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| Alfred Bessette aka Brother Andre St " I'm just the little dog of St. Joseph ." |
The "Christian virtues" include, among others, the three virtues called "theological": faith, hope and charity. Thomas Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor" of the church, will of faith, hope and charity, the three theological virtues with priority given to the cardinal virtues are saying (prudence, justice, courage and temperance). Why? Because, according to Thomas Aquinas, the purpose to which the virtues is blissful life with God. For Aristotle, virtue is the end of human flourishing or happiness (eudaimonia ), for Aquinas, bliss. From this point of view, the theological virtues are the full development of other virtues. If the theological virtues are called "supernatural", contrary to the virtues "natural" cardinal, because they come from God.
remains that just as the cardinal virtues, the theological virtues involve the usual practice. Faith, hope and charity, like all other virtues, therefore, require training at all times. It has beautiful arrangements to be born with faith, hope and charity, it is still necessary to develop them and ensure their vitality. The best athletes continue to train. So too does the saints. In fact, by the exercise of charity, according to Thomas Aquinas, that faith manifests itself as excellence (see Summa Theologica, 2a-2AE, Issue 4 Article 3 ) , so there no faith without charity event. St. Paul goes on to say that "when I faith (pistin) the fullest, one that moves mountains, if I lack charity (agapèn) I am nothing. " (1 Corinthians 13 2). Clearly, therefore, love (agape ) is greater than faith ( pistis ).
is the exemplary level of charity is the holiness. If faith is a necessary condition of holiness, it is not the sufficient condition only charity constituting such a condition. In short, I'm very hard to believe that God exists or that Jesus is the Son of God, if I lack charity, my faith is weak or fake.
Holiness is therefore a highly available practice. It does not in any way to be a genius to be a saint. Brother Andrew was fond of repeating that he was uneducated, " The good Lord took me to humiliate others. He took the most ignorant people and to humiliate the community of Sainte-Croix . " ( Brother Andrew would often say ... Collections of words of Brother Andre reported by his friends. Fides, 2010, p. 95) You sound like Socrates say in which Plato's Apology of Socrates " My wisdom - if there is wisdom - is that I know nothing ." As we know, Socrates was virtue consist in knowledge: can not commit evil in ignorance , he liked to say. Also, in the eyes of Socrates, brother Andre would not pass the test of virtue as the little brother was simply unable to verbalize or even theorize virtue, he was equally ignorant on this point that the Athenian citizens were for Socrates.
However, Andrew's brother, like Socrates, are believed to paragons of virtue, even if they were not able to define precisely what it is. Aristotle understood it, that virtue has nothing to do with knowledge, it is an acquired habit so that to become virtuous, we must get used to the practice. In his great treatise on morality, the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, Socrates and Plato without naming, rejects the terms of the design under his illustrious predecessors:
was therefore quite right to say that force to perform what is right and it just gets strength to perform what is tempering that is temperate. And without doing that, no one has the slightest chance to become good. But voila! Most do not act this way and seek refuge in theory, believing devote himself to philosophy and so can be virtuous. They are somewhat like those patients who listen attentively to their doctors' prescriptions, but do nothing. (Book II, 1105b7-18)
Today we would say that ethics advocated by Aristotle wants to "how-to", but it would be somewhat distorting because it has a lot of theoretical consideration as we shall see.
The word "ethics" still comes from the Greek ethos and means manners, conduct, character, habits or customs. Aristotle wrote: "The character ethics (ethos) takes its name from the habit (ethos). It is called ethics due to the fact that taking habits . " ( The great moral , 1186a) Ethics in the eyes of Aristotle, is not synonymous with "moral" in the sense that Aristotle would question on a theoretical level the rules of good conduct. In some ways, Aristotle takes the literal meaning of ethics, that is to say, the Greek sense of etho s: habits, customs, common practices, etc.. Aristotle never ceases to repeat, against Socrates and Plato, we may well know what is right without being right. On this point, education is crucial to virtue.
If virtue is not knowledge, it is an acquired habit, Is it? The word translated under the Greek arete . This word has since taken a very narrow sense of a sexual nature because when someone says it's a "vicious" is generally understood to mean that it is a depraved person sexually. Pedophiles are vicious. When Greek as Socrates or Aristotle speaks of arete, it designates not even chastity. The meaning of arete is much broader than we now understand by "virtue". A good translation of the word arete would excellence. Aristotle not hesitate to talk about "excellence" of a knife or a flute in that excellence is respectively cut out and produce music.
It is important then to understand the link between Aristotle happiness, defined as human flourishing (eudaimonia ) to excellence (arete ), so much so that being virtuous is be happy, and vice versa. This is where the concept "teleological" or finalist the master of the Lyceum. Indeed, very early in Ethics Nicomachean , Aristotle said: " good is the aim of any ." What do we mean by this bit of enigmatic?
is relatively simple, we just talked about. For Aristotle, a knife or a flute are good or excellent to the extent that these two objects produce this why they were manufactured. When the knife cuts well, he realized his end, so it is intended; a flute with a flutist is unable to produce sounds, the least we can say is that it does is not a good flute. For Aristotle, everything that exists, exists for a purpose (telos a), and this is good or perfect. That is what virtue is to say excellence: to achieve this for what it is made according to its nature.
The human being is no exception since it has its own end - the telos - which is to be happy. What to what, therefore, the human being is designed, its perfection, that is to say, his excellence is happiness (understood as flourishing (eudaimonia )). Everything he does, does so in humans to thrive, to develop their full potential. However, again according to Aristotle, excellence of the human being consists in its vitality, its own perfection, that is to say that living well, which does not consist in something other than the exercise of excellence - the virtues.
If we commit evil, so it's not because we are ignorant, but because we have not developed good habits that are the excellences. As some like to say, we are here to learn. Maybe one day, by dint of suffering, we learn to act well. Education excellence is therefore central. " This is not a negligible work, Aristotle wrote, contract from the earliest childhood any particular habit, on the contrary, of major importance, or rather, the capital. " ( Nicomachean Ethics, 1103b 24-25)
In fact, education for excellence for Aristotle is to find" a balance "between two extreme types of action and practice them. Excellence is that moderation and balance. This is the Aristotelian doctrine of "balance." Take courage as moral excellence. This excellence takes place between rashness and cowardice. Faith, too, as a theological virtue, is a middle ground: the trust is, firstly, between credulity and dogmatism, on the other. As one who feels absolutely no fear before the imminent danger is not courageous but foolhardy or insane, the religious fanatic is evidence of dementia but not of faith. In both cases, it is as if the means are disproportionate to purposes. As if we wanted kill a fly with a gun ...
courage is often confused with the determination. The thief who robs a bank certainly has the determination, but no courage . Courage operates as a term of appreciation when you rent the action taken; its opposite is madness or dementia which is blamed and condemned the action raised. Marc Lepine, to quote here a case of sad memory, showed great determination, resolution insane, but not courage. One could describe the action of Marc Lepine of "overkill "- As rightly said in English - as the medium used by Marc Lepine to achieve his end was disproportionate. It may well be anti-feminist, it is still necessary that the means chosen to make his point of view is correct, neither excessive nor inadequate. An anti-feminist who would always afraid to assert itself, would be a coward, he would sin, not by excess, but insufficient. In the case of Marc Lepine, his vice is excess.
retort is that courage is one of the simple determination to another. Voltaire, for example writes: "The courage is not a virtue, but a quality common to the villains and great men. But the real difference between the two lies in the fact that the former are clumsy in the exercise of virtue, unlike the latter who excel.
In everything he does, human beings always act for the good. Nobody wants evil for evil. Everyone is good. The problem is that most of the time we're doing it wrong. We act blindly, which is either an excess or a deficiency. Excellence lies between excess and deficiency.
Now back to our saint, brother Andrew, who was canonized, remember, because he practiced so extraordinary or heroic Christian virtues . If Aristotle is right, the saint is actually a master of excellence. It is said that Brother Andre practiced Christian love like no other. The excellence of charity lies midway between selfishness on the one hand, and lack of concern for self and others, on the other. If we love one another as we love, as prescribed by the greatest commandment Evangelicals, it is frankly not always easy to trace precisely the boundary between loving others while not forgetting no self. Love of neighbor is there a completely selfless love? No, says the advocate of egoism, because we love in each other's self. Yes, replies Christian altruism.
Anyway, as regards the brother Andrew, known to disappear completely before the glory of healings " This is not me, it was St. Joseph who got your healing ; thank St. Joseph. "
If it was not at all puffed up with pride and focused on itself, one might think that, in contrast, Brother Andrew did not like himself at all. It is reported the following anecdote:
I must say that Brother Andrew had no great opinion of himself. One day I asked him where he was buried after his death. He replied: "No matter, bury me, if you will, in a box manure for me, it's the same thing." ( Brother Andrew said often ... P. 90)
In fact, the balance lies between not seek pride and scorn. In the first case, one seeks to avoid the excessive pride, in the second, self-esteem is lacking. Be careful not to fall into excess boasting one hand, and not fall into the trap of not opposite enough love, that's what is excellence brother Andrew. But this excellence in his case, let us recall once again, is regarded by the Church heroic or extraordinary . Heroic indeed was excellent as brother Andrew, throughout his long life he was able to maneuver beautifully between Scylla and Charybdis is to say, avoiding all the pitfalls of pride mystical self-denigration to serve excellently his brothers and sisters.
historian of religions Mircea Eliade, has proposed the term " hierophany " (Greek hieros , sacred and phanein , manifest) to denote the arrival the sacred in everyday life. There is no doubt that the life of excellence - the holiness - of brother Andrew was "hierophanic. Excellence, indeed, is never far from sacred. For Aristotle, too, a man's life devoted to the practice of excellence is certainly the order of the divine in us. ( Nicomachean Ethics , X, 7) The saint's life so highly advanced toward God. The saint is a sort of icon of God. As Wittgenstein said, if God does not say it certainly shows himself. The excellence of the porter opens the gates of heaven. That is what is truly miraculous in this saint who was not devoid of humor as long as it being declared that "the dog of St. Joseph."
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