The Good Life, Part 1
Originally posted 25 October 2017.
This month, it seems, my blog concerns the books I am reading. I have a bone I am chewing on—who am I going to be in retirement?—and I am letting one literary relic lead me to the next. A great deal of the process is governed by serendipity. Recently, I was in the Massanutten Regional Library here in Harrisonburg to attend a program on regional rockabilly and rock and roll bands of the early 1960s. I had a minute to kill, so I headed upstairs to the psychology and philosophy section and noticed James Hillman’s The Force of Character and the Lasting Life. Way back when, I was a fan of Hillman’s work, so checked the book out and brought it home. I have read half, but I have gotten immersed in another book.
Early last week I decided I wanted a haircut, and there is a small shop downtown with a barber pole and everything like barbershops used to be. Yes, I am nostalgic; I wanted to find my local home, not a chain and not a trendy hipster shop. So there, happily, I went. It wasn’t exactly what I hoped for—a local version of Floyd’s Barbershop—but I think it will do. And—the point of the narrative diversion—next door is a crowded bookshop, filled chaotically with paperbacks and videotapes. After my haircut, I stopped in and browsed, finding Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, which I once owned and probably read, and The Good Life by Rev. Peter J. Gomes of Harvard’s Memorial Church. Of course, I have known that all my recent readings have been dancing around that very old-fashioned conception of “the good life,” so for a mere $1.99, I grabbed it, and that is what has pushed Hillman into the background.
By the way, the above books pretty well illustrate one of the schisms that I am negotiating: Gomes’ recovery of the Christian Virtues and Hillman’s and Moore’s (Hillman is Moore’s mentor) pantheistic depth psychology, unified communal tradition versus individual psyche mythmush (my made-up word). Still, both root themselves in the myths and politics of the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews. But then the Greeks and Hebrews are “always already” present in everything we read. In these books, the fact is more obvious.
Gomes’s The Good Life is divided into three sections. Part III, “The Good Life: The Great Virtues” is what I really wanted to read. I have been an unusually well-behaved reader this time and began with the first two sections. The three chapters in Part I, “The Good Life: In Search of Noble Purpose,” situate the Gomes’ ruminations in the early 21st Century, after the Twin Towers have fallen and as the Millennial Generation begins to enter college. Gomes’ college kids are, of course, Harvard kids, and his affection for those young adults and their awakened interest in the big questions and for the long traditions of Harvard, its presidents, and its prestigious faculty, permeate the chapters with the sweet oder of equanimity. He counter-points his proud nostalgia and great expectations, however, with stories of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon years when “the best and the brightest” taught us that great educations and erudition are erratic predictors of moral competence. McGeorge Bundy versus Archibald Cox. All of which leads to a critique of the idea that knowledge guarantees knowledge of the virtues and that knowledge of the virtues guarantees the good life.
While occasionally dipping into the Judeo-Christian tradition, here Gomes plunges into the admittedly aristocratic ethical system of Aristotle. He latches on to this line from Aristotle: “What is to prevent us, then, from concluding that the happy person is the one who, adequately furnished with external goods, engages in activities in accordance with complete virtue, not for just any period of time but over a complete life?” It is a great question. And in exploring it, Gomes makes sure that we get virtue and happiness properly ordered. Virtue is the goal and means, while happiness is the bi-product. I appreciate that distinction, as I have to admit that, even at this late date in my life, happiness is not really my goal in life. “Happiness,” to me, sounds a bit too much like “cheerfulness” and too little like “contentment.” In addition, he ventures into James Hillman’s territory explored in The Soul’s Code. What are we meant to do, what does our daimon wish? Or as Gomes phrases it, “We are only truly happy when we are doing what we are meant to do and being what we are meant to be.” Here, I think, the virtues are a means through which we allow ourselves to be ourselves.
But Gomes ends Section I with a bigger, real world set of questions situated in a Judeo-Christian context. In that context, “what we are meant to be” becomes less of a choice or of fate and more an obligation, one that we should not be merely grateful for (Gomes actually belittles “gratitude” as a “cold virtue”—something I will have to think about, since gratitude is one of my goals this year), but should diligently and willingly enact. And thus Gomes raises the practical question that I guess every Harvard grad must face as the big wide world enthusiastically welcomes them upon graduation: how are we to behave in an ethical (dare we say “righteous”) manner in a world that is less than perfect, in a world that requires us not to be our virtuous selves if we are to be successful in it?
Well, this took me longer to get through than I expected. Next time, Section II. But let me admit, right here, right now, that it strikes me that as I am trying to figure out how to live a good life in retirement that I am living a pretty good life. Or am I merely illustrating the slippery nature of the word “good.”