#242： The Forgotten Virtue of Reverence
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Professor Paul Woodruff argues that reverence is a virtue that extends past religious ceremony and is vital for the flourishing of human society. He is the author of the book, Treverence: Reviving a Forgotten Virtue, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so we typically
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think of the quality of reverence as connected with religion but my guest stay on the show
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argues that reverence is a virtue that extends past religious ceremony and is it vital
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for the flourishing of human society his name is paul woodruff he's professor of humanities at the
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university of texas and the author of the book reverence renewing a forgotten virtue and on
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today's show professor woodruff and i discuss what the ancient greeks and ancient chinese can teach us
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about reverence why reverence has been forgotten in our modern age and what you can do in your own
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life to renew this virtue great show with some great insights after the show is over be sure to
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check the show notes at aom.is reverence well professor paul woodruff welcome to the show
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glad to be here uh so you are a professor of philosophy you've written uh several books uh
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you focus on greek philosophy ancient greek philosophy um and the book i'd like to talk
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about today is reverence renewing a forgotten virtue um before we get into reverence the
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virtue of reverence and what it's what it looks like let's talk about virtue in general because
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it seems like the framework for uh reverence is virtue ethics um for those who aren't familiar
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with virtue ethics can you give us a summary of what it is and how it differs from other ethical
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frameworks well most people think of ethics in terms of rules like never tell a lie and
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rule-based ethics is is is limited because we all know there are circumstances in which it seems right
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to tell a lie for example when the gestapo's knocking at the door to ask where the refugees are
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to take them away so i think of virtue ethics as uh adverbial you know the the brave person is one
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who lives uh bravely or courageously as much as as much as he can and by the way it's nice to
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talking about virtue on this website because the etymology of virtue is uh the latin word vir for man
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manliness uh or maturity right i think maybe a better a better word for what we're talking about
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here i think of a virtue as not a fixed trait because even the courageous person is sometimes
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going to fail in courage but more as a commitment to live in a certain way to make decisions in a
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certain way so the virtue ethicist thinks about uh adverbs about how to how to live and how to make
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decisions and how does one become more virtuous within um virtue ethics i mean aristotle wrote a lot
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about this in the nicomachean ethics um so how how does one become virtuous well one becomes virtuous
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according to aristotle uh by uh cult of the patterns of behavior that you see in in virtuous people
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until those patterns really become yours and you're choosing what to do out of your own
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character and not simply by imitating others so it's a it's a dual uh process becoming virtuous
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the uh the chinese theory of virtue there's a fascinating theory of virtue in the chinese
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tradition that comes down from confucius and mencius and that starts with the idea that every human
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being is born with uh certain sprouts like like rice sprouts uh that can grow into virtues if they're
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properly cultivated so for uh confucian ethics the goal of ethics is to cultivate one's own capacity
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for for living virtuously and one does that in society long story there right and and so i mean
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the the assumption there i guess in the chinese of you would be that you can't be virtuous without
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the virtue or like you have i mean so you already have to have that virtue within you in order for
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you to be able to cultivate it uh there's got to be something for you to cultivate and i i think if
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you were born uh without any uh sprout of uh bridge or or reverence or uh justice that it would be very
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hard for you to to develop it that what perhaps impossible you'd be a sociopath in becoming uh more virtuous
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you really need to find what what's in you that's already right uh and and and make that better
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and and the same in interacting with other people you need to find what what they have in them uh that
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is is moving in the right direction and try to uh cultivate that and bring that forward okay so let's
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talk about the virtue of of reverence um because i think we've all heard of you know i think when people
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think virtues they think courage justice um wisdom um but people don't think of reverence um we often
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associate reverence with religion but you argue that it's not an exclusively religious virtue so how do
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you define reverence so that it's not exclude not exclusively in the domain of religion or faith
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well let me start with the opposite of reverence i think the opposite of reverence is what the greeks
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call hubris which is the overweening pride or arrogance of a man who who really thinks he has
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god-like attributes if you think you can never go wrong if you think you're invulnerable if you think
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that you've been so successful that success will follow you all your life you're falling into hubris
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reverence is the virtue that protects you from that felt recognition of of human
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limitations a felt recognition of really what it is to be human and so i mean it is so but it's not
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humility though right i mean it's even though it's the opposite of hubris reverence isn't humility per
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se right because i think the opposite of humility is pride and pride is often a good thing uh so i i i
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some years ago gave a talk on reverence at a at a meeting of uh roman catholics and and nuns and i was
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asked this question about humility and i said that i think uh people often preach uh humility to those
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whom they want to uh bow down to them uh and the uh the nuns all nodded they they were tired of being
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told to be more humble and a great soul is reverence but it's not compatible with abject humility and i
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believe in your book you you kind of define reverence in terms of feelings right uh it reminded
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me you're definitely i think you have a good definition it reminded me of the definition of
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practical wisdom or uh i forgot the greek word for it um but it's like having the right feelings
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at the right time for the right reason so reverence seems to be based in feelings right
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i think all of the virtues are based in feelings and it's because they're based in feelings
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they they motivate us there's not much motivational power in a rule but if you have in you a strong
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feeling uh to of courage or a strong feeling of reverence that is motivating feelings make us
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do things uh shame makes us run away courage makes us stand up anger makes us want to uh reverence
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uh helps us uh feel awe in the face of something that is a greater power than we are uh the transcendent
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uh for example so certainly reverence can be connected with religion because the reverent person is
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uh feels awe at the that the thought of god but i don't think the only transcendent object
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uh for which we should feel awe is there are other transcendents uh around us we we might feel awe
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in the presence of nature we might feel awe uh in the presence of at the thought of justice as an ideal
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and so on yeah i mean those are good examples of non particularly non-religious examples of things
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you can be reverent too but i think you also talk you can be reverent towards you know even political
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institutions and that's i know that might be a hard pill for people to swallow in this day and age when
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they might be cynical about our political institutions but reverence is some that's something you could
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possibly give reverence to well the our constitution is an interesting case and so is our declaration of
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independence i don't feel reverence for the document in either case but i do feel reverence for the idea
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behind it i just was reading a wonderful book by danielle allen called our declaration about the
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declaration of independence this is an african-american woman finding in the declaration of independence
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a concept of equality that she can share well the authors of that document weren't thinking of it that
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way at all but she found in the document a commitment to the idea which she uh for which she does feel
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reverence obviously and is reverence um a public or private virtue or is it both i i think it's both
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uh i think it's a public virtue in that reverence is expressed in ceremonies that bear with other people
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i think it helps a great deal in developing any virtue to to share it with other people and in the case of
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of of reverence whenever we are sharing a ceremony and there are many different kinds of ceremony they're
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not all religious whenever we're sharing in a ceremony with other people we are in fact
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of varying a kind of reverence because when you're conducting a ceremony with the appropriate
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feelings are recognizing your own uh limitations with respect to that ceremony you're not going to
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interrupt the ceremony or step into the space uh that is occupied by the ceremony and so on
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now there's a long interesting story about ceremony and reverence yeah we'll get to that in here in a
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bit um so i mean why is reverence important because i think in this day and age you know if reverence
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is sort of this recognizing your limitations and having um you know and avoiding hubris i mean it
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seems like our day and age is just like no you know like we are limitless we can do whatever we want
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we can conquer anything if we put our mind to it and our will to it um so why would reverence
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be an important counter to that um that feeling that we have to like try to be limitless in our lives
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well i think it's important because without reverence we are vulnerable to fall into hubris
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hubris leads to overreaching and overreaching to catastrophe the greeks understood this very well
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that's the kernel of tragic wisdom and we've seen examples of this i think uh the united states after
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what it believed to be a triumphant success cold war uh went on a a rampage of hubristic decisions
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uh we we deregulated important elements of the economy which produced the crash of 08 but we invaded
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afghanistan and iraq uh there of course are controversies about these but i think it's fairly
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clear now that the the idea that we could by force of arms create a friendly democracy in iraq uh was
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full of hubris it was a disastrous decision and a good example of a failure of reverence in in high
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places oh yeah well yeah that was interesting the point you made that um hubris is most we're most
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susceptible to hubris in the the point of victory i think napoleon even talked about that he said the
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most dangerous moment in battle is the moment of victory because that's when people that's when
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soldiers can get a little crazy and just go on a rampage or they'll get overconfident and let their
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guard down a bit well and think of napoleon uh believing that he could conquer up and hitler
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having the same view of thinking that he could send an army into russia and bring it to its knees
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both uh decisions led to catastrophes for the invading armies so i mean we just talked about
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reverence on a uh a meta level of a very public level i mean but let's go on to the individual how can
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reverence make us you know better parents or better citizens or better uh you know teachers for
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example well i think a very important virtue for parents and teachers and for anybody who has
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authority over others it's valuable to be able to remember at each point that you're not a god
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that you can be wrong that you need to listen to other people who don't listen our parents who may
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very well find themselves seriously at odds with their children and i see examples of this every year
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in my among my own students if they have parents who are who are not listening to them there can be
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very serious breaks uh it can lead to uh catastrophes for the for the family and the students a student who
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who can't tell his parents that uh he wants he doesn't want to go to medical school
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he might have no other recourse than to fail all his courses i've seen that happen that's a self-destructive
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result a student who cannot tell his parents that he's gay may take his life and i've seen that
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sad result too and that's because of a lack of reverence on the part of this it's uh very sad to
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watch that teachers also i think need to be able to listen and remember that they're not divine
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yeah and that can be hard whenever you have a class full of people in there who are forced to
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listen to you right there right and get to your head um so you mentioned uh we've mentioned the
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greeks and the ancient chinese and about their insights about reverence why did they think and
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write so much about the virtue of reverence and why was it important to them reverence was important
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in the confucian tradition i think for two reasons one is that uh ceremony was very much built into
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this culture from the beginning and i think a large part of confucius motivation in trying to
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introduce ethical reforms in that early period was that he felt that ceremonies were being conducted
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uh merely by rote without any sense of their their meaning without any feeling for what they meant
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so he said for example about uh filial piety about uh he said uh so the son uh gives food to his elderly
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parents uh any better than the the man the owner who gives food to his dog the difference would be in
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the feeling of reverence that accompanied the act of piety and so on so it was very important for
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them in connection with ceremony i think it was also important to the chinese because chinese culture
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was traditionally very hierarchical and i think the more hierarchical the culture the more important
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it is that people high up in the hierarchy recognize and are frequently reminded that they're not gods
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and part of the purpose of ceremony in chinese political life i think was to remind the emperor
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and other high up people that there was something to which they were subordinate so the emperor was
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called the son of heaven uh one way of reminding him he's not god and in the ancient greeks i mean why
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why why was reverence so important to them why was reverence so important for the for the greeks yes
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i think it was important for the greeks uh for different reasons the greek life was never so
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ceremonial and it wasn't so hierarchical the greeks i think were uh resistant to hierarchy right from
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homeric times we see the soldiers trying to rebel against the generals in the beginning of homer's
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but as the greeks developed uh democratic institutions it became very important for them
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to recognize the difference between a leader and a tyrant and the difference is reverence
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that shows up a lot in greek literature tyrant is full of hubris inflamed by hubris he overreaches
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and stumbles and there's a disaster for him and sometimes for his people as well whereas the
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leader out of reverence recognizes his humanity recognizes the humanity of others and is a more
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equal part of the community so for greeks i think it was part of the democratic thinking that's
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interesting so there's like two different political systems one very hierarchical one more democratic but
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both relied on reverence to to keep them going that's how i see it yeah and yeah in the ancient
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greeks you're right they did write a lot about reverence i mean i think the the tragedies it's all
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it's all about reverence when you get down to it i think so right i mean oedipus rex you know he
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this guy that's when he became a tyrant when he just killed that guy on the road that ended up being
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his dad didn't show reverence there um and then i guess uh antigonea is that the one where
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the guy couldn't bury the lady couldn't bury her brother right yeah all acts of hubris um
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it's really it's interesting so let's talk about this you you say uh reverence is a forgotten virtue
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why is that why have why has reverence become a forgotten virtue in our day and age well i think
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there are two reasons why especially uh in american culture uh reverence is is forgotten
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uh one of them is that we have forgotten the importance of ceremony and that has something
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to do with the revolution in christianity that that the reformation represents protestants uh increasingly
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uh have rejected uh have rejected ceremony which they associated with the catholics that they were
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rejecting well i think that's part of it is uh the intensely protestant nature of our of our culture
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and i say that as somebody who grew up in a protestant tradition but i think it's also due to our
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a cultural commitment to rejecting hierarchy i think there's a sad faith in that because there's
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hierarchy everywhere you look in our society we're not free here hierarchy and yet uh we like to think
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that we are and so we uh we forget uh that very often we are in positions of great authority that require
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reverence reverence it's interesting that we know we don't we don't have much of a hierarchy
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um in our culture today but you know even the greeks they didn't have really hierarchy but yet they
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were able to still cultivate reverence so why i mean why were they able to do it but we're not able to
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i think that the ancient greeks had a uh uh had a culture that was infused with the tragic wisdom
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that uh arrogance leads to overreaching which leads to a fall and we just don't seem to have that
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in our culture and i i think that perhaps we don't have it in the culture because our history has been
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one of of successful overreaching from one side of the country to the other uh america has uh has been
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uh very successful in in reaching what were supposed to be its boundaries the the war of
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independence was partly about pushing back the boundaries that the british had set for westward
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expansion just don't like limits we don't like human limits at all we we i think are are reluctant
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in our culture to accept human limitations i think we've reached the which we're going to be in
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more and more serious trouble okay if we don't if we don't recognize our limitations okay let's go
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back to this idea of of ceremony and in the reverent life and why why is ritual and ceremony
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an important part of reverence i i think we we develop reverence by by speaking the the language of
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reverence which is the language of ritual and ceremony uh when when you meet and shake hands
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uh we don't think of that as anything terribly special uh but it is actually it seems to me
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expressing a measure of reverence here we are in uh together we're we're both human uh we greet each
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other we shake hands uh when a student puts up her hand in the classroom uh before speaking so as not
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to interrupt another uh that's an act of of reverence a very small and subtle one but a very important
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one because it it is a a little ceremony that that greases uh oils that the gears of human interaction
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and i mean but as you said uh confucius was worried about the possibility of having ceremony
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without reverence um sort of sort of just wrote things so i mean how do you ensure that these
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rituals or ceremonies that we that pop up in our life whether big or small um maintain a a measure of
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reverence within them that's hard and i think it's also really important i think to maintain
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meaningful uh ritual and ceremony we have to be prepared to change as society itself changes
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what it what it means uh to be a friend in terms of of ritual and ceremony is being changed by the
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internet and i as an older person don't know this very well but there are of course rituals that are
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involved in the social media that that are being lifted without much forethought but i think they're
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probably very important to the ongoing uh relationships that that develop on these these on these new media
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we have to be prepared for all kinds of of change if you if you just stick with the same
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ceremonies and let them become dry and brittle and stiff then of course the feeling is going to fall
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away from them and we'll go look for something else a lot of traditional forms of of christian
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worship are are falling away among protestants especially and we have new styles of new styles of
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worship new styles of church and probably that's what we we need is a willingness uh to evolve
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new new ceremonies or to find ways of of infusing old ceremonies with new meaning so i mean i guess it
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is possibly it's so reverence to tradition uh you can have it but you don't want it to be rigid because
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that's what will lead to that sort of calcified empty ritual calcified is a good word yeah and so i mean
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i guess you could use your reverence towards tradition to maybe yes create something new
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revitalize using that reverence or tradition to revitalize and make something new exactly well put
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i think that's it i mean it reminds me we had um uh ted linden on the pod he's a classicist he wrote
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the ghost of war and he talked about the ancient greek's reverence towards homer and the iliad and the
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the epic poems and that's where they sort of use that reverence to create new ways of fighting so
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the phalanx was inspired by that but it was new it was radically different from what how they fought
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in the iliad but they had this reverence towards it that allowed them to create this new form of battle
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more a ritualized form of battle yes for the for the greeks especially uh war did involve
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uh ritual they went into battle singing the pian they uh they went into battle in line each man
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carrying a fairly small shield which protected both himself and this and the arm of the man
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to his left this is a concept that that i think is is still important in in our own in our own
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military part of the goal of military training is to teach people through military ceremony
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how to be interdependent and how to function together in a unit and have a reverent attitude
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towards war yes which is kind of interesting people wouldn't think you'd need reverence in war but
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the greeks are very conscious about being reverent even in war well yes and they're conscious of the
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of how easy it is in war uh to overreach the iliad is is is wonderful about you know patroclus
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uh goes off into battle wearing achilles armor which is already a little act of hubris
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and is so successful partly because people think he is achilles and run away from him
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so successful that he goes too far and because he goes too far he's killed and then the man who kills
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him hector is so puffed up with his own uh success at killing patroclus and and winning various other
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aspects of the battle that he stays out on the battlefield after his wise younger brother advises
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him to go in and that leads to disaster so they were well aware that you need to keep yourself
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be under control in battle and realize that you are mortal that you can be hurt and that the people
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around you can be hurt um so you mentioned shame earlier um and you you talk about shame a lot
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throughout the book and shame i feel like today in our culture has a a stigma to it like shame is bad
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you don't want to feel shameful there's shame is talk shame is toxic uh is the thing you say but you argue
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that shame it plays a vital role in the irreverent life why is that well shame i think uh think of as
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as alien to our our culture uh and and along with that we pretend that honor is not very important
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either honor and shame are the a pair of values good and good and bad in my experience as a
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manager and and leader in the academic sphere i was a chairman and a dean and a director i've had
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lots of administrative jobs in my experience people are more concerned about honor and shame in the
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workplace than they are about their salaries salaries matter partly because of the lower salary
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uh is thoughtful and the higher salary is thought of as an honor i think we're shame is is is the most
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one of the most powerful motivators in human life shame gets you moving the coach will get the player
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moving by shaming the player in the in in warfare uh people go forward into danger because they're ashamed
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in the face of their friends uh to run away shame is enormously important but shame of course can lead
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us to do terrible things so i think it's important to recognize that the reverent person uh feels shame
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at the right time and in the right way and for the right reasons one reason hector dies in the iliad is
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that he's ashamed to go in and face the brother who advised him to stay out and shame leads to death which leads
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to the destruction of troy so shame can be terribly harmful so we're right to be nervous about it but so can
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other emotions here can be harmful anger makes you want to hit people and anger can be very harmful on the other
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hand we need to have a capacity for anger because when things are are wrong when wrong things are done
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to us or people around us if we don't feel anger i think we're seriously morally deficient
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but like shame anger and felt in the right way in the right amount and at the right people and so on
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so the virtuous person is the person who's committed uh to uh directing these emotions in the in the best
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way so i think this raises an interesting point so shame and honor they're they're social feelings
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right they're feelings you get because other people are watching you um yes and so i mean that i guess
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that suggests that reverence it's hard to live a reverent life by yourself as a as a hermit um i mean
00:32:09.940
do you need to be embedded in a community to actually you know live the full expression of
00:32:15.940
reverence i believe that yes i think for for all of the virtues you need to get it in a community
00:32:22.020
it's we are social animals we need each other for i mean we to be human is to speak a language you
00:32:33.080
can't speak a line yourself you need to have other people in order to learn a language let alone
00:32:39.240
actually speak it so i i think being part of a community is essential to be a human being
00:32:48.040
the greeks again who have such an influence on my thought the greeks felt that a human being
00:32:54.600
was a social animal and therefore couldn't really live a human life as as a as a recluse entirely a god
00:33:05.120
would have the power uh to live alone and they thought that wild beasts might be able to live
00:33:12.160
alone they might i think they were wrong about the beasts but the thought that you could live a
00:33:18.180
fully human life completely on your own without being part of a community is the hubris of thinking
00:33:25.780
that you have divine powers we're not divine we need each other and do those individuals you're
00:33:31.360
embedded with like in order to be reverent do they also need to be reverent i mean what if you live
00:33:35.640
in a community that just full of irreverence um would it be possible to cultivate that virtue within
00:33:42.500
yourself surrounded by other individuals who don't have reverence i think there's a lot of luck
00:33:50.680
in living a virtuous life if you're born into a slave holding society and you and you're taught
00:33:59.520
to treat other human beings with violence and contempt it will be hard for you to be a good person
00:34:06.400
if you're born into a society that has uh only contempt for ceremony and and politeness it will be hard
00:34:21.200
for you to cultivate reverence perhaps impossible i think if you're born into a society that is
00:34:29.500
deeply vicious in one way or another you're morally unlucky i sometimes use the example of
00:34:38.380
courage suppose i i want to be courageous and i've been put in a military unit that is commanded
00:34:45.860
by a coward in which everyone is a coward i want to practice acts of courage to become more courageous
00:34:53.240
but i simply cannot practice courage by myself if i if i run up alone against the machine gun nest i do
00:35:02.120
something really stupid and i'll be killed and that's not courage courage is not stupid you need
00:35:08.600
to develop a virtue you need to be able to practice it and to practice it you need to be with other
00:35:16.120
people who allow you to practice it who give you a context in which you can practice it but we we need
00:35:25.000
so you need to be thoughtful about the people you associate with if you want to cultivate this virtue
00:35:29.320
that's that's true i was i was pleased one of my one of my daughters actually chose her high school
00:35:37.000
with this in mind she thought if she went to high school a she would have to be part of a community
00:35:44.680
that would good for her so she went to high school b instead recognizing i think intuitively
00:35:52.280
the importance of the kind of community you're in for the kind of person you could that film that make
00:35:57.880
you feel proud as a as a dad and as a philosophy professor oh yes yeah i bet um so we've been
00:36:07.160
talking about sort of around the edge of things you can do to cultivate reverence in your life um
00:36:12.120
you know take part in ceremonies recognize your limitations but i mean your books about renewing
00:36:17.480
reverence i mean any i know it's it's hard to boil this down into like you know five talking points
00:36:23.800
but uh any things or actions that people can do to cultivate a more reverent life within themselves
00:36:32.600
well first of all i think we should pay attention there are all inspiring experiences that we can so
00:36:44.600
easily have uh the uh uh the beauty uh of there's beauty in in things that we normally think of as
00:36:53.240
as being ugly uh you you you walk across a road and there's a little oil spill and there's a
00:36:59.000
a rainbow in a puddle uh that could be awe inspiring we can practice awe by paying attention to all the
00:37:07.240
beauties around us by by noticing the beauty in the most common uh sparrow that flies across in front of us
00:37:17.080
we can pay attention to the sunrise and the sunset everyone gets one each of those a day and they're
00:37:25.880
awe inspiring but paying attention is the first thing i think uh the second talking point i would have
00:37:34.760
about uh renewing reverence is finding occasions to speak which of languages of reverence finding
00:37:42.440
ceremonial occasions of various kinds of i think music is one of the languages of reverence poetry can reach
00:37:55.160
you don't have to go to a church or or synagogue or a mosque or a temple to have the kind of experience
00:38:04.360
reverence that that that will cultivate reverence for you with you uh and then perhaps the third thing is to
00:38:16.440
keep asking yourself uh what you're doing uh pay attention to your your own actions and what they
00:38:26.440
what they mean it would be very dangerous to suppose well i've uh i've been a reverent person all my all
00:38:35.560
my life and i am safely ensconced in in my virtue i don't have to worry about this anymore that that's
00:38:43.320
very dangerous that's hubris in fact so you need to be aware of yourself and of what you're doing on
00:38:50.520
each occasion and never feel that you've got it made uh morally speaking think of reverence as a
00:38:58.360
continuing commitment and not something you achieve and then with other people i i talk about asking the
00:39:06.680
the right question the most irreverent seeming person prize somewhere in him or her a little
00:39:17.960
sprout a little green growing sprout of reverence that you could identify if you ask the right
00:39:23.640
question so ask the right questions that's great well professor woodruff this has been a great
00:39:27.640
conversation um is there any place anywhere people can go to learn more about your work well uh i don't
00:39:33.560
have a website but my books are all on amazon and they're all in print and just so you can find
00:39:41.480
there's a there's a little page at amazon with my my things on it the most recent book is a second
00:39:49.400
edition of the book on reverence which has a new chapter on renewing reverence and also a chapter on
00:39:56.040
sacred respecting what is sacred in other people's traditions which i think is very important and also
00:40:02.680
a chapter on compassion which i believe is a very important part of reverence and then the
00:40:08.200
the the most recent book uh before that revision is called the ajax dilemma which is really about
00:40:14.600
reverence leadership well very good well we'll be sure to link to that on our our website when
00:40:19.000
we publish the podcast so people can find those um professor woodruff this has been a great
00:40:23.080
conversation thanks so much for your time it's been a pleasure my guest today is paul woodruff he's
00:40:26.680
a professor of humanities at the university of texas he's also the author of the book reverence
00:40:30.760
renewing a forgotten virtue and it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere
00:40:42.440
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:40:46.840
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com our show is edited
00:40:51.240
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00:41:04.360
and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly