Against Unselfishness
Taking a break from current events (1918—), I’d like to recommend a fascinating book that re-imagines economics. Self-consciously bold, the book rejects the utilitarian view of man implicit in “neo-classical” thinking (Ricardo, Malthus, later Mises), which focuses on man as an imperfectly rational calculator of his own self-interest. Instead, it attempts to view the economic activities of men and women in a much wider context—that of their life as social animals, members of families and communities, and creatures of God. The volume, Human Goods, Economic Evils, by Edward Hadas, is one of the latest productions of the admirable ISI Books—which seems to be picking up the task once performed by Regnery Publishing, providing philosophical and cultural nourishment to what remains of the conservative mind. (ISI is stoking the frontal cortex, while other “conservative” publishers seem fixed on the reptilian brain. Who can blame them? I try to keep mine well-fed, granting it a single rat every day.) In an online article, Hadas sums up the motives for his writing:
The faithless reason of methodological atheism is dangerous to Christians, but it can be overcome. The task is not easy, because the atheistic explanations cannot exactly be disproved (’falsified’, in the language of the fashionable philosophy of science). They can and should be ridiculed for making insulting claims about men and their motivations, for relying on preposterous unacknowledged motivations and for denying the power of goodness, but ridicule of one set of explanations can only be truly effective if it is accompanied by a superior alternative. What are needed are Christian reconstructions of the various social sciences, remade to be in the true image of man. In other words, a new reason must be created, one which corresponds with the teachings of faith. For scholars, the need is quite practical. If Christian social scientists and teachers cannot rely on working practices that are based on men seen as social, religious and moral creatures, they will inevitably fall back on the existing models, based on men seen as individualistic, worldly and selfish. The result will be incomplete and sometimes immoral analyses.
From that starting point, Hadas lays out in thumbnail what he sees as a more complete anthropology on which to base other human sciences such as economics. He nicely sums up man as “good but weak,” and views human economic activity in the much wider context of man’s effort to “humanize” his environment—to make a world more responsive to his needs and wants. These are inherently “good,” but man is “weak,” and will frequently mistake his needs, and “want” what he should not have (or far more of it than he needs). Instead of the value-neutral language of conventional economics, which exempts itself from judging human desires, instead relying on a kind of moral “price system,” in which all desires are basically interchangeable, Hadas draws on the Classical and Christian tradition (and the work of Alasdair Macintyre) to incorporate serious value judgments into his cogent economic analysis. His goal, candidly stated throughout, is to create a solid theoretical framework that will unite into a more rigorous system the insights and injunctions of Catholic Social Teaching—a much debated subject which I discussed in brief last week.
I’m still only halfway through the book—which I’m reading because I’m speaking, alongside Hadas, at an ISI conference in April that celebrates Wilhelm Röpke—but I can already highly recommend it. There’s just one statement in it which provokes my dissent on a critical point, and which violates the deep common sense which animates the rest of the book. On pages 26-27, Hadas assaults the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham that underlies modern economic thinking, making sensible observations on the reality of everyday altruism:
In reality, however, men often look beyond themselves in their search for the good. A quick observation of the labor of mothers, fathers, coworkers, soldiers or lovers shows that men frequently search for the good of others, often so resolutely that they willingly make huge personal sacrifices.
So far so good. But the next two sentences, I think, plunge off the cliff: “A more Christian analysis suggests that men should search for the greatest good, which involves a profound denial of all selfishness and self-interest.”
Here Hadas goes much too far, and makes of Christian ethics something like Ayn Rand’s caricature of “altruism” which she pillories at tedious length throughout her novels. To move many notches up the scale of literary quality, this is the variety of Christianity which motivates the self-extinguishing clergymen in the brilliant Camp of the Saints—who welcome the conquest of the West by Moslems and Hindus in the name of selflessness. It is the same “unselfishness” that C.S. Lewis’ devil advocates in The Screwtape Letters.
If I could add a few qualifiers to Hadas’ language, such as “denial of unjust selfishness” or “distorted self-interest,” I could adopt his statement and move on. But given his use of “profound,” I don’t think he’d let me, and because of that the point is worth arguing.
Are Christians really called to a “profound” “denial of all self-interest”? In the most fundamental task which faces any of us, seeking eternal salvation, our first motive is the pursuit of eternal happiness with God. This is no hedonistic or shallow search for satisfaction, but the proper functioning of a human will as it seeks the goal for which it was created, which God Himself surrounded with rewards that will redound to the self (and to no one else—God doesn’t need us). The alternative, damnation, is equally hedged around with punishments which one will endure by oneself. It seems that the divine economy itself is set up based on the assumption that man will pursue happiness and shun unhappiness, and this is as it should be. In the writings of the most mystical of saints, we occasionally find such a pure love of God that the saint himself (or more usually herself) actually ceases to care about the happiness of heaven—so pure is his love of God. However, that is a difference of emphasis, not a contradiction. Where mystics have arisen who actually professed that they did not care whether their souls were damned or saved, they were typically condemned; indeed, this was one of the flaws that got the Quietists denounced. A certain eternal self-seeking is not just permitted; it seems to be commanded. (Jesus Himself was not averse to offering punishments and rewards—a fact for which Nietzsche condemned Him, as I remember.)
Let’s move to more controversial ground, the natural order. If man is to reject all self-interest, this must include every sphere of life—including the realm of eros. On a radically altruistic analysis such as this, none of us should seek out the company of people whose conversation we enjoy, or wed those to whom we are attracted. Instead, we ought to mortify such selfish inclinations, and seek out the loneliest person we can find. We should mortify biology, and find a spouse among the ugliest and least marriageable—lest the taint of selfishness attach itself to the sacrament.
Equally, I cannot see why we should prefer the interests of our own children or family members over those of strangers, or of our countrymen over foreigners. Strictly applied, such a standard would dynamite the Christian notion of subsidiarity, which ranks our obligations as proceeding outward from the self, with the greatest claims upon us made by those who are nearest (relatives and neighbors). Perhaps one could make a case that in strict justice we owe our own children nutrition before we owe it to strangers, but in dispensing it we would always have to be careful to disentangle any motives of personal affection or attachment, and strive not to take undue pleasure in it.
Does it sound like I’m addressing a problem that doesn’t exist, knocking down a straw man in a forest where no one will hear it fall? I wish I were. The first time I discussed this issue with a friend, she confirmed that she too had been troubled by the question of selfishness: “I’ve always wanted to adopt, and I still intend to. But for a long time I wondered if it was even moral to have my own children, when there are so many unwanted children out there whom I could raise instead.”
To which I responded: “That’s kind of creepy and sick, don’t you think?” She allowed that it probably was. Not everyone would agree. A decade ago I wrote an article addressing a book which literally argued that Westerners did not have the right to reproduce themselves in a world troubled by hunger, and I coined a word to describe the book’s position: “demographic masochism.” The whole discussion reminded me of the words of a wise Christian psychologist, who inquired, “Jesus said to love your neighbor as you love yourself. But what if you hate yourself?”
Let me carry this reductio just one step farther—into the absolute ethical contradiction to which it leads. If all self-interest is evil, then what does it mean when I perform an act of kindness to someone (let’s say, I volunteer to shovel out his driveway)? Whose interests am I serving? His. If he accepts that offer, whose interests is he serving? His own. In other words, he is being selfish. Which is evil. Indeed, by even offering him this service, I am in essence serving as a near occasion of sin, a temptation to self-interest on his part. In which case, the kindest thing I could do—thinking of his eternal salvation—would be not to make the offer. Unless, of course, I was sure he would be virtuous enough to refuse. (Of course, continuing the regress, he might reluctantly accept, if only to allow me the chance to do something virtuous--just as the woman I did not want and who did not want me might unselfishly accept my marriage proposal, the better to let each of us make a lifelong sacrifice.) In such a world, everyone would be holding the door for others, who would smile but refuse to walk through them. And no one would get anywhere.
More realistically, the people who accepted this notion of unselfishness would be holding the doors for the selfish ones, who would prosper enormously in the absence of anyone defending even their most legitimate, just self-interest. Any claim of weakness by the unscrupulous would be immediately met with a wave of self-accusation by the scrupulous, who would avoid the crippling guilt by giving in to every demand. All of which pretty well describes current ethnic politics in America and Europe.
Instead of such a frankly hopeless standard, Christians are better off accepting the fact that they have selves with legitimate interests, which they should pursue—but keeping a skeptical eye, informed by justice and charity, on the excesses of selfishness which tempt us constantly. We need not make some universal moral calculus which determines if each of our actions is motivated by “the greatest good” (and for whom? the greatest number?). Instead we must walk through the thicket of mixed and conflicting motives, asking always for the Grace which perfects, but does not abolish, nature.
Comments
So, why did GOD give people a mind that would do science snd become atheist?
[not that I am]
Free Will?
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If all self-interest is evil, then what does it mean when I perform an act of kindness to someone (let’s say, I volunteer to shovel out his driveway)? Whose interests am I serving? His. If he accepts that offer, whose interests is he serving? His own.
WTF????
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I see my friend, John, laboring to remove and replace the engine in his car. I, being a good neighbor offer my services and we drink some beer, pull out the offensive engine and replace it.
Who’s interest am I serving? My grease stained hands? My billfold? What is my interest? What do I have to gain for my effort? What profit did I make?
A damn good neighbor and friend thats what. No Charge.
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We live to Glorify God.
Which means:
* to keep the Sundays and Holy Days of obligation holy, by hearing Mass and resting from servile work;
* to keep the days of fasting and abstinence appointed by the Church;
* to go to confession at least once a year;
* to receive the Blessed Sacrament at least once a year and that at Easter or thereabouts;
* to contribute to the support of our pastors;
* not to marry within a certain degree of kindred nor to solemnize marriage at the forbidden times.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04154a.htm
I would also like to throw in the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy:
* To instruct the ignorant;
* To counsel the doubtful;
* To admonish sinners;
* To bear wrongs patiently;
* To forgive offences willingly;
* To comfort the afflicted;
* To pray for the living and the dead;
* To feed the hungry;
* To give drink to the thirsty;
* To clothe the naked;
* To harbour the harbourless;
* To visit the sick;
* To ransom the captive;
* To bury the dead.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10198d.htm
But you knew all of that, Mr Zmirak!
THOSE are the actions of the unselfish. Does that mean going out and taking in a homeless (harbourless) family? Well, yes, but not YOU personally should be responsible for it: there are Religious men and women that do that kind of thing, and your almsgiving to those Orders help much more than a selfishly unselfish act of “doing it yourself”.
The only “caveat” to the Corporal Works of Mercy are the sister Spiritual Works. While harbouring the harbourless, it is best you instruct them away from their ignorance by teaching the Catholic Faith; that they be counciled of their doubts, they be admonished for their sins, that they be treated patiently, to forgive them, to comfort them, and to pray for them and their ancestors. THAT is the difference between Enlightenment-influenced ideas of “charity” and the True Charity of the Catholic Church. Along with giving someone some bread to eat, they should be instructed in the One True Faith, and not by just any “yahoo” with a Bible and a missionary zeal, but by authentic, legitimate, and well catechized members of Religious Orders.
This whole idea of personal “unselfishness” is Revolution run a muck; it was first seen in Sacred Scripture, with Judas Iscariot complaining the oil that was used to anoint Jesus wasn’t sold off to help the poor.
In fear of being accused of “false ecumenicism”, I will post a part of a Methodist minister’s sermon (if anyone needs a link, I will post it after this message, we are allowed only two links per post):
<<Fundamentally we are reminded of the priority of loving devotion to Jesus. For those gathered in the house of Lazarus, and Mary and Martha, it is a call to be faithful in the face of Jesus’ impending death. The woman, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, seems to have a past that we have not encountered before. We simply know that she had sat at Jesus’ feet and learned from him (something women did not do) and that she and her sister owed a huge debt of gratitude to Jesus for having raised their brother from the dead.
She anoints Jesus feet with a funeral ointment whose scent would remind each there of death. This precious nard perfume (made from a tree that grows in west central south Arabia) could have been sold for three hundred denarii (pieces of silver). This was an equivalent to a laborer’s annual wage!
Judas objects. The community needed the money. We have ministry to do. We have hundreds for whom to care. However, Jesus denounces Judas’ self-righteous attitude that masks greed and avarice. There will always be poor people. Rather, this act of forgiveness and devotion represented in this woman’s tears and love will not be here forever.
Love for Jesus outweighs all other considerations; this is bedrock theology for the whole of the gospel of John. Love surpasses all theology, all thoughts, all heresies. The gnostic heresy based on secrets (part of the heresy which invaded the early church with which the gospel writer John was especially concerned), assures one of the spirit, and certainly means keeping the commandments. However, there is no secret knowledge in this attitude of love. Love becomes the hallmark of the disciple community.>>
It is Forgiveness and Love that drives the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy, THAT is what makes them the true pillars of unselfishness.
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http://www.parkavemethodist.org/sermon.php?s=21
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St. Thomas, the theologian of the Church, gives an easy solution to this question, and it is that the Common Good, since man is a social animal, and the State is a perfect society, supercedes the private good, nor is it merely an aggregate of private goods. This solution has numerous virtues, not the least of which is truth, but also that it serves to rebuke the Anders Nygreninsts, and the Libertarians equally.
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Only a month in Rome, and Mr.Zmirak already seems in need of getting out of Dodge.
It might be of metaphysical benefit were he to take a copy of Ortega Y Gassett’s ‘Reflections On Hunting’ along into the countryside and find something worthwhile to shoot.
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Truth is subversive to power....and Reality is subversive to truth....and Mystery is subversive to reality....
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TO AL::: Man is NOT a “social animal”....personality precedes property, being precedes personality, spirit precedes being....Man is a supernatural yearning to re-join the “caritas”, the heart of the Creator...Man is always inside the Mystery...there is no “common good” without first, a “private good”...in the meanwhile the emperors have all their clothes....and yours and mine to boot…
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A very interesting article. Thanks, Mr. Zmirak, for bringing this book to readers’ attention. I liked your phrase near the start about “the reptilian brain”.
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About selfishness, we may be facing what Chesterton
calls “the paradox of courage”, that only those who
are not afraid to die can save themselves. So it is
that only those who can overlook their desires that
can achieve them.
It reminds me of a Tanya Huff story, based on the
Shoemaker and the Elves fairy tale, in which a
hardworking mechanic is given a chance to achieve her
heart’s desire, but realizes that it comes at the cost
of enslaving an alien race. She gives it up, then
setting the alien race free.
The next day she sees that the aliens have given her
the blueprints to achieve her heart’s desire.
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Great Post. The book in on my shelf, on deck, I need to pull it off and get to it soon.
Pax
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Great article, Mr. Zmirak.
“Well, yes, but not YOU personally should be
responsible for it: there are Religious men and women
that do that kind of thing, and your almsgiving to
those Orders help much more than a selfishly
unselfish act of “doing it yourself”.
Mr. Capp, where did you get this notion? Why is it
necessarily better to delegate such works of charity
to the Religious rather than doing it yourself? If you
yourself can take in the poor family without undue
risks to yourself or to others, by all means take them
in. How is it “selfishly unselfish” to do the good you
can?
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With all due respect, Miss (Mrs.?) Konkola, you seem
to have missed Mr. Zmirak’s point. He is saying that
*not* all self-interest is proud or tainted by
original sin. “Love your neighbor as you love your-
-self” means that some love of self is legitimate. It
is in everyone’s enlightened self-interest to achieve
happiness, i.e. to get into Heaven. Dying to self is
not some nihilistic goal in itself, but rather a means
to live to God, which is the best thing anyone can
achieve for himself. Loving God and neihbor is true,
humble, meek love of self. “Pure altruism” is the
inverse of Randian self-centeredness. It postulates
a zero-sum universe, where one cannot truly give to
others without taking away from oneself. No, giving
really does benefit the giver, too, and humility helps
the humble. Enlightened self-interest, as illuminated
by Faith, is not pride.
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“which is the best thing anyone can
achieve for himself.”
And before anyone says “that’s salvation by works!” I
mean that we “achieve” salvation by receiving the freely
given gift of God and cooperating with it.
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“ Just one example: Puritan England was arguably the most Christian country in modern Western history.”
This would require *quite* the argument. When they
weren’t busy persecuting the true Faith, banning Christmas, pillaging
Ireland, or dethroning their rightful monarch, they
may have found some time for “arguably” more Christian
behavior.
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Thank you, Caper. I’ll explicate my point a little further: The self has LEGITIMATE claims, which it is due in strict justice, much less charity. Sometimes, for the sake of peace or humility, one should willingly give these up ("turn the other cheek"). At other times, one must vigorously defend one’s rights--and by extension, the right’s of one’s family, then community, then nation. To do anything else is to be complicit in fostering, rewarding, and encouraging INJUSTICE. Which is evil. That is the problem with liberalism--it substitutes for the nuanced view of the Good which emerged within Christendom an empty, formalistic altruism which EVERY BIT AS EVIL as the opposite vice, disordered selfishness. Suicide is just as sinful as murder.
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@Caper
The reason to turn this kind of work to the religious
is that they have facilities and knowledge that you may
lack.
It is not wise to take needy people into our homes,
maily because we may not be able to handle them. They
might be delusional, or prone to violence, or have a
contagious disease and we may not have the sanitary
facilities to handle it. We may not be able to give them
the time they need, either.
But a religious order has worked out those problems, and
can do what is needed. It behooves us to help them do
the job, either by donations, or by donating some of our
time, either of them will be welcome.
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Adriana,
Thank you for your comment. However, I am not sure
that is what Mr. Capp was aiming at. I made the
stipulation, IF you are able to do it, then why not?
He says that it would be “‘selfish’ unselfishness” to
take in the homeless ourselves. If by “selfish” he
means that we would be committing imprudence in the
course of trying to go “all out,” then that makes
sense. But why housing the needy is *proper* to the
Religious, if that was his claim, I don’t see.
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Okay, I see, he said “the ‘selfish’ unselfisness of
DOING IT YOURSELF.” All good, my bad, etc. Spoken
conversation has this advantage over blogging, that
you can ask for an immediate clarification.
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<<Why is it necessarily better to delegate such works of charity to the Religious rather than doing it yourself?>>
Other than personal and familial obligations, the Religious Orders have the necessary division of labour to do the job well. I’m not saying that if your sister-in-law needs a place to stay for a few weeks to send her packing to the nearest homeless shelter run by a Religious Order. At that point, because of your obligations to family, it would be best to take her in yourself. However, it’s not your responsibility to take in strangers yourself; the Good Samaritan teaches that lesson. He pays the innkeeper to take over after his initial, necessary charity.
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Mr. Zmirak, you needed no help from me, to be sure.
But your thoughts so inspired me that I may have been
a bit “selfish” myself in pre-empting you!
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Thank you for gracious correction of my assumption
that you were a woman, Mr. Konkola.
Is it in the enlightened self-interest of a person to
be humble? Does a person benefit from being humble?
Does humble and meek submission to criticism help a
person attain happiness?
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Re Mr. Konkola’s statement:
“Some examples of what used to be required for properly mortified pride/ self-love: if you find yourself getting angry at insults under any circumstances, that is a sign of unmortified pride/sinful self-love.”
Okay, if that was the standard which Christian confessors were recommending, I can respond to it clearly: I reject it. It’s not humility, it’s masochism, of an almost clinical variety.
Were that sort of thing essential to Christianity, it would indeed be the “slave morality” that some have called it. I doubt very much that the knights who fought the Crusades, the kings who built Christendom, the fathers who protected and nurtured families and populated it, the aristocrats who endowed monasteries, the peasants who defended their rights against rapacious land-barons, the Irishmen who resisted the depredations of the humble, loving Puritans who happened to be attempting to exterminate them, practiced any such attitude. On the other hand, I can certainly imagine the bishops who are demolishing the Episcopal church reacting this way to Moslem clerics threatening to impose Sharia.
If that was the sort of thing the clergy were dispensing, I’m sure everyday Christians knew enough to take it with a grain of salt--and wonder how it served the clergy’s interest to make the laity so very accommodating.
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“The above reactions provided another test of hypocrisy: proud love to talk about other people’s flaws, the humble eagerly discuss their own. Contemporaries used their understanding of self-love to reverse the perception: the less somebody talked about his flaws, the greater a sinner he was. On the other hand, the best people seemed to be full of flaws—if you just listened to what they said. “
IF this were true, Mr. Konkola, then humble people
would love to discuss their own faults. Then they would
derive self-satisfaction from talking about them. So
talking about their faults would be a form of self-love.
You cannot eradicate the basic desire for personal
happiness. If happiness comes through patience, meek-
-ness, mildness, etc., then enlightened people will
know that these bring happiness, which they should
desire for themselves. To be profoundly and really
indifferent to one’s own fate is not to be Christian but
to be a Buddhist nihilist.
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@Caper
Indeed, the false humility of always discussing
one’s fault *is* actually pride. It is basically
a way to be always talking about yourself, and
that prevents other people to talking about
something that interests more, mainly themselves
True humility in this case is listening and not
saying too much..
It is hard to stomach, but actually our sins are
not very interesting to other people…
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I can’t believe we are still discussing this after I nailed it on the forth “writeback”!
All while quoting a Methodist minister or pastor or preacher or whatever-they’re-called, nonetheless!
Face it, unselfishness is using your talents to Glorify God, which, once again, consists of the Precepts of the Church. An adjunct of what one gathers from following the Precepts of the Church are the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy, which are the ONLY proper and True way to provide Charity. Notice admonishing the sinner is on the list. That doesn’t mean to make him sit around and listen to our sins, but to point out his own. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t remove the beam from our own eye; but after we remove that beam, we should then help our brother remove the mote from his. God tells us (Matthew 7:5): “cast out first the beam in thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
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Adriana,
Yes, ostentatious humility is actually pride. But then
you point out that part of true humility is indulging
others, who desire to talk about themselves. But
surely humility does not entail providing others an
occasion of sin. So some talking about oneself must
be permissible, for a humble person encourages others
to do so, within limits of course. If everyone followed
the “I only listen” rule, no one would talk, so no one
could listen. This is the same reductio that Mr. Zmirak
employed above. Some self-interest, including in con-
-versation, must be legitimate. This may sound self-
obvious (and it is), but the dogma of pure, unadulterated
hopeless, undesiring self-emptying altruism would deny
this. A true understanding of Christian humility shows
that Christ fulfills all legitimate personal
desires, He does not abolish them.
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Man is NOT a “social animal”....personality precedes property, being precedes personality, spirit precedes being....Man is a supernatural yearning to re-join the “caritas”, the heart of the Creator...Man is always inside the Mystery...there is no “common good” without first, a “private good”...in the meanwhile the emperors have all their clothes....and yours and mine to boot…
What to make of this--while man does have a spiritual element, that is not all of it, nor is it the defining part to the exclusion of the body. Heaven, supernatural communion with God, is “social,” it is not private, and God Himself is not a private good, but a common good--see Charles de Koninck on this point.
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Mr. Chan,
In my experience, people who use more than one ellipsis
per sentence have, shall we say, “unique” views of the
world.
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John,
You noted that if humility demands what I say it demands, then Christianity really is the self-destructing slave mentality it is accused of being, and you do not want to have anything to do with that kind of religion—i.e., you accept Nietzsche. Do give serious consideration to the possibility, discussed in detail and with evidence by your Catholic ancestors, that the effect of pride/self love is counterintuitive because it creates so many harmful side-effects that it destroys the both the proud and the society they live in. Equally illogically, humility creates personality traits that are highly beneficial and end up bringing the success the humble do not seek. (European Chivalry is an example of the above: the Crusades failed and, when home, the knights most of the time fought each other destroying large swaths of society in the process. The detailed psychology about pride’s dangers may well have been developed by confessors on the basis of the “research” they did on late medieval European nobility.)
As to evidence to support the non-logical causality, I attach two quotations that illustrate the mentality of the 17th-century Englishmen, who originally founded the British Empire. The description of dying to the world comes from Richad Baxter. He was the spiritual leader of the Non-Conformists and, measured by published editions, the most popular religious writer in 17th-century England—the attitude Baxter describes probably explains the famous British “stiff upper lip.” The description of humility comes from a popular puritan writer, Anthony Horneck. A suggestion: read Horneck slowly, point by point, and at each point stop and introspect to see if you would have passed that test of humility. While doing this, keep in mind that Baxter and Horneck describe attitudes embraced by one of the most successful groups of people known to history. For a much earlier example of a similar attitude, read up on the “Gravitas” of Republican Rome.
“ . . . the spiritual man is dead and senseless to the things of the flesh, and has no savour in those things that are other men’s delights . . . He tastes no more sweetness in their pleasures than in a chip. He wonders what they can see or taste in the things of the world, that they so run after it. To be rich or poor, do but little differ in his eyes. To be high or low is all one to him, considering these things as accommodations to the flesh . . . If you applaud and honour him, he takes it but as if you breathed on him; at the best it is but a sweeter kind of breath. And if you vilify, and reproach, and unjustly condemn him, he takes it for no great hurt. . . Nay what if I said that if you imprison him, threaten him, torment him, yea, put him to death, he does not much regard it, nor make any great matter of it, so far as he is crucified to the world.
“ . . . he is a truly humble Man, that does despise himself, and is contented to be counted not only humble, but vile, and wretched too; that . . . is contented his defects and infirmities should be known, bears Injuries patiently, is glad of mean employments to show his love to God, does not care for being known . . . and looks upon himself as nothing; is circumspect, and modest, delights not in superfluous talk, laughs but seldom . . . is well pleased with being made the filth of the World, and as the off-scouring of all things: That does think himself unworthy of the least crumb he eats, of the least drop of drink, he drinks . . . That can hear a friendly check with meekness, can ask forgiveness, in case he does unawares offend . . . That is contented, that those whom he loves, and in whom he trusted, and who have been kind to him, should forsake him, abandon him, and persecute him, and can bear with the ingratitude of men, to whom he has done many good turns . . . That can be contented to see his neighbour honour’d, and he himself slighted.
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I will answer Mr. Konkola’s remarks in my blog Monday. Suffice it for now that I think he and his sources misunderstand humility, and make of Christianity a world-despising, gnostic sect.
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Mr. Konkola,
If you are arguing that Mr. Zmirak misunderstands
humility as the Catholic Church teaches it, why do
you cite Protestants? I give Protestants no authority,
and I doubt Mr. Zmirak does.
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Caper,
17th century English Protestants, particularly the Puritans, got their religious psychology from late medieval Catholic confessors’ manuals. Please, read Thomas A Kempis’s, “The Imitation of Christ.” That text was the second most popular book (after the Bible) in 16th-century Europe, and a slightly “Protestantized” version of it was a runaway bestseller in Protestant England. Kempis had a few things to say about the meaning of humility, and there is no doubt he set forth the mainstream Catholic view.
As to John, I’m eagerly looking forward to your criticism. Particularly I want to see your response to the argument that the effects of pride and humility are counterintuitive and non-logical. For background, look at the piece I published last Spring on TakiMag on pride and humility in the Bush administration. More details of the argument can be found in the “Meek Imperialists: Humility in 17th-century England” article referenced at the end of the TakiMag piece.
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Mr. Konkola,
Then please quote Thomas a Kempis directly. When you cite a source in an argument with a Catholic, you should use Catholic sources. As a general rule of argumentation, when you cite an authority, it should be one your audience recognizes as such.
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Mr. Konkola: “the effects of pride and humility are counterintuitive and non-logical.”
No one here is disputing this point. You simply failed to recognize Mr. Zmirak’s point: there are legitimate self-interests that are not at all proud. And the absolute denial of any and all interest in one’s own happiness, virtue, state, etc., is not true humility but rather nihilism. That humility is good and pride bad is not at issue in this debate.
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“and a slightly “Protestantized” version of it was a runaway bestseller in Protestant England.”
It must have been very protestantized, for they would have had to ditch clear sacramental theology of the saint. If they messed that up, I give no credence to the idea that they faithfully rendered what else they found.
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But when you are talking with a Catholic, crossover texts taht crossed over only because the blatantly Catholic parts were cut out and the text and the author’s point butched don’t win you any points in the argument.
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“butchered”
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