Stumble It!It occurs to me that it can be said that “service” of any sort–if it is to any ‘other’ than the self–is a true virtue. I would like to agree with the idea without reservation, but I can’t. It seems to me that service given to another is a good thing only if the service is not to enable and an evil person to continue to commit evil.
Hmmm, but that is a tough line of thought to finish. Is a wife’s continued service to an abusive husband then wrong? Conversely, does the cook to an evil dictator commit an evil act by providing such a dictator with nutritious sustenance?
I want to agree that, generally, non coerced service to another is a virtue, but at the very most, it must be a subordinate virtue. It is a virtue so long as it does not cause harm or enable someone to do harm.
Thus, in a way, it is wrong to continue to provide sustenance to the dictator. One should quit such a job out of conscience. In the same way the abused spouse should remove themselves from the abusive context and no longer enable the abuse by proximity. Of course, and especially in both of these two special cases, it could be said that these situations are by their nature coercive, thus exempting either of any wrongdoing. The abused spouse can rarely leave the situation safely. I would imagine the same is true of the cook for the evil dictator.
Or consider another case, I decide to pick up a rock off the shore of the beach and to serve it my whole life long, day in and day out. Surely, there is no virtue in such an act? Such selflessness is admirable, in a way, but selflessness can be foolishness too, right?
I think in the end, “service to others” in and of itself, can not be defined as a virtue–at least a necessary virtue–if we take necessary virtues to be those acts, thoughts, and states of being which are by definition always “good.” It may be a subordinate virtue, a helping virtue, an enabling virtue, or something of the like (anyone have a better term?), but it is not a cardinal virtue.
This thinking is not clear, but that is what this blog is about…thinking it through on some of these fun issues. Your thoughts, clarifications and better wisdom are most welcome.
Tags: coerce, coercion, evil, evil dictator, foolishness, necessary virtue, self, selflessness, serve, service, service to others, subordinate virtue, the other, The Virtues, virtue, wisdom
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at +00:0020084231UTC13: am31
I think that during the course of your argument (maybe or maybe not intentional) your path slightly veered off the original course… you started with the “act of service” and you end with “service to others”. I would argue that “service to others” is a subset of the “act of service”. Paul (in Corinthians) states that there are different kinds of service, although unfortunately doesn’t elaborate… His point appears to be that even though there are different kinds of service, there is but one God that is served… which would lead me understand that as His children we are called to serve Him and yet may serve Him in many different ways. Serving others is naturally one way in which we can serve Him… and thus is one many of types of “service” (a whole different argument could be made that there are many different kinds of “service to others”).
How we serve others is naturally affected by our sinful nature, as anything else we do. Therefore anything we do as an “act” is tainted by this sinful nature – therefore someone choosing to “serve” an evil person is not engaging in an act that comes from being virtuous. Would it be safe to say that all “acts” have a secular origin or a Christ-centered origin. It therefore seems to be important to distinguish between an act that originates from virtuousness and an actual virtue that is a quality borne from Christ-centeredness.
I believe that service really can’t be viewed as a virtue to begin with, because it is an action and not a aspect or quality of a person – a person who is virtuous would engage in acts of service that reveal the virtues of their spirit. Service (or the lack of) is really evidence of the state of the heart’s selflessness, love, compassion, etc. Thus a person can be misguided or wrongly motivated in who, what and how they serve…
I may not make any sense, but hopefully have helped to further such thoughts of what is a virtue and what is not and how “acts of service” are part of the picture…or not.
Monday, August 18, 2008 at +00:0020082331UTC18: pm31
sraedeboer,
I love the second to last paragraph starting: “I believe that service really can’t be viewed as a virtue to begin with, because it is an action and not a aspect or quality of a person – a person who is virtuous would engage in acts of service that reveal the virtues of their spirit.”
That paragraph wraps up your previous thoughts, and I think you are right. If virtues are a mark of character and not an individual act alone (and I think it is) then your points are right on.
So, it even goes to show that motivation is important. One can serve good food to the dictator to show good will in the hopes of bending his ear about the goodness of following Jesus’s example, etc… Surely, this is a mark of virtue. Perhaps it is not the most effective strategy to reform an evil government, or it may be the only one that works. It is hard to know until the effort is made. It is also easy to call it a virtuous act, even if ineffective.
Such a chef, if s/he cultivated a character of goodness, would eventually give up with this tactic if no progress was made…thus not continuing to enable evil either. Wisdom would teach such a person the difference.