Vice is a virtue these days. Indulgence, lavishness, and vanity are held up as some of the highest goods. Phrases like “retail therapy,” “guilty pleasure,” and “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” are almost viewed as positive values. On the other hand, virtue is seen as a drag. We hear, “go big or go home,” “nice guys finish last,” and “don’t be a buzzkill.”
While there is an ounce of truth to each of these phrases, the bigger idea behind them—that virtue is a bummer or a bore or a waste of life—is a misconception. The truth is, virtue is beautiful, and it leads to the best possible life.
Before we can see why virtue leads to a better life, we have to understand what virtue actually is—something ordered, proportioned, and aligned with reality, much like beauty itself.
Let’s consider beauty. If you’ve ever used word processing software, you’re probably familiar with line justification. If you set the software to right-justify, all of the lines are lined up along the right side of the page. To justify lines on a page is to order them a certain way. In order for this to happen, there needs to be a boundary around the page—the margins—for the lines to be ordered against.
These two attributes—borders and justification—go a long way in producing a beautiful representation of text on the page. In fact, these two attributes are important components of anything beautiful. Take a look at this lithograph, titled “The Good Shepherd,” by Gebhard Fugel.
Most obviously, there is the rectangular boundary that makes up the outer edges of the image. All of the main elements within the border—Christ, the sheep, the clouds, etc—are justified in relation to both the border and to one another. When these elements are well-ordered, clearly defined, and proportional, the image is more beautiful. There is a certain balance, a certain uniformity, to the whole scene.
The uniformity is not perfect, but this doesn’t diminish the beauty of the image. In fact, if the image was perfectly uniform, it would lack another important component of beauty: variety. According to Edgar Allan Poe, “the “Uniformity” is the principle: — the “Variety” is but the principle’s natural safeguard from self-destruction by excess of self.”
These two central components of beauty—uniformity and variety—are aligned with the very nature of reality. Iain McGilchrist, considered by many to be one of the greatest neuroscientists and philosophers of our time, comes to a similar conclusion about the nature of reality as Poe does about the nature of beauty.
In an extraordinary lecture, titled “Division and Union,” at Ralston University, McGilchrist explained that both division and union are important, and that it is “the business of the unfolding of the cosmos to make [distinction within sameness] grow and flourish—an eternal creative unfolding of generality into uniqueness. It’s what we mean by there being anything at all.”
He used snowflakes as an example. “No two snowflakes have the same structure. But interestingly, each arm of the snowflake obeys the same pattern that each other arm of the six arms of the snowflake obey…They seem to me to be a beautiful example of beauty and complexity that give rise to things that are unified and unique, and yet have interesting parts that make them the whole that they are.”
Photos by Wilson Alwyn Bentley.
So, in beauty and in the very nature of the universe, there is uniformity and variety. These are determined, in large part, by the borders and justification of its components.
Let’s look at justification again. The word, justification, comes from Late Latin iustificationem. It means, “administration of justice.” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=justification) We generally think of justice in terms of laws and the legal system. A judge serves justice. But on a deeper level, it is much like justification in word processing software.
Justice, in the legal sense, means a boundary is set and enforced, a line is drawn in a place deemed fair or right. Justice in terms of beauty is, similarly, all about forming the boundaries of the materials in the right relationship to themselves and to other boundaries, giving them uniformity and variety. Think back to justification in word processing software. It’s all about lining things up a certain way, relative to specific boundaries.
Ultimately, though, justice is not just a legal term or a component of a beautiful document. It is a virtue, a way of being in alignment with the true nature of reality.
It is the virtue of justice that underlies all of these other fields we call justice. According to Aristotle, virtue is “the golden mean between two vices,” and “means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for the right purpose.”
When Poe spoke of variety being the natural safeguard from uniformity’s self-destruction by excess of self, he was talking about a “golden mean between two vices.” Variety prevents uniformity from being excessively uniform, and uniformity prevents variety from being chaotic. These virtues compose beauty. Their excesses, which are vices, produce ugliness—disproportionality, injustice, disorder, etc.
In the same way, the promotion of indulgence, lavishness, and vanity, as the highest goods is vicious. Indulgence is the excess of temperance (deprivation is its deficiency, the other end of the golden mean of temperance). Lavishness is an excess of spending and consuming (stinginess is its deficiency) while generosity is the mean. And vanity, in our culture, is the excess of self-worth (low self-esteem is its deficiency).
On a surface level, indulgence sounds great. It means I get to eat all the ice cream I want. But in reality, it’s a shallow, unrealistic approach to consumption. Sure, limiting myself to one scoop of ice cream might feel restrictive in the moment, but the true buzzkill is the lethargy and health issues that follow excess. Temperance leads to a better, more beautiful life.
To favor vice is really just to take a shallow view, to aim lower, to miss the bigger picture. It is to not understand the true values of things, or to understand them but still fail to put them in the right order. To live virtuously is to put things in their proper place just the way a painter does with strokes on a canvas. To live virtuously is to live beautifully.
To do so, we must learn the nature of reality and align our actions with the highest values. Then, we are in a position to live our best lives. It’s time to stop settling for less. It’s time to raise ourselves beyond the limited ways of vice.
