Virtue of Necessity

I believe there is a world of difference between a necessary virtue and a virtue of necessity. While a necessary virtue is a virtue in the proper sense and it's a virtue irrespective of who practices and when it is practiced. For instance, hope is a necessary virtue at all times. We know we are not beings fashioned  once and for all and we time and again hope to better our lives. On the contrary, a virtue of necessity is subjective and conditioned to particular time and to particular persons. In short, it is the justification of one's errors. Let me illustrate with a practical example that you and I are well acquainted with in our every day life. You see some people to be extremely courteous and respectful all of a sudden to your surprise. You begin to wonder what produced such a change in a person who cared not whether you existed previously or not. Some time most probably s/he may come to you for some help or other. Continuation of your relationship much depends on how you respond to. Here being respectful is a virtue of necessity. Our politicians are the best examples!

 On the contrary we come across men and women who in good times and bad times profess the integrity of conscience. They prefer to die rather to sacrifice the ideals the stand for. Simple difference between virtue of necessity and a necessary virtue is its necessity itself. To be better human I have no need to act in front of someone much less I need to advertise my little deeds. However, I need to be loving, caring, truthful, trusting to be able to become everyday a better human person from what I was the day gone by. 
In short, virtue is a matter of conviction not of convenience. Bribing, stealing, murdering will never become virtues just because you think there is a necessity to do so. To be a better human is a pressing need than anything else. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Tragedy of Macebeth

Image
Recently I was reading Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth.   The following dialogues are worth mentioning. "Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desire." Macbeth before murdering the king.  "Is this a dagger I see before me? I have thee not, and yet I see thee still." Macbeth's guilt is manifested in the form of a dagger. "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?" Lady Macbeth washes her hand every quarter of an hour. She sees blood stains in her hand. Her guilt is manifested in this way. She again says: "Here is the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." It was a pleasant reading. There are a lot of things we can learn from this tragedy. There are Macbethian symptoms in our modern age. There are people who live in guilt and die of it eventually. Perhaps Shakespeare helps us to see the psychotic and neurotic tendencies that ...
Read more

Psychology of Evil

Image
Evil is defined as the absence of good, a non-entity, etc. For instance, a person who has only one hand suffers a physical evil. While physical evil is something that everybody understands, or within the range of our understanding, let alone the causes for it. It is the moral evil that is trickier. I suppose we are led to believe there is no such a thing as evil through our studies than positively affirming its presence. Everybody agrees to some extent that there is evil in the world; but not all of us will be willing to say it is an entity.  I remember my friend and I used to discuss about such issues for sometime in the last academic year. A few boys also used to scare the others with their stories. As I was reading through Scott Peck's The People of the Lie , I got an idea of what evil is.  Though it is worth discussing the ideas present therein, I wish to state one thought that runs through the entire book. The biggest strength of evil is its deception, unwillingness...
Read more

Swelling Is not Growth

Image
Of late I have become apprehensive of statements such as "India is competing the rest of the world" in terms of economy. A couple of days back I happend to be in a city super mall, here in Nashik. It is certainly one of the richest commercial centres I have ever visited. On my way back I did observe our citizens carrying logs on their heads, children roaming the streets in tattered clothes. Something struck me hard as I gave thought to popular saying of the day "India shines." Can we call India a growing country or a swelling country? Does this sound funny, perhaps yes. Growth is intergral development and never scattered development. What we see in India is the accumulation of riches by a few and an existential struggle for survival by the majority. We never call "swelling as a growth." It is not even a symptom of growth. Rather it is a sign of  maladies. In the name of industrialization and modernization today the indigenous people in many parts of the s...
Read more