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Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.1.1


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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