He who acts unjustly acts
impiously. For since the Universal Nature has made rational animals for the
sake of one another, to help one another according to their deserts, but in no
way to injure one another, he who transgresses her will is clearly guilty of
impiety towards the Highest Divinity. . . .
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.1 (tr
Long)
A fellow
eccentric and lover of all things classical once suggested to me that virtue
was the most neglected term and concept of our generation. I understood his
point immediately, because the fashion of the day is to define ourselves by the
pleasures we feel, and by the convenience of our circumstances.
If you
say that the excellence of how well we live is the only complete measure of
life, and that all other things, however preferred they may be, are
indifferent, you will likely find yourself considered odd, maybe even dangerous.
I added,
however, that perhaps a certain type of virtue, the one we call piety, was even
lower in our esteem. After all, people do still speak about being fair and
just, though they hardly ever speak about being pious. We look to ourselves
quite a bit, but to God not so often. That may be a part of our problem.
Trends
will come and go, so I try not to give too much weight to such things. I find
that the obstacles to happiness described by Marcus Aurelius are much the same
as the ones we face here and now.
Yet I do
think it interesting that whenever I see us fail at practicing justice, it is
often because we are only paying lip service to a word. After all, we can’t be
fair and just if we do not have a greater frame of reference to work from, if
we lack piety for the very order and purpose of Nature.
I have
always understood justice as giving to each his proper due, taking no more than
I deserve, and giving no less than others deserve. I have long appreciated
Plato’s lovely definition from the Republic,
that justice is minding my business.
I have
also always understood piety as a reverence for what is greater than myself,
for the Divine in particular, though it can also include my elders, my betters,
or my community.
Notice
how piety and justice are quite closely related, in that each involves the
principle of respect, respecting my neighbor as sharing in the same nature, and
respecting the Divine as the source of all of Nature. In a sense, one is a
horizontal love, between equals, and the other is a vertical love, from an inferior
to a superior.
And
neither can really exist without the other. I cannot honor both my own reason
and that of another without understanding how we all exist within the order of
Providence, and I cannot honor the order of Providence without a concern for
its creatures. The purpose of the part is meaningless if separated from the
purpose of the whole.
He who
fails to give his neighbor his due, also fails to give God his due, and so the
unjust man is also of necessity an impious man. Act contrary to the nature of
the effect, and you act contrary to the Nature of the Cause.
Written in 7/2008
IMAGE: Nicolas-Gabriel Jacquet, Justice and Piety at an Altar (1601)
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