THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

Why virtue is the most important thing and Socrates’ challenge to be the person you pretend to be…

Virtue is the ethical quality of goodness or excellence. Ancient authors believed virtue was the most important characteristic you could possess and that a virtuous person was the most important thing you could become. You could define clearly and embody fully ethical qualities like wisdom and justice, courage and self-discipline, or piety and justice that were virtuous.

Virtue was given many names, by a myriad of thinkers, over every century since the Axial Age. She is a broad goodness, usefulness, or highest natural state. She is also a goddess, a wisdom, and an ideal. You can still name her. It matters more than anything that you do.

This is what that wise person in your life meant when she told you “it is more important who you become than what you become.” You can be a doctor or a lawyer or a charismatic politician but lack virtue and it is all loss. On the other hand, you can work a trade with virtue, you can lose a job with virtue, you can be lowly esteemed and conduct your heart, soul, and mind like an emperor.

Plato once passed onto learners the wisdom of his Master:

The greatest way to live

with honor in this world

is to be who you pretend to be.

-Socrates

In ancient philosophic ethics, particularly Stoicism, honor (kalos) is an alternate term for virtue (arete). What Socrates meant was that most people go around feigning to be a good person, while in actuality they vacillate between their ideal self and their base self. It is easy to do this. It is easy to fall into the trap of wavering between who you wish to be and who you wish to outgrow over and over. Many people do this for a lifetime.

The fact of the matter is that everyone pretends to be a good person. A virtuous person is actually a good person because they have aligned their ideal-self with their words and actions.

A virtuous person has learned to be who they pretend to be, and for Socrates, that is the most important thing.

Anytime you progress towards your more virtuous self… you are growing.

Be good to each other,

Mark and Eric

TEXT AND ROCK