Sila and Soul (Part 3)

I said that I would talk about two ways in which soulmaking or imaginal practices, or two kinds of soulmaking and imaginal practices, can augment or expand our consideration of ethics, and relatively briefly touched on how imaginal practice, in the ways that we've taught it so far, can come in and enrich, dimensionalize, give added range and also depth and strength and possibility to our ethical consideration, ethical action, ethical stance in life. And I mentioned a second possibility, in addition to what we might call the standard sort of imaginal practice. I mentioned a second possibility, which I think I called the ideational-imaginal, or the ideological-imaginal, or imaginal ideas. And so I'd like to talk a little bit about that, introduce it as a possibility, and there's probably much more that can be explored here.

I've touched on it in the past; I don't think I've used those words before, ideational-imaginal. I think I've just mentioned it very briefly over the last few years, for instance in the possibility of meditating or finding an opening in meditation from some sensible perception -- for example, of beauty, or some inner image of something beautiful (I think I gave the example of some beautiful music that was playing in my mind) -- and sort of travelling from that to a more, if you like, pure essence of beauty in itself that is not so coupled with, hinged on, related to an instance of beauty (this or that beautiful thing -- music or object or whatever it is). So I think I've just mentioned it a couple of times; we haven't really amplified it, and I don't remember if anyone has really picked up on it that much. But I want to talk about it a bit now. And I want to talk about it in the context of talking about ethics, in this context, and particularly in the context of introducing the ideas of moral values and virtues, which is to do with a kind of ethics that sometimes people call 'virtue ethics,' or a kind of approach to ethics that people call 'virtue ethics.' This is one possible way of approaching sīla, one possible way of considering ethics and how we weigh up what's important, what we prioritize, etc., in our approach.

So introducing the ideational-imaginal in the context of introducing the ideas of moral values and virtues. And so there's ideational-imaginal that doesn't so obviously overlap with this area of ethics, and of course there are ethical considerations that don't necessarily overlap with the ideational-imaginal. Some -- in fact, quite a lot -- of where I draw my inspiration from and some of the material from in this regard is from the philosopher Nicolai Hartmann, who has a massive tome called Ethics. It really touches me, touched me when I read it, in the way he opens this out and how he talks about it. I feel there's a lot of relevance to the soul there, and therefore to soulmaking. But as we go through some of this material, I want to, again, sometimes draw connections to Buddhadharma, and also to Soulmaking Dharma, and also to draw out some of the implications in thinking of things this way, these ways, and approaching them these ways.

So I guess we could go in in any order. I think I might start with a sort of more, let's say, general introduction. So just the idea of these ideas, or these ideas and the sort of theory of it a little bit. So we'll start with that. I really hope that you'll immediately see, even though I'm talking in generalities at first, that -- I hope it won't feel abstract to you, that you can sense immediately in your heart and soul how these things matter to our lives, matter for society, and matter to the soul. Okay. So values and virtues. Let's start there. This word, 'value,' particularly with regard to moral values, is a word that, in English, has replaced what used to be the more common word of 'the good' -- I think it's agathon in Greek and bonum in Latin. So we have this word, 'goods' -- you're shipping goods here or there; you're paying for the goods; you're selling goods or whatever. So it's related. What's goods and good is of value, something valuable. So, you know, just for example, health is something valuable. Food, nutrition is something valuable. Property is something valuable. Happiness, consciousness, life -- these are all kind of values, in one sense.

When we talk about values -- obviously there are many, many more -- most values are valuable because they enable something else that is, if you like, more ultimately valuable. So for example, health is valuable in that it allows one to have the energy to live and to do and to experience this or that, or to do and experience more widely. So health in itself is valuable because it allows us to live and to do and experience. We could also not stop there. Why is living or doing or experience -- is it in itself valuable, or is it that doing is valuable, and experiencing and doing are sometimes valuable if they're enabling something else, if they serve something else? So one question -- we may come back to this; we will come back to this -- is what are more ultimate values, if you like? But just to point out, most values are valuable because they enable something else which is more ultimately valuable.

When we talk about specifically moral values, we mean something morally good, something morally valuable. So justice, for example, is a moral value, right? Honesty, courage, trustworthiness. We're talking about here, in the larger realm, things, institutions, actions, organizations, things in themselves as well as kind of inner attitude, dispositions, etc. Actually, we'll come back to that in a second. So when we talk about moral values, they pertain to human beings, to the acts and the personhood or the personalities of human beings. Moral values have to do with human beings. At least that's the way we usually tend to think of this -- morality has to do with humanity. And so we judge a human being or a human institution or a human action, human personality, in terms of its moral value, but not, let's say, in and of itself, a lamp or something like that is not in itself moral valuable, or a carpet or something.

When we talk about moral values that have become kind of dispositions of a person, or the dominant tendencies, they make up the ethos of the person -- remember, that word means the character, the sort of set of dispositions of a person -- when we talk about moral values which have become dispositions or dominant tendencies or the ethos, that's when we use the word 'virtue.' So again, it refers to human beings, their dispositions, their ethos, their dominant tendencies. So a couple more points, just by way of introduction, general points. Notice that moral values often depend on *non-*moral values in one way or another. So if we actually put it in the negative, not to steal, for example, or to practise generosity if we put it in the positive, those moral values depend or assume some value, some goods-value, of what it is that was stolen, or that might be stolen, right? So the moral value depends on the value of something else. To be generous only has a meaning as a moral value if there's something of some worth, of some value, that I'm giving. And similarly harming -- harming another person, it assumes the value of well-being; it assumes the value of enough health to do something else valuable, etc., or that health itself is a value.

So that's one observation. And the second is one that you've probably heard before: that the moral value of an act depends on the intention, and the virtue of a human being depends on disposition. So, in other words, on the intention and disposition -- not on result of an action. So you're probably familiar with this from Buddhist teachings on sīla. The often-used example, or an often-used example, is two people stick knives and cut into the flesh of another person, of two other people, and those two other people whose flesh was cut with knives die. But one person was committing a murder because they wanted, for example, to steal something from this person who they killed with a knife, and the second person was actually a surgeon who was trying to save that person's life but unfortunately the surgery wasn't enough to save that person's life. Same result -- death by knife, or they died because a surgeon accidentally cut a vein or whatever it was -- but morally very different, because the intention was very different.

So moral values depend on intention, virtues depend on disposition, not just on result. Now, you can see already and hear in some of what I'm saying, if you're paying really close attention, already it raises all kinds of questions and complications. So we could say, yeah, but practical wisdom -- in other words, a keen discernment and sense of what the results might be of certain actions -- is, in itself, a virtue. So it's not that results and attention to results are completely irrelevant.

If we talk about virtues as kind of the moral values that become dispositions, or part of the ethos of a person and the dominant tendencies, we can talk about, we can list things like empathy, sensitivity, faith, loyalty, love and different kinds of love. So actually what Hartmann calls love of one's neighbour, or love of the remote, someone far away and in the future, these are virtues. Self-control, courage, humility, wisdom, strength, nobility, gentleness, trustworthiness, generosity, the capacity for self-sacrifice. We could name many more. But these kinds of things are what we're talking about. Actually naming them, listing them, mapping them is quite a complex undertaking, very complex undertaking, and maybe we'll return to that whole problem. But can you sense, even as I just list that limited selection I just ran through, can you sense the effect of the, if you like, higher development of those virtues, of those qualities -- of empathy, of sensitivity, of the different kinds of love, of faith, and loyalty, and courage, and generosity, and the capacity for self-sacrifice, wisdom, strength, nobility, etc.? Can you sense the ethos that would follow from devoting oneself to the higher development of those qualities, of those virtues?

[15:42] And if I say, if I ask you, what comes up for you if you hear the phrase "a beautiful life," if you hear those words? What is, if you like, the range of phenomena for which you would even consider the term 'beautiful' actually meaningfully appropriate? We've talked about beauty in other retreats, in series of talks, etc. But does it include the virtues? I used to use the phrase "beautiful qualities of heart." But, as I said, can you get a sense that a life lived sensitive to and devoted to, sensitive to these virtues, sensitive to moral values, keenly sensitive in the soul, in the heart, a life lived that way, developing that sensitivity, devoted to the cultivation and expression of the virtues, committed to them, standing by them, making them a priority, can you get a sense -- I don't know -- can you get a sense right now that that might be as beautiful or even more beautiful than other ways in which a life might be considered beautiful? What does it mean to live a beautiful life, and are we called as human beings to the possibility of a beautiful life, of sculpting, of crafting, of making an art of our life into something beautiful? And if so, what is the place? Do the virtues, as we're talking about them now, and this sensitivity to moral value, and the development of all that, and the prioritizing of all that, the commitment to all that, does that have its place in all that? Can you get that sense?

Or is it that something else arises for you? This is complicated territory, and this whole conversation on ethics, I realize, is very touchy, very sensitive, and one has to be quite careful in wording. I was almost a bit reluctant to even start talking about ethics. But it can be loaded in all kinds of ways. So what arises for you when we think about the meaning of what is a good life, what is it to lead the good life? "Ah, I'm living the good life." What does that mean if we go deeper into the levels of possible meaning, what that might actually look like and be? What does it mean to live and lead a beautiful life? What might it mean, and what arises for you just when you hear those words, or when I put them in connection with this concept of moral values and virtues?

Now, some of you who are sort of up on your Buddhist lists will immediately perhaps think, "Ah, the ten pāramitās, or sometimes what's called the ten perfections in Theravādan Buddhism, and sometimes Mahāyāna Buddhism -- mostly Mahāyāna Buddhism lists six, and Theravādan Buddhism lists ten. Are they not, are those pāramitās or pāramīs not virtues? Are we talking about the same thing here? So yes, there's definite overlap. The ten Theravāda Buddhist pāramīs are:

(1) generosity

(2) sīla itself (ethical care)

(3) renunciation is the third

(4) wisdom (or better, insight) is the fourth

(5) energy, sometimes could be translated as courage

(6) patience

(7) truthfulness

(8) determination

(9) mettā (that is, loving-kindness)

(10) and equanimity.

That's ten. In the Mahāyāna, they are:

(1) generosity

(2) sīla

(3) patience

(4) energy

(5) samādhi, actually meaning kind of meditative depth and range and skill

(6) and wisdom (or better, insight).

So there's a definite -- what should we say? -- connection, parallel, overlap here. But there are also some important differences, at least in the way that I would like to open out the subject of virtues and values and that territory of those lists of pāramīs and pāramitās in Buddhadharma.

So firstly, there are many more than ten. If we open out the consideration of virtues and values, there are more than ten. Certainly more than six; more than ten. That's one observation. As I said, listing them, or even identifying all of them, and how you break up the list, etc., that becomes quite a project. But certainly more than ten. Second, and also very significant, is the word pāramī or pāramitā can be translated in two ways, and they're related. One -- I think the most common -- is 'perfection.' So Prajñāpāramitā, sometimes the Perfection of Wisdom is a translation. So pāramitā means 'perfection.' It also can mean 'transcendent' or 'transcending,' which I'll come back to, but if we just stay with this translation, this meaning of pāramitā as 'perfection.' In the Buddha's teaching, there are ten perfections, there are ten qualities you can perfect. But the word 'perfection' implies that one can reach the end of a certain development. One can complete a process. That possibility is there to kind of reach: "Right, I've completely achieved final excellence with patience, or renunciation," or whatever it is, "truthfulness," etc. And one of the important points I would like to make about the virtues is that they don't have an end. They're infinitely developable. They contain and unfold their own beyonds, their own infinite reaches of depth and flourishing and range, etc. So there's a difference there.

And related to that is a third difference. So the Buddha, somewhere in the Pali Canon -- and I don't know exactly where, but -- it says, "All dhammas converge in the Deathless." All dhammas converge in the Deathless. Now, dhamma is one of those words that has at least two or three meanings -- at least -- in Buddhist teaching. But one of its meanings is 'teachings' itself. So a dhamma is a teaching, so a teaching on generosity, a teaching on the pāramitās, a teaching on renunciation, a teaching on equanimity or whatever. It can also mean 'mental quality.' So again, the quality of patience, the quality of generosity -- again, like a kind of disposition, if you like. And so this phrase of the Buddha's, "All dhammas converge in the Deathless," could mean that all the pāramīs and other qualities that the Buddha referred to, all pāramīs actually serve merely to help you transcend, to help you transcend the realm of fabrication, the realm of the formation of appearances, the realm of perception and experiences, the realm of birth and death, of life and experience, and transcend that to reach the Unfabricated and to end rebirth. So "All dhammas converge in the Deathless," they all kind of point towards and lead and have their fruition in this transcending and escaping from the realm of form and appearance and experience and perception. That would be one meaning of this "All dhammas converge in the Deathless."

In other words -- and as I've said before -- the whole thrust, as I read it, the whole traditional thrust of Pali Canon Buddhism is to get off the wheel of rebirth, of life and death, of birth and death, and to -- wrong word, but -- melt into, dissolve into, disappear into the Unfabricated, beyond all appearance, beyond all experience. And so everything else in the Buddha's teachings, in the Dhamma of the Buddha, serves that end and supports that end, and works together. All these factors -- the wings of awakening, the pāramitās and all that -- they serve to support each other in a kind of synergistic way that propels the being and aids their release, or (the Buddha's word) release and escape from saṃsāra, from the wheel of rebirth, into not being reborn again -- the end of the rebirth of experience, into the Unfabricated.

That phrase of the Buddha's, "All dhammas converge in the Deathless," could actually have another meaning, which I'll mention just now before coming back to what I was saying earlier. It could mean, the Deathless there, could mean the dharmakāya. So "All dhammas converge in the dharmakāya." Now, dharmakāya is a word with a very interesting history in Buddhadharma, and one of its original meanings was really -- kāya means a body, like, in a way, a body of water, so a collection of dharmas, dharmakāya, a collection of dharmas, meaning a collection of qualities. Now, dharmakāya is an aspect of Buddhahood; it's an aspect of Buddha-nature, so that in the first teachings about or exploration of what actually is a Buddha, what is Buddha-nature, dharmakāya meant the collection of a Buddha's qualities, the mental qualities including their virtues, the dispositions of a Buddha. Dharmakāya meant that. So "All dhammas converge in the Deathless" could mean "All pāramitās and all teachings and trainings lead to this collection of qualities that inhere in the Buddha-mind, in the Buddha-being, if you like, in the Buddha-nature." But that actually is a more Mahāyāna idea.

So it's probable that when the Buddha said "All dhammas converge in the Deathless" he was probably -- I mean, actually, you can spin it either way, but let's take it to mean that for now, that it meant they serve to support that travelling towards transcendence, towards release, escape, removal from the realm of fabrication, the realm of appearances, experiences, phenomena, and rebirth, and ending that. So that, again, virtues as such, pāramitās as such, in that teaching, take a secondary role. They are for the purpose of serving release. So that's one way of saying what are they for, what's their worth? What's the worth of moral virtues? But as Nicolai Hartmann points out -- I'm going to read you a little quote -- in the way he would read it, because it's not at all a life-transcending philosophy that he espouses, and in some ways he's very not religious (in other ways, I think he is religious without realizing it, but), what is morally good is good in itself. It's not for the purpose of something, and certainly not for the purpose of removing oneself from the realm of appearances and experiences, perception and phenomena. So what I want to read to you is this from Nicolai Hartmann:

The useful is never the good in the ethical sense. We say that a thing is "good for something." But this is not the moral meaning of the good. The latter [the moral meaning of the good, in other words] reveals itself only when one inquires after that "for which" anything is good. If one traces this "for which" back to what is no longer good for anything else but is good in itself, one has reached the good in the other sense, which contains its ethical meaning. The morally good is the good in itself. Therefore not to be good for something else is of its very essence. According to its nature, it is never the useful.^[1]

Now, I might qualify that a little bit and actually say the morally good is useful; it's useful for other people. Sometimes it's useful for ourself -- if I'm kind, then maybe people are going to be kind back, or there's more chance that they'll be kind back. If I'm kind, my kindness is often useful to them. And so if I'm generous, my generosity is often useful to them. And if I'm generous, maybe some people will be generous back, reciprocally or out of appreciation or whatever it is.

But what I would qualify a little bit, what he's saying, and saying at that, in its sort of deeper essence, or there's a dimension, there's a level in which the morally good is not just useful for ourselves or for others. It's actually not good 'for something,' it's not 'useful'; it's just good in itself. And this, in a way, to me, relates very much to what it means to live a beautiful life, to lead a beautiful life. There's something that's good in itself. It has no other purpose than because it's beautiful, because it's good, because it touches the soul in that way.

If we stay with Hartmann a little bit, he has a particular kind of ontology that he developed in his philosophy, which I find quite interesting and really thought-provoking. But one question is about the ontology of moral values: do they have independent, inherent existence? Or are they, in a way, created by humanity, or by a person, or by a culture at a certain time? Are they dependent, contingent in that respect? Now, he was writing mostly in the first half of the twentieth century, and that book on ethics, I think, is from the 1920s. But already by that time there was the awareness in philosophy, in moral philosophy, that -- well, look, ethics, what's considered valuable morally, and the whole notion of ethics, and what's ethical and what isn't, we only have to look at the history of different cultures and places and see that it varies. What is regarded as morally valuable varies with time, with place, with culture, with person. So it's quite individual as well. But he makes the point that yes, agreed, that's obvious that that's a fact historically, but that need not imply that they don't have independent existence, that moral values don't have independent existence. Because he says that what happens in the realm of moral values is that we tend to have movable fashions and a kind of partial blindness that goes with those fashions.

So this is akin to when we talked, in the talk in this series on ontology and epistemology, I think, and we were talking about ideas, for example, of the disco ball, or whatever those things are called, that kind of radiate from different sides -- you can't actually see it all at once, and you can't get the light reflecting from it all at once to your eyes. You have to look at it from a certain vantage point, from a certain angle. So you're only seeing part of it. Or when we talked about the different kind of ways of creating maps [the Mercator and the polar projection]. Anyway, two different ways of creating maps that give different pictures in two dimensions of a really existing three-dimensional globe. So that the truth of things is somehow hard to grasp all at once, but when we look at it, we look at it partially, or with a partial blindness. So Hartmann talks about, I think, what he calls a 'value-firmament' -- so a value, sort of the heavens or the constellations in the sky of values. But he says we, at any time, are looking at it as if with a small beam of light, like with a torchlight. So our torchlight can only illuminate certain areas of that value-firmament, certain values. And when we do that, others slip from our consciousness; we don't notice them, or we relegate them, or we just don't consider them; we're oblivious to them.

So this is quite an interesting ontology, and relates to some of what we said before. He does say values are still subjective in one sense, in that they are values only for human beings. But he says even that doesn't take away from their independent existence, because he points out that geometrical laws, for example, the laws of geometry, or mechanical laws, the laws of objects in motion like footballs and cannonballs and rockets and things, or physiological laws, the laws that living organisms kind of are curtailed and abide by, these only apply for limited categories of beings. So geometrical laws are for spatial figures -- triangles and squares and lines and points and whatever, polygons. Mechanical laws are for solid bodies. Physiological laws are for organisms. So it's subjective in that sense, and moral laws, moral values are only for humans. So it's subjective in that sense, that they're for humans -- a moral law doesn't apply to a triangle, for example. It's limited and subjective in that sense, it's for humans. But that doesn't imply, in his thinking, that they are therefore created or they can be kind of done away with. They're just relative to certain kinds of being. All those four kinds of laws that I enumerated are each of them relative to a different one of four different kinds of beings. And he says they are actually unconditional.

How do we know and perceive values? How do we get our sense of values? [37:48] For him, it's not a cognitive process. It's not something we think about rationally and ponder and deduce from logic. So Emmanuel Kant is often labelled as someone who has that kind of idea of morality and the approach to morality, wanting to find a kind of rational basis, but whether that's actually true of Emmanuel Kant completely, I don't think so, based on the little that I know. I think it would be an oversimplification. But anyway, Hartmann's point is that we have an intuitive sense and an emotional sense of moral value. It touches something, he would say, in the heart or the intuition. I would also say in the soul as well. And that's how we perceive values and we know values. I'll come back to that in a sec, in fact. But he also says -- and again, this may be an unfashionable point, again, these days, for the same reasons that I laid out in the earlier talks on ethics -- but he also says, you know, it's not that all persons have an equal capacity to perceive moral values and to know and sense moral values. There are differences there. There are differences in what has been developed. This person has developed that sense, that intuition, that feeling to perceive and know moral values more than this other person. Or this person has been educated in some way, helped, trained to become more sensitive, to perceive and know moral values. And there might be just innate aptitudes -- this person just was born with a kind of soul that was sensitive in the realm of moral values, or sensitive to certain values.

So there are differences there, and that has to be acknowledged. Again, that might be a sort of somehow taboo thing to say, but he says actually it's just like insight into mathematics, or the truths of mathematics, or mathematical laws. They are true. They are independent of whether two people, A and B, can both grasp that mathematical law. Perhaps Person A has a particular aptitude with mathematics. Perhaps they have particular training with mathematics, and they can read some mathematical equation or some mathematical formula or postulate or truth and actually grasp it, understand it, know it, sense it, sense its validity. And Person B just doesn't have that mathematical sensibility in their mind, in their soul, or they haven't been educated in that way. So he says it's just like that; it's the same with moral values.

He says something further. And this, again, is very interesting, I think. I want to, as I said, link all this up to soul and soulmaking. So as you're listening to this, there's partly all its implications for our consideration, our approach to ethics, and then there's also our consideration, how it impacts and what it implies for our consideration of souls and soulmaking and all that. So a further thing he says is that values make the person; the person doesn't make the values. So again, this is still in the area of talking about: what's their ontological status? Do they have independent existence? Or are they merely created by the person or by a culture? He says values make the person, not vice versa. And he gives as a sort of evidence for that the fact that when we feel guilt, we're actually feeling or sensing our own failure to live up to our values, to live up to our ideal self, if you like. And to him, this implies the apriority, a priori nature of values -- in other words, that they come first: values make the person. So a person has these values that exist in the value-firmament; these ones are important to them; they have this kind of sensitivity to these values, less so to these values. And that sensitivity derived from or in relationship to the values makes the person. It shapes the personality, as opposed to the person shaping and creating the values.

So I think that's a very interesting thought. To me, it's a little bit one-sided as an explanation, a postulate. I'm not entirely convinced by that. And in fact, there's quite a lot in Hartmann that I'm not entirely convinced by or keen on, but I still find him very touching and very beautiful and very thought-provoking as a philosopher. So there might more be a consideration of dependent origination and the various factors that contribute to make the person and contribute to make the values which they are sensitive to, etc. So yes, we could say the person makes the values, absolutely, and the culture makes the values, and the culture makes the person who makes the values, in indirect and direct ways, and reactive ways and proactive ways, and consonant ways and dissonant ways, in opposition, in congruence, etc. But we can also say that the values make the person, along with Hartmann.

Or at least we can say -- again, if we take one of the principles of soulmaking -- that okay, we don't have to decide on an ultimate truth here, but we can entertain the idea, entertain the logos, put it in the soul for a while, for example, and see what it does if we entertain the idea that values make the person, that values kind of exist in some independent way and at some level where we can't completely grasp all that there is to know about them, their whole range, how they relate to each other, their hierarchy. We can't grasp all that. We get a one-sided, movable sense of them. But we can entertain the idea, for a while, and not as an ultimate truth, but entertain the idea that they do exist in that way. Not as a final position, but we entertain that. We play with that idea in a way that becomes powerful for the soul. And I think that idea that values make the person, rather than the other way around, if we lean that way for a while, that there could be a lot of soulmaking coming out of that.

I don't know if you can sense that as I'm mentioning it right now, and that also it has many implications for our ethical life, and again, how we approach, how we consider ethics, what we deem as important when we approach ethical situations, and the very lens in which we see all that. But as I said, he was writing in the early twentieth century, and with the rise of modernism, and certainly into so-called postmodernism, there was perhaps, I think, generally speaking, a kind of waning of the interest in values and moral values as a sort of way of understanding ethics. And especially with postmodernism, there's a sense of, like, "Well, how can you claim," as we said, "that they have independent, objective existence? Because nothing does," etc., "Everything's culturally conditioned." And also corollary waning and lack of interest and lack of esteem of the notion of virtues and that kind of idea about humanity and a way of approaching ethics.

And again, in a way -- because I, for myself, put these ideas about values and virtues into the realm of, the area of, the larger realm of what I might call religious sensibility in the larger sense, and so because that wanes, too, very much with modernism and postmodernism, part of that is a disennobling, a removal and the depletion of the potential of what can serve to and be part of a sense of nobility in a human being. So that's also one of the losses of modernism, through modernism and postmodernism, modernity and postmodernity. That whole idea is too close to the noble and the religious, etc., that it goes out of fashion.

I want to read you something from Alasdair MacIntyre as well in this regard. So he's also commenting on this development through modernity. He writes, and this is, again, from his book After Virtue:

Without allusion to the place that justice and injustice, courage and cowardice play in human life very little will be genuinely explicable. It follows that many of the explanatory projects of the modern social sciences, a methodological canon of which is the separation of 'the facts' from all evaluation, are bound to fail.^[2]

So in other words, this idea [that] I can separate the facts out from any value, any evaluative statements or lenses I bring to bear on those facts, that's an idea you'll recognize when we talked about the history of science and classical science. That's a sort of axiomatic principle of the classical scientific method, or even the modern scientific method, that one tries to remove any kind of evaluation or evaluative tendency that will distort or sully or subjectivize the objective facts, so-called facts. So that with modernity, there's the rise of this classical scientific method, and that spreads to other domains other than the sort of -- I don't know what you'd call them -- the core sciences of physics and chemistry and biology and all that into the modern social sciences. So people try and apply that same kind of pared down, austere, so-called objective scientific method to social sciences like sociology and psychology and others. But he's saying actually if you take out notions of justice, injustice, courage, cowardice -- in other words, values and virtues -- it's very hard to explain anything with just the so-called 'facts.'

For the fact that someone was or failed to be courageous or just [he writes] cannot be recognized as 'a fact' by those who accept that methodological canon [based on classical science and its belief in the possibility of total objectivity].

So that whole waning of the interest and the unesteeming, the progressive unesteeming -- not completely, but for the most part -- of that whole realm and interest in values, moral values and virtues, actually goes with modernity to a certain extent, because it's intrinsically evaluative, and that's what we're trying to get rid of.

If we go back to this question of how do we perceive values -- and again, it's actually still related to perceiving moral values, and still relating to their ontological status -- in the English translation of Nicolai Hartmann's book, there's, I think, a very good introduction by a guy called Andreas Kinneging, and he writes a couple of things which I think are worth just kind of running by you, quoting ... if I can find them. [shuffles papers] Let's see. Again, how do we perceive values? How do we come to know them? He writes:

It is impossible to observe values empirically. [In other words, you can't see a value itself. You only see] Only acts, things, and events are perceived empirically [perceived with the senses].^[3]

So only acts, things, and events are perceived -- you can't see a value itself. You can't sense it directly.

To know the value of what is observed empirically is possible only if one has already comprehended the relevant value in abstracto [in the abstract] of what is observed, and can use that knowledge as a standard to assess what has been realized. Knowledge of values is a priori knowledge, [in other words] like knowledge of mathematical [and logical] being.

In other words, we just have an intuitive knowledge of values. As a kind of abstract knowledge, we have a sense of what's good, what's kind. It's not like we see certain acts, we see a hundred acts, and then we deduce from those different hundred acts, "Ah, I see," so I make the conclusion that generosity is this -- I deduce from those empirical observations of a hundred acts of different people in different situations, or myself, then I make a conclusion of what constitutes generosity or kindness or courage. We have, he says, an a priori knowledge, an intuitive, instinctive, in-built knowledge that corresponds, in the subjective domain, to their objective, independent existence. And it's that that we measure an observed, empirically observed act, we measure its correspondence with our intuitive sense, whether it tallies, whether it's congruent, whether it chimes with and fits our intuitive, a priori sense of this or that value. And again, just to repeat what I said before. So:

Not everyone has the same capacity to sense values, and not everyone's capacity is equally well developed, Hartmann [argues]. 'There are such things as education and lack of education of the sense of values, talent and lack of talent for the discernment of them. It is here just as it is with mathematical insight [as I said before]. Not everyone is capable of it; not everyone has the eye, the ethical maturity, the spiritual level for seeing the situation as it is. Nevertheless, the universality, necessity, and objectivity of the valuational judgment hold good in abstracto. For this universality does not at all mean that everyone is capable of the valuational insight in question. It only means that whoever is capable of it -- that is, whoever spiritually gets hold of its meaning -- must necessarily feel and judge thus and not otherwise.'

And I'll just read a little more of this, because he writes -- this is Kinneging now. He says:

Value blindness is quite a common phenomenon. [So a condition of just being insensitive to certain values]. In extreme cases it brings about a complete loss of meaning of life and the world. 'He who stolidly passes by men and their fates, he whom the staggering does not stagger nor the exalted exalt, for him life is in vain, he has no part of it. The world must be meaningless and life senseless to one who has no capacity to perceive the sense of life's relationships, the inexhaustible significance of persons and situations, or correlations and events. The outward emptiness and monotony of his life are the reflex of his inner emptiness and his moral blindness. The real world in which he exists, the stream of human life which bears him up and carries him along, is not without manifold wealth of content. His poverty amidst abundance is due to his own failure to appreciate life. Hence, for the moral nature of man there is, besides the narrow actuality of action and ought-to-do [so we ought to act in line with certain virtues or moral values], a second requirement: to participate in the fullness of life, to be receptive to the significant, to lie open to whatever has meaning and value.'

So I find that a beautiful passage and very important passage. But one of the points there is that it's possible to be value blind. And again, I want to come back to that later. But the sense of seeing values, of perceiving them, of intuiting them, is what he calls in philosophical terms a priori, so a priori judgment. Actually, one more thing from Hartmann while we're there, if I can find it. He says there's something very interesting about the human capacity for moral action, for moral sensibility, to sense moral values, and to bring them to bear, and express them in one's life, and to choose that way. And so he says (now he's adopting a certain framework of the world):

Man [okay, let's say a human being] in comparison with the whole of the cosmos is a speck of dust, an ephemeral, a negligible phenomenon.

So there's a certain cosmological context of which man, in the scope of things, of the vast reaches of the universe and the vast spans of time in the universe, is really just an insignificant little speck. He says one of the interesting things about ethics and humanity is -- again, excuse the gender-biased language he's writing back then:

Man, a vanishing quantity in the universe, is still in his own way stronger than it: he is the vehicle of a higher principle, he is the creator of a reality which possesses significance and value, he transmits to the real world a higher worth. Nature is bound down to its own laws; man alone [humanity alone] carries in himself a higher law whereby he -- or more correctly the law through him -- creates in the world, or from Non-Being [from non-existence] brings forth into Being [into existence], that which was prefigured in its ideality.

In other words, these ideals of moral values and virtues. Despite being insignificant in the context of one's actual existence in the vast spans of space and time in the universe, human beings can do this thing where they can axiologically -- in other words, ethically and in terms of values -- they can do something that's extremely significant.

We may name this rehabilitation of man the miracle of the ethical phenomenon; it is the sublime in him, that which verily lifts him up above his own mere existence in the world.

So yes, physically and in terms of the transience of our existence, we're ephemeral and insignificant and small in the context of the larger universe, but there's something amazing that we can do -- bring forth from this kind of ideal realm of values something from non-existence into existence, which, other than through us, cannot come into existence.

So again, I don't know how all this lands, how it really lands in your soul. I don't mean just whether you kind of agree or not agree. And there are, as I said, many complications, some of which we'll pick up on and go into later. But I really mean in the soul, in the heart, how does all this land? I've been talking quite generally now. But as I asked before, can you get a sense, perhaps -- I don't know if you share this sense -- that a devotion to cultivating virtues, to expressing them in one's life, to standing in them, and standing by them, and standing up for them, a commitment to them, a prioritizing of them, that that would constitute and form and be an essential part, perhaps the essential part, in what we might call a beautiful life? And as such, might be something for which we could say, in Soulmaking Dharma terms, there is a telos, there is a human telos. We are called to that. Yes, each in our individual, particular ways that we create/discover what it is for me or you as a unique individual, with our own soul, if you like, what kind of beautiful life there, the flavour of that beautiful life. But can you get [a sense]? I don't know if you share that sense of the beauty of this, the nobility of it, the calling of it, the possible logos that might regard that as a telos. This is what we're called towards. We're called towards a beautiful life, living a beautiful life, creating a beautiful life. And the place of virtue in that, in this, is central.

If we look into the etymology of that word, 'virtue,' I think it's quite interesting. So the word itself, 'virtue,' is from the Latin virtus, which means 'manliness,' but let's play with that a little bit and actually say 'humanity,' i.e. being fully human in non-gender-biased language. So to care for the virtues is to become fully human. The more we care for the virtues, the more fully human we become. And if I don't, am I actually a human being? I might have DNA, and I might have that form, and two ears, and a nose, and eyes, and a liver, and a spleen and whatever. Am I human just because ...? You know? So it's related to that word, to being fully human. Again, we could regard it more telistically, if that's the adverb, and as a movement, something we're called towards. We're called towards our full humanity and the virtues are perhaps an integral part of that.

It's also related to the word 'courage,' actually. The word in Pali, vīriya, which can be translated as 'energy,' but can also be translated as 'courage,' also has a relationship with the Latin, I think -- vir, 'man.' So it's related to courage, to being fully human. 'Virtuous' also means 'efficacious' and 'potent.' That's a kind of archaic meaning. And 'virtual' is from the Latin virtualis, which means 'effective' (also from vir, its root in vir, which means 'man'). So there's something about -- I'll come back to this point shortly, hopefully, but -- when we consider virtue, it's also our efficacy, our potency. How efficacious our being and action and speech and ethos in the world are is part of what it means to have virtue. We also have this word in English, 'virtuoso,' and it's also from the root, from the Latin vir, 'man.' But to me, 'virtuoso' gives a whole sense of this, when we consider and open up for our soul, the soul-meaning, the soul-sense of this area of virtues, it also implies, 'virtuoso' implies something -- there's skill and art here. So this whole consideration of virtue, of living a virtuous life, of living a beautiful life, of the sensibility and commitment to moral values, etc., there's something of skill and art in that.

And in fact, virtu, or vertu, sometimes with an i, sometimes with an e, is a taste or love for works of fine art, a connoisseurship, and also the quality of being rare or beautiful. So can you sense how the kind of different etymological components here actually feed in to organically, perhaps, filling out a richness and multidimensionality and multidirectionality even of what we mean? All these words are etymologically tied together.

[1:07:36] Actually, I don't want to stop there. There's a guy called -- I think his name is Paul Kugler. I think his first name is Paul. Yes, Paul Kugler. And he wrote a short book called The Alchemy of Discourse, I don't know, twenty years ago or so. And he talks in that book -- he picks up on a piece of research that Jung did early in his career. It's related to archetypes, but it's to do with phonetic similarities, phonetic relationships between words. It's different than etymological relationships. 'Etymology' means actually you can trace these different words, like virtue and virtuous and virtuoso and virtual, etc., back to a common root, and trace how that meaning comes out of that common root in history over time. But Paul Kugler, following this piece of research that Jung did -- and I think Jung never really went back to it, and as far as I know, no one else has really gone back to it and explored it and filled it out. I think there's a lot of potential here, and that's partly why I'm mentioning it. But basically words are connected not just etymologically but phonetically -- in other words, by a relationship of similar sound.

So he gives examples of -- it's actually quite interesting, Jung's original piece of research. We don't have time to go into that right now. But he gives, for example, words that are not etymologically related -- so 'carnation,' the flower, 'carnal,' and 'carnage,' for example. And what he's saying is, in Jungian terms, the unconscious puts those words together. It associates them together. They kind of touch the soul in similar ways, or hearing one word actually ignites for the soul a kind of intuitive, maybe dim association or sense of those other words through the sound. It's not related through the etymology, through the meaning, but through the sound. So the words have very different meanings, but there's a relationship through sound that he says stimulates, in the unconscious, a kind of archetypal complex through which all those words are related.

So that's one example. He gives a few. Another might be -- actually, he writes quite interestingly about the word -- this is in Latin now, but it's liberalitas, it's 'generosity.' Liberatio, where we get our word 'liberation' from, 'setting free,' 'deliverance.' Liberi in Latin, which is 'children.' Libet, which is 'it is pleasing,' or 'I desire,' or 'I want' -- it's related to desire. Libido, which we have -- so 'lustfulness,' or 'libido,' 'desire.' What else? Libation, 'to pour or to make an offering.' Libitina, which is a burial goddess. And librarium, 'a case for books.' He's saying all those words, through the sound commonality, the relationship of sound, a lot of them don't seem to have anything to do with each other, but he says they point to a common archetypal complex also related to Dionysus -- so libido, desire, and freedom, etc., and libation, the drinking; the god Dionysus is the Greek god Bacchus, etc., who's the god of wine. Dionysus has a relationship with death, Libitina. And curiously, you think, "Oh, books. What does that have to do with it?" But actually Bacchus, we get our word 'book' from the word Bacchus.^[4]

So anyway, these words are phonetically related, or phonologically related, and they speak to the soul that way. They trigger each other, or they're related to each other. They're constellated together, they're ignited together for the soul. So I'm partly mentioning that because it seems to me no one else has really picked up on that line of research. It's just a short book by Paul Kugler. Maybe someone hearing this at some point will like to pursue in a small way or a larger way that kind of line of inquiry and exploration in terms of soulmaking. That's why I explained all that.

But if we go back to this word, 'virtue,' we talked about the etymology. What about phonetic relationships, or what's phonologically or perhaps archetypally tied to the word 'virtue'? Maybe the word 'vertical.' It's a different root. Or vertex. They're both from the Latin vertex, which means 'to turn around,' like around a point or a place where planes or lines meet, or in astronomy it's a point in the sky towards which a star stream appears to move, the vertex. And 'vertical' and 'upright' -- so Being Upright is the name of Reb Anderson's book, I think, on ethics. So 'uprightness' and 'virtue' and all that. But there are rich, rich meanings and phonetic relationships in that word, 'virtue.' Really what I'm after here is the soul, filling out for the soul, amplifying for the soul the range, the meaning, the dimensionality of those words, of that word 'virtue,' both through etymology and through this phonetic correspondence or association for the soul.

And it's interesting. I want to read again something from Alasdair MacIntyre here. What we actually think virtues are in terms of our -- again, talking about anthropology -- what's our take on human nature? So he makes a very interesting point regarding if we consider human beings as innately kind of selfish, then that places the whole idea of virtues and the whole teaching of virtues in a certain light relative to that selfishness. If we think human beings are naturally [good], or deep down they're good, their true nature is good, then that casts a different light on what the virtues are. So I'm going to read the passage anyway, if I can find it. So actually, leading up to it, he talks about what he considers to be the Aristotelian understanding of virtue, but let's leave that for now and just take it from where he leaves that off. He writes:

One distinctively new way open to understand the virtues once they had been severed from their traditional context in thought and practice ... is as dispositions related in either of two alternative ways to the psychology of that newly invented social institution, the individual.^[5]

Okay, so basically he's saying, look, in classical times, in the time of Aristotle, there was a very different understanding of things. The social context, the structure of society was very different, and the whole notion of virtue was bound up with that in many ways simpler society, and the idea of the individual was also very different, or the self-sense, as I've pointed out, was very different. He says now that whole traditional context has gone, and we've got this new prominence of this new notion and new sense of ourselves as individuals, as selves in this kind of modern sense that we feel intuitively; it's not just an idea. So he writes:

Either the virtues -- or some of them -- could be understood as expressions of the natural passions of the individual, or they -- or some of them -- could be understood as dispositions necessary to curb and to limit the destructive effect of some of those natural passions. [And then he continues] It was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that morality came generally to be understood as offering a solution to the problems posed by human egoism and the content of morality came to be largely equated with altruism.

Okay, so you don't find that in Aristotle, for example, this idea of morality and altruism somehow being almost synonymous. So you've got this idea that human beings, there's this dangerous human ego -- that idea rises to the fore -- and with it, this idea of morality and altruism. He continues:

For it was in that same period that men came to be thought of as in some dangerous measure egoistic by nature.

I wonder if that's true in the East. I have no idea. But it's interesting if you read Śāntideva, who wrote in the eighth century in his Bodhicaryāvatāra, the Bodhisattva Way of Life or however you want to translate it, it's there a little bit, this kind of intense suspicion of the human tendency, of the self-sense in the human being, and egotism and selfishness therefore. You don't find it -- I don't really find it in the Pali Canon. The Buddha doesn't really -- he talks about self, but not really in this kind of way we've come almost to associate this danger of egotism and selfishness there. And nor, as far as I'm aware, do you read it in Nāgārjuna, who was writing in, let's say, the second century of the Common Era. So don't know if it's true in the East, but Alasdair MacIntyre's saying that about the West in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And he writes:

And it is only once we think of mankind as by nature dangerously egoistic that altruism becomes at once socially necessary and yet apparently impossible and, if and when it occurs, inexplicable.

So the whole question of what are the virtues -- are they natural things that are, if you like, our true nature, that just need to be supported and encouraged and nourished and expressed? Or are they rather qualities and elements of being that we can train and cultivate that actually, as he says, curb and limit our more natural passions, dispositions, which are more selfish and egoistical? So that distinction, or those two possibilities, mirror distinctions I think you can sometimes hear or read in Theravādan Dharma, where, for instance, in the Pali Canon, the Buddha often talks about three kilesas as being kind of natural to human beings -- greed, aversion, and delusion. And much less does he talk about Buddha-nature and your intrinsic goodness and that kind of thing, which we hear in the Mahāyāna, and even more so in fact in the sort of modern Western spin on Mahāyāna teachings about Buddha-nature. So it's very contemporary. Again, is it a response, a reaction to the pain, the affliction of the pandemic of inner critic, etc., that we need to kind of promulgate and promote teachings that teach us about our inner goodness, our natural, deep down, inner goodness, versus teachings on original sin or that basically you're just a fountain of three kilesas and that's kind of your basic nature, which you need to be trained out of?

So that's kind of interesting as to the nature of the virtues and how that relates to, again, our anthropology, basically, our framing and view of what a human being is. Either way, though, we could see them either way. We could see what the virtues are in relation to human nature in either of those ways. And either way can be supportive of our sīla and our ethical consideration and can also be soulmaking. So from a Soulmaking Dharma perspective, actually it doesn't matter too much. There will probably be more of a leaning in time towards this intrinsic nature and it's related to the divinity, etc. But actually it can go either way.

[1:22:11] But again, I want to just linger with the sense of -- I hope you get the sense, that this isn't abstract -- how important and how beautiful this notion of the virtues is and how beautiful they are, and what that has to do with leading a beautiful life, and our invitation, our calling to our telos, our destiny, if you like, or possible destiny if we choose it, if we support it, towards a really beautiful life, a profoundly and widely beautiful life. Plato in his Crito says, "If you cannot live virtuously, there is nothing to be gained by staying alive. Life itself has no value for you." And Socrates somewhere or other said, "A person ought not to consider their chance of living or dying; they ought only to consider on a given occasion whether they are doing right or wrong." Strong teachings, strong words. "A person ought not to consider their chance of living or dying; they ought only to consider on a given occasion whether they are doing right or wrong." Again, I'm sure the Buddha somewhere or other says, "Better one day lived with sīla (with moral virtue and uprightness) than a hundred years lived unethically, without sīla."

So, I don't know -- can you get a sense of the soul's love of moral values? And perhaps the soul's telos, our telos as human beings, our destiny, our calling, that towards which we are invited, the magnetic pull which we are potentially growing towards if we can just care for that growth? I can't remember if I've talked about him before, but there was a German theologian -- actually, let's preface that. So in the context of talking about ethics, there are all kinds of systems of moral philosophy, ethical philosophy; all kinds of ways we can consider or approach the whole realm of ethics in our lives and how we think about it, how we look at it, what we consider a priority or important, all that. And of course we tend to think about efficacy -- so what's the result of a certain action, like what's the result of my kindness or generosity? And in regard to situations like climate change, etc., we often tend to think about "What's going to make a difference?" Of course that's really important, the efficacy. But in a way, that's only, let's say, half of ethics. And the soul's love of values, love of virtues, the soul's, as I said, this telos -- its calling, its invitation to become fully human, to live that beauty, is perhaps the other half. So you have these two, this kind of balance -- I mean, there are other possibilities, as well, of course, but you have this balance of efficacy and virtue.

And I can't remember if I've talked about him before in other talks, but there was a German theologian, a Lutheran theologian called Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was born near the beginning of the twentieth century, and he lived in Germany. And he criticized outspokenly the Nazi philosophy and programme and what they implemented in their acts and all of that, what was going on in Nazi Germany. He remained completely outspoken in his criticism. He would not shut up. And he knew what this would cost him, that he would probably pay for it with his life. He could have, along with so many others, kept quiet, but he chose to just keep telling the truth as he saw it, standing in, standing by, standing for moral values; living, creating virtue, committed to it, prioritizing it -- more important, as Socrates and Plato said, than life or death.

Was his speaking -- almost a lone voice; not quite, but almost a lone voice in Germany -- was that ever going to change things? Was his speaking going to topple the Nazi regime? Were they going to say, "Oh, yeah, Dietrich, you're right! Hah! Yeah, of course. How stupid we are. We'll change our ways"? That outspokenness, that courage, that commitment, that firmness, that resolve, that purity, that boldness ... it wasn't going to change things. He wasn't an idiot. Unlikely to change things. Pretty unlikely. And much more likely was that it would cost him his life. So, unlikely it was going to change things, but was it beautiful, his outspokenness, his courage, his speaking out, his standing in and for moral value, the good? Was it beautiful? Was it noble? Was it brave? Was it inspiring? Does it remain a model to be respected and honoured and aspired to, that he chose and acted and spoke as he did back then, even at the cost of his own life? And in the end, that's what happened. In 1945, they hung him in a basement with six other people -- I don't know who -- and hung him from a meat hook and executed him, basically. Doing the right thing no matter what, virtue over efficacy sometimes. Virtue over efficacy.

Again, I can't remember if I've given this example in a talk before, but on the Titanic ship when it was sinking, there weren't enough lifeboats for everyone on the ship, so I think women and children -- actually rich women and children -- got priority, and then the remaining women and children got priority. And there were women and children and some men who were left on the ship, sinking, tilting, going down into the icy waters, no lifeboats left, abandoned, knowing they were going to die. And they started singing hymns -- hymns to God, hymns in praise of God. You think, what's the point? What's the point? But to me there's something beautiful there for the soul. There's something noble there, and I would say virtue and value there for the soul. They're going to die anyway, so what's the point? In the talks An Ecology of Love, I think I talked -- I can't remember what I called them ['instrumental' and 'soulful'], but there's a kind of activism that's very focused on practical results, and said that's really, really important as a style of activism. Then there's another kind of activism that has to do with really doing the right thing, or standing up for the right thing, or saying the right thing, and it's not so much focused on efficacy. And it might be more focused on the soul-sense of things. So one participates in an action, or one stands up for something or takes a risk for something, and it's really for the soul-sense, and related to that is this doing the right thing and virtue -- even if it doesn't lead effectively, if its effect is more limited. One's doing it for soul's sake, so to speak.

Now, virtue and soul are not always synonymous there, but there's a relationship. So just as on the Titanic sinking, there's something that one does regardless of the outcome. But these two kind of perspectives on ethics -- let's call them the perspective of virtues and the perspective of efficacy -- they're not separate. They're two ends of a spectrum, if you like, of activism and ethical conception. So consideration and respect for virtue, as I said and Alasdair MacIntyre's pointing out, has almost completely dwindled and been eclipsed by the latter approach/conception in terms of efficacy in our modern culture's world-view and its anthropology. But in a way, they're important pieces of a larger jigsaw, I would say. So it might be that, for various reasons, at our current point in history and our culture and the wider society there's a really strong case to be made for the resurrection of a kind of consideration of virtues as a primary consideration in our relationship with ethics and choice and what's happening.

So sometimes, for example in relation to climate change, there are many people who are actually involved in activism or involved in research on climate change and species loss and environmental degradation, and actually right there with current scientific data and facts and looking at the trends, some of them feel like, "We've already gone off the edge of a cliff here," and "What's the point?" is a question that arises. "What's the point? Humanity is already likely tied into a 3, 4 degrees rise in temperature, almost no matter what, and the likelihood of us collectively curbing our carbon emissions or addressing some of these issues is relatively slim." Now, sometimes we can get a bit too dualistic with regard to something like climate change or species loss, as if it's a bit black and white. As someone I was talking to pointed out, "Well, 3 degrees warming is a lot better than 8 degrees warming, and 2 degrees is better than 3 degrees." So it's never like there's a cliff beyond which everything becomes completely pointless; there are gradations there of catastrophe, if you like. Sometimes we can just get into, in the face, looking closely at the scientific data and the science of it and also at the larger picture of socio-economic trends, one can be very despairing and regard it and fall into a kind of black-and-white thinking. But actually it's more gradated, and 2 degrees is definitely better than 3 degrees; 1.5 degrees centigrade rise is definitely better than 2 degrees; 3 degrees is way better than 8 degrees, etc. -- all of which are going to be pretty hairy anyway. At least pretty hairy.

But there's another consideration here in terms of what's the point, and this has more to do with doing the right thing, which, in other words, is doing what is virtuous or doing, resonating with, choosing with, aligning oneself with what has moral value. And in that kind of relationship -- so even when, if we do say we're going off the edge of a cliff, "What's the point? We're all going down with the Titanic" or whatever it is, "It's a tragic situation. Nothing can be redeemed," whichever situation we're talking about -- this virtue ethics, this idea of doing the right thing regardless, it introduces, if you like, another dimension that it's referred to other than the efficacy of actions, other than the practical, as well as the practical outflow and results. And as I said, it starts to be referred or invites consideration of what we might call ideal values -- I want to come back to that word, 'ideal' -- of divinity, of the ethos of human beauty and potential and this invitation to fully human being, etc. It invites that whole other dimension regardless of the actual, practical result. I hope you're listening with your soul and listening for the implications for your soul in all this.

Now, if we just stay with this a little longer, I think there's a case also for not just where it's a hopeless case -- where whatever efficacy we can achieve in regard to some situation is very limited and not at all what we would want -- not only then, but also in cases where the efficacy is just uncertain or complex. So exactly when or where the efficacy of our action or of our choices is uncertain, or appears so diluted in the web of conditions, or the effects of others' actions and choices. So, for example, something like climate change -- what's the point of me choosing this or that difficult choice of renouncing whatever it is, eating meat or flying too much or whatever? What's the point of me doing that if, you know, all these other people are just going ahead? And anyway, my flight, the flight's going anyway, even if I don't get on it. The contribution of my emissions in the totality -- I can't trace it, as we outlined in one of the previous talks on ethics. I can't actually trace my exact carbon emissions and what exact result that will have, unlike if I shoot someone with a gun; it's very obviously me that did that.

So exactly these situations where the efficacy of our actions is uncertain, of our choices, or is diluted in the whole complex web of conditions or of the effects of other actions -- that might be also where the virtues aspect should be more prominent in our thinking and a guide to our moral choices. If we just think in terms of efficacy, it's like, "Yeah, the flight's going anyway. Yeah, I only ate a little section of the butt of that cow" or whatever. "The cow was going to be slaughtered anyway," etc. There's a whole other side to this, and that's the virtue perspective.

So efficacy and virtue. Now, we should point out, as well -- like I said, there are other considerations, as well, but let's just keep it at those two for now -- too much emphasis on virtue over and above efficacy of action, that wouldn't be a virtue, right? If I'm so unconcerned and unattuned to what has potential efficacy and I'm just focused on my own sense of virtue, that's going to be not very virtuous. That itself constitutes a kind of failing in terms of a virtue. It's not a moral value to do that. So, for example, someone might be extremely courageous in some situation -- I don't know, let's say soldiers at war, defending something, and a soldier is extremely courageous doing something, gets themselves shot and killed or whatever, or maybe, but not for any good purpose. It doesn't help his fellow soldiers. It doesn't protect anyone else. It doesn't have any effect in the larger scheme of things. They've just done something extremely courageous or brave without any consideration of the relative efficacy and how that weighs up in the larger equation. And if there were other choices where there was some efficacy of an action, then doing that extremely courageous action without efficacy, I don't even know if it qualifies as being courageous. It's not a virtue, okay? Too much emphasis on virtue over and above efficacy is itself not a virtue.

I'll say a couple more things for now. Hartmann makes a point that when we act virtuously, when we act in line with a moral value, or aligned with or devoted to a moral value, we're actually not concerned with ourselves, so to speak. We're concerned with how that affects another person. So my kindness towards someone else is for that other person; I'm not thinking about me and kindness. Or generosity -- I'm not thinking about me and how it affects me. I'm thinking about them and the effect on them. But I wonder whether it's that simple, especially when we get conscious of this whole area, or when we've been exposed to certain teachings. So I wonder whether ethical actions and intentions can actually be regarded as kind of double intentions, having a double intentionality, contrary to what Nicolai Hartmann says. So they are aimed at the good of another, or the good for another. My kindness, my generosity, my concern, my justice, my dispensing of justice (if I'm in that position) is aimed definitely at the good of another, but also at one's own virtue. It's resonant with and sensitive to one's own sense of virtue, one's own building of virtue, one's own telos as a human being, the demands of one's conscience.

So there's a kind of double intentionality: towards the other, but also towards one's own being, towards one's own soul, towards one's heart and the development of one's life, and that sense of the fullness and the beauty of life. So in that double intentionality it's actually, in a way, analogous to consciousness, which is aware of and directed to an object -- that's how consciousness functions; it's directed to an object, it's aware of an object -- but it's secondarily, if you like, aware of itself. Usually the secondary awareness of awareness for itself, its awareness of itself, is not usually amplified to the subject. It can be amplified with practice, though, and some of the emptiness teachings we've put out there involve amplifying that, getting a sense of the awareness of awareness that just goes naturally with any awareness. I'm aware of the clock, I'm aware of speaking, I'm aware of the words that I'm listening to, but I'm also aware that I'm aware. It's just implicitly bound up; it's part of what makes up awareness. And that sense of that can be amplified.

So it can be amplified with practice, with regard to awareness, but I wonder if awareness of virtues and an aspiration, a passion, a love for growing virtue can also be trained. I think, contrary to what Nicolai Hartmann says, there's a double intentionality there. We are concerned with our own soul and our own being. There's a kind of self-reflexive intention. Sometimes people talk about the self-reflexive nature of awareness, which just means that awareness is aware of itself while it is primarily aware of other objects. But that self-reflexive awareness that's intrinsically wrapped up and part of awareness can be amplified, as I said. So there's a self-reflexive intention in ethical action as well when we choose in this way.

Let's just quote from Hartmann then:

The object of the high-minded or loving person is not to be high-minded or loving, but that the other person, to whom something is given or whom he makes glad, may have the gift or the gladness. He gives out of love, but not for the sake of being a loving person. He is concerned not at all with his own moral being, but with the being of the other person, and indeed by no means only with that other person's moral, but with his whole being, bodily as well as mental, that is to say, with conditions that are valuable for that person.^[6]

So I just wonder if that's really true or complete. And as I said, is there not also a certain kind of joy or delight or fulfilment, a sense of beauty in exercising virtues? And is this self-reflexive, self-directed strand of being virtuous, is it akin somewhat also not just to the self-reflexive nature of awareness but also to the autoeroticism in eros? Which when we were unpacking the nature of eros, I think particularly in the Eros Unfettered talks, we said actually autoeroticism is an aspect, a component, a side of eros. In other words, when we have eros for something else, we're also enjoying our own eros, or more significantly, we also become an erotic object for ourselves. Our self becomes an erotic object for our self. It may be clearer sometimes in sexual eros, where when we're finding another erotically attractive, when we're engaged in sex with someone, there's also this finding ourselves erotically attractive, and that's actually a necessary part. It's not egoistic. It's a necessary part of how eros constellates.

So there are parallels here, but there's a kind of self-reflexive intention with awareness, with eros, and with ethical action. So all of those self-reflexive intentions or attitudes may be -- in fact they usually are -- relatively obscured to the consciousness. They're secondary, and we may not even notice them at first. And all of them, if they dominate too much the more normal, primary intentions of virtuous behaviour, or awareness directed towards something or other, or eros towards an erotic object, they will actually effect a kind of imbalanced self-centredness, unattuned and insensitive to others and to the world, right? If actually there's sexual eros or in lovemaking with someone else I'm more turned on by my self than I am with them, something's a bit off balance. If I'm more aware of the awareness, generally speaking, and not of the object -- generally speaking, apart from isolated cases of practice in certain directions -- that's not very helpful. And similarly if I'm more concerned with my own moral development than I am actually with the effects of my kindness and how it impacts on this person, or my generosity, then something's out of balance. But still, they are elements of our lives, of our minds, of our being.

So don't we aim, sometimes at least, at the image of a beautiful life? Isn't that something of what's calling us, as I said? And again, with respect to climate change or species loss, for example, where the effects of our choices and actions are not visible to us very much at all, hard to see the effects -- and that's part of the problem of globalization, a complexity and all that -- isn't this love of virtue, the sense of one's human telos, of the beautiful life, even more important than in other ethical situations or transactions? So again, with regard to soulmaking and soul and the importance for soul of these kinds of considerations, in this double intentionality or this self-reflexive intention that's kind of part and parcel of consideration of virtues and moral values, it's related to the sense or it stems from the sense of the beauty of those virtues, and the sense of soulmaking that's potential there, and the eros that we have for values, which I want to come back to.