum doctum affirmat ex omnibus solum neque in alienis locis peregrinum esse neque umquam inopem amicorum, sed in omni civitate esse civem difficilesque fortunae casus sine metu despicere posse; at qui non doctrinae sed felicitatis praesidiis credat se esse munitum, eum instabili et incerta conflictari vita. - Satis constat (ut spero) regem Croesum fortunae suae confisum multa passum esse.

Deus defunctus

In this outstandingly godless and desacralized world of ours, blasphemy, I think, is no longer worthy of intellectual discussion. "God is dead", as was over a century ago, quite convincibly stated by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nominalism, congruous with secularism or nonreligiosity as it most certainly is, seems to have become the final (/last) word of philosophy - if not the the point where all philosophy comes to an end. Blasphemy means, or has previously meant, impious utterance or action concerning God or things sacred.

It is in history and not in the present world that examples of blasphemy as well as those of heresy are to be sought. In the sphere of religion, heresy (from Gr. haíresis, wrong choice) means an opinion at variance with or contrary to the doctrine of the orthodox church.

In his monumental work in four volumes Henry Charles Lea discusses the heyday and decline of the Spanish Inquisition. From the early modern era he provides stimulating specimina of more or less spontaneous sayings, for which some unfortunate people, by the mighty and energetic Holy Office or Inquisition, were prosecuted. Lea names such actually dangerous, and, to my mind, innovative sayings as "God cannot do me more harm" (meaning that God is not omnipotent since he is incapable of doing me more harm), and, "in this world you will not see me suffer". The latter expression implies the most unclean disbelief in the Final Judgment, or, in Latin, "Dies irae", the Day of Wrath (see Lea, iv, 332).

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

From the third century AD on, the actual target of Neo-Platonist philosophers has been to reach personal understanding of and unification with the higher spheres of reality. In their metaphysics, no room is given to the principle of evil. For these thinkers, of whom Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus are regarded as the most important, neither matter nor evil is posited to be real.

If matter and evil were real, they, in Neo-Platonism, would deserve an equally independent reality as they do in Manichaeism, which, as far as I can see, is a more consistent philosophico-religious system than Neo-Platonism. According to Manichaeism, there are two ultimate principles of being. One is good; the other is evil. This means that both good (represented by God and the soul) and evil (represented by Satan and the body) are real, or really existent, in terms of metaphysical dualism.

In 415 AD, Hypatia, head of the Neo-Platonist school in Alexandria, is made a martyr of philosophy [never mentioned by name in Severinus Boethius' book 'De consolatione philosophiae' from 524/6 AD]. She is publicly tormented and murdered by the fanatical Christian mob; "the they", so to speak, were instigated by their equally fanatical or even more barbarous leaders, the bishop of Alexandria not excluded.

Hypatia, who never did anybody any harm, was murdered by having her skin stripped off with sharp sea-shells; what remained of her was consigned to the flames.



Let us say that evil really exists. Spectacular violence, as a form or manifestation of the primal evil, cannot be said to be non-existent. Crowd behaviour is unanimously described as being action-oriented. Characteristically, it lacks moral responsibility. "Anything goes."

Adolf Eichmann and Saddam Hussein

On May 31, 1961, Adolf Eichmann was tried and executed by hanging. It was fated that he should hang in Israel. Eichmann was and still is called the Engineer of Death (ED), being the actual primus motor for the extermination of the Jewry during the long years of the Second World War. The soul of this utterly evil man was duly expelled out of his body, which, as it was regarded as one representation of most monstrous cruelty (the soul being the other), was condemned to the flames. After the cremation the ashes were scattered in the waters of Mediterranean. In this spectacular procedure, certain symbolism is easily perceived, since the treatment of Eichmann's dead body was compatible with the well-known practices of the Nazis in the death camps, where millions lost their lives. Their corpses, or parts of their corpses, were either recirculated for the purposes of the German war-machine, or they, in accordance with the 'Final Solution Project' of the Nazis, were destined to vanish when dark pillars of smoke came out of the crematory chimneys.

Throughout his trial Eichmann admitted what he had done, emphasizing that he had obeyed the orders, just as he was demanded to do [as "das Man" does - if I am allowed to use an existentialist mode of speech]. On the other hand, however, Eichmann never felt guilty.

In her book [Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, 1963] Hannah Arendt highly upset her readers by arguing that Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity. She also said or at least implied that Eichmann's personal problem was his overdeveloped sense of duty [as the Engineer of Death in Hitler's imperium]. Thus, according to her existentialist and humane interpretation, Eichmann should not be considered a demon.

What about Saddam Hussein's execution on December 30, 2006? He, too, was fated to hang. It has been told that Saddam, resigned to his fate, met his death very heroically, that is, with great dignity. Not only prior to his death but also at the very time of his death, Saddam was the target of mockery from the part of those who were witnessing the event.

Both Eichmann and Saddam were, by their respective tribunals, sentenced to hang for crimes against humanity [genus humanum]. We remember, however, that Saddam was a military person; in his case, the verdict should have been death by shooting, not by hanging.

Nevertheless, Saddam was graciously given his final resting place in his Home Village of Awjah, while the Mediterranean Sea is being irrevocably polluted due to the curse of Adolf Eichmann's ashes.

After Virtue and Humanism

Today, the secularization of the Church and all western society is a matter beyond dispute. Our ambitions are worldly and we do not share the belief in the transcendent reality any longer. We have grown too old to believe in Biblical myths. It must be pointed out over and over again that the abandonment of religious presuppositions and "eternal truths" has neither actualized the need for old pagan virtues nor developed new ones. No longer do we have any belief in the beneficial power of what was called virtue by our "ignorant" ancestors. To many of us, history, the modern history not excluded, is a spectacular battlefield of irrational and unconscious forces. All in all, human life has become part of natural history, in terms of Darwinism or sociobiology.

What matters today is the biological or "pessimistic" or Freudian concept of "human" life, but not the humanistic and optimistic and rationalistic concept of the alleged supremacy of man, which is his dignity according to Cicero, and later on Pico della Mirandola. In his notorious "Faustian" hubris this Renaissance author refused to pay any limits whatsoever to an individual human being; instead he elevated man's life to the level of infinite endeavour. He had made clear to himself the vital importance of the concept of virtus ('virtue') without which there would be no meaning in life. According to Pico della Mirandola, virtus is the capacity to actualize one's potentiality so that the veritable virtue is achieved. His humanism resembles a certain trend in modern existentialism, so-called humanistic psychology, which is hostile to behaviorism or any form of biologism (naturalism).

In my opinion, it is irrelevant to claim that virtues, or moral values, as credible entities or collectivistic representations, have disappeared from man's consciousness, or that at this stage of advanced technology and psychology, every single human being has his own simulacrum of virtue, rather than the virtue proper, and that this simulacrum or virtue would not be comprehensible to another particular individual because there would not exist such an essence as one common humanity (except in the nominalist sense of the word). In this perspective, correct or false, every individual being is, by the necessity of nature, doomed to an infinite loneliness, albeit a "virtuous" one, during his or her time in the flesh.

According to modern scientific naturalism, we humans are nothing but biological organisms ('bio-machines'). Biology is decisively stronger than reason, and, because virtues are said to be part(s) of reason, they have lost their indisputable status which they used to have in the collectivistic value-systems. There are simulacra, however.

The abandonment of virtue might be argued to depend on the values of the Enlightenment Project, which, rather than a success story of modern man, may prove to be a downright failure, beyond freedom, dignity, and ancient virtue...

Views on Virtue

The 20th century, as we can well remember, was characterized by several world-wide crises. Before the so-called Great War (1914 - 1918) was apocalyptically followed by the Second World War (1939 - 1945), the optimistic spirit of the twenties had not lasted long. The Wall Street Crash (1929) was a hard blow not only to the Americans but to the international sense of community as well.

From the standpoint of an individual man, who felt that he was at the mercy of faceless and irrational powers, the 20th century repeatedly brought disillusionment and pessimism. It was convincibly argued by existentialists that science, rationalism as well as humanism ("Menschenglaube"), together with the "Christian" faith in a better tomorrow, had suffered shipwreck.

According to Karl Meister, however, man is an optimistic animal who truly needs the all-pervasive consciousness of the ethical ("das Bewusstsein des Sittlichen"). In his speech, which Professor Meister delivered at the University of Heidelberg (22nd November, 1930), he among other things idealistically affirmed that

"Der Keim des Sittlichen ist jedem Menschen angeboren als ein ihm Ureiniges und letzthin Unerklärbares, aber erst im Kulturmenschen erwächst aus diesem Keim das Bewusstsein des Sittlichen und hebt ihn über das unmundige Kind wie über den primitiven Menschen empor. Es ist somit ein Gemeingut der kultivierten Menschheit, und zwar ist es ihr höchster und unverlierbarer Wert [Prof. Meister means a man's ontic value, his true virtue, or "virtus"- JS], den sie wohl vorübergehend verzerren, missachten, sogar verleugnen, aber nie ganz vernichten kann, solange sie noch kultivierte Menschheit ist" (Karl Meister, 'Die Tugenden der Römer', 1930, 1).

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In ancient Rome Seneca had rhetorically argued that "Calamity is virtue's opportunity" (Prov. 4,6); 'Calamitas virtutis occasio est.' I gladly share Seneca's opinion, which is actually a rhetorical exaggeration. In Antiquity, calamity was considered congruous with a man's virtue, his manliness. Here is another charaterization of manliness or courage ('fortitudo' , 'virtus').

"Courage is what we all need in the end, and it is constantly needed in the ordinary course of life: by women who are with child, by all of us because our bodies are vulnerable [or fragile - JS], by coalminers and fishermen and steel-workers and lorry-drivers. It should not be regarded as primarily a military virtue. Courage is not just an ideal to be admired; we never know when it will be absolutely demanded of us, the alternative being infamy. Each of us is a hero in the Greek sense, a child of God; we must be ready for a call to do great things, and trustful that God will provide the strength we shall need" (P. Geach, 'The Virtues'. Cambridge 1973, p. xxix).

I think this Christian conception of courage is remarkably "weaker" than the conception of "virtus" in certain Roman Republican authors, Caesar and Sallust for instance. In their literary production, "virtus" can be said to represent hubris, or a naive and ignorant attitude of life. But the pagan concept of virtue (and courage) is actually denied by Geach, Professor of logics at the University of Leeds. He explicitly claims that in the end all virtue without faith, hope, and charity ("fides", "spes", and "caritas") is in vain. "For only by these [theological] virtues can Original Sin be overcome" (Geach xxxii).

I feel that man's virtue is absolutely incompatible with the Christian concept of Original Sin. Does Faith thwart virtue and logical thinking? In the final analysis, it is only God who, from the Christian standpoint, can be postulated to be in possession of virtue.