Character and Ethics
Items on personal character and public action
Gratitude and Leading in Challenging Times
Sat 18 Nov 2006 • Responses: 4 • by Fred Harburg
“Genuine gratitude in the face of difficulty is the attribute that most distinguishes the great from the good.”
Selfless gratitude—the ability to appreciate the goodness of life while simultaneously feeling deep empathy for the pain and suffering of others—is one of a leader’s most important qualities. Yet the anxieties of a world rife with terrorism, economic uncertainty, illnesses, hunger, and injustice, can choke the lifeblood from one’s sense of gratitude. What’s a leader to do?
In closely observing senior leaders from many different walks of life, I have seen that genuine gratitude in the face of difficulty is an attribute—perhaps the attribute—that most distinguishes the great from the good. There are three reasons gratitude is such an essential quality for men and women who are called to positions of service as leaders. First, gratitude is the key to authentic emotional connection. Second, it is the basis for emotional resilience. Finally, the expression of genuine gratitude unlocks the door to discretionary effort.
The Business of Business
Wed 11 Oct 2006 • Responses: 6 • by Dallas Willard
Business is a profession, and professions have a moral role in society
In this exclusive article, Senior Fellow Dallas Willard discusses the purpose of being in business. He argues for a return to the view of commerce as a profession like law and medicine and discusses what this would mean in practice. So, if you are in business, what does true success look like? There is, he says, much more to business than its mere survival and profit.
Freeing the Slaves of the Market
Fri 08 Sep 2006 • Responses: 3 • by Vigen Guroian
Why (and how) we should teach literature to business students
Dr. Vigen Guroian has concluded that his college is “complicit in producing so-called educated people who are deaf to wisdom, blind to beauty, and incapable of mounting an argument for goodness and truth against evil and falsehood.” In response, he decided this spring to try an experiment with a class of business undergrads, helping them to make the distinction between a truly liberating education and mere training for work, showing them how literature can help make them—and us—more fully human. This is his story.
The Connecticut Yankee Is Dead
Wed 17 May 2006 by Peter L. Edman
Long Live the Connecticut Yankee . . .
Trinity Forum Director of Research Peter Edman discusses some of the themes in our new curriculum on technology, Children of Prometheus. When we think about technology, it’s also important to think about human nature, for while our technology changes, our nature is more constant. He introduces several books and ideas that deserve your attention and will provide a taste for the Prometheus curriculum.
On Classics and the Moral Imagination
Wed 07 Dec 2005 by Peter Edman
One of my own areas of interest and study is what is sometimes called the “moral imagination.” Given the caricature of business leaders these days, people might be surprised at how many leaders I come across who are interested in this topic.
Many of you have asked for more resources on developing the moral imagination, which is a key component of becoming a “humane business” leader, in Russell Kirk’s term. It is related directly to our deepest human impulses and best ideals. A good introduction to the concept is an essay by my friend Vigen Guroian, “Why Should Businessmen Read Great Literature.” In answer to the rhetorical question of his title, he asserts:
The answer is simple: to be free, and in that freedom to grow into fuller, more complete, virtuous, and interesting human beings who share with each other a living and life-giving culture.
In the modern world, achieving this freedom often requires an active effort to escape—escaping from the prison of our all-consuming culture and its presuppositions, from the reductionist jailers who tell us that the world we can see is the only reality.
On Friendship
Mon 28 Nov 2005 by TTF Staff
These are some books we recommend for further reading on the topic of Friendship, the subject of our Reading by Cicero.
- Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1974).
- Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (books 8 & 9). One of the classic treatments of friendship.
Richard Lamb, The Pursuit of God in the Company of Friends (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003). An in-depth and practical contemporary handbook on spiritual friendship with annotated bibliography.- C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Harvest Books, 1960, 1971).
- Lilian B. Rubin, Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives (New York: Harper & Row, 1985). A psychological study.
- Caroline J. Simon, The Disciplined Heart: Love, Destiny, & Imagination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). Discusses friendship and other loves in the context of literature and philosophy. Accessible and insightful.
Buford on Newman
Tue 12 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
Bob Buford has sent out a passage from John Henry Newman’s sermons as recommended summer reading for his e-mail list. I thought it worth sharing with those of you who might not be on that list.
This is Newman’s Sermon 30, preached on the Feast of St. Luke, “The Danger of Accomplishments,” from his Parochial & Plain Sermons (1908). As a literature person, I take exception to a good part of the sermon—he falls prey to false dichotomies—but its overall point is well taken.
Now the danger of an elegant and polite education is, that it separates feeling and acting; it teaches us to think, speak, and be affected aright, without forcing us to practise what is right. . . .
Daedalus and Icarus
Wed 06 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
Our forthcoming technology curriculum includes a section from Bertrand Russell’s Icarus, Or, the Future of Science.
Icarus was written in 1924 in response to a 1923 published lecture by JBS Haldane, Daedalus, Or Science and the Future. The debate between these two great men of science is reconsidered in the Spring 2005 issue of The New Atlantis by Charles T. Rubin.
The real argument is about the meaning of and prospects for moral progress, a debate as relevant today as it was then. Haldane believed that morality must (and will) adapt to novel material conditions of life by developing novel ideals. Russell feared for the future because he doubted the ability of human beings to generate sufficient “kindliness” to employ the great powers unleashed by modern science to socially good ends.
Both authors explore the problem of relating moral and technological progress with sufficient depth that we would benefit by reexamining this debate with a view to our own time. But the manner in which they frame the problem stands in the way of articulating a clear moral goal that might serve as progress’s purpose and judge. With serious ethical discussion thus sidelined, technological change itself becomes the fundamental imperative, despite the reasonable doubts both Haldane and Russell have concerning its ultimate consequences. And while Haldane is more loath to acknowledge it than Russell, the net result of their debate is a tragic view of mankind’s future, marked by an irreconcilable and destructive mismatch between our aspiration to understand nature and the power we gain from that knowledge.
James Stockdale, RIP
Wed 06 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
Speaking of out-of-print Readings, in response to the news this morning of the death of Adm. James Stockdale (1923–2005), here is a quote from his essay “The World of Epictetus,” which appeared in The Atlantic 241 (April 1978): 98-106.
Stockdale was a philosopher, professor, vice-presidential candidate, Navy admiral, prisoner of war, and recipient of the Medal of Honor. May he rest in peace. The World of Epictetus was the fifth Trinity Forum Reading; Os Guinness wrote the foreword and Admiral Stockdale kindly granted us reprint permission.
When I ejected from the airplane on that September morn in 1965, I had left the land of technology. I had entered the world of Epictetus, and it’s a world that few of us, whether we know it or not, are ever far away from.
Dallas Willard on Ethics
Wed 06 Jul 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Dallas Willard is quoted in an article on ethical lapses among leaders in the Christian Science Monitor.
In an article of 6 July 2005, “It’s All Good, Boss!,” correspondent G. Jeffrey MacDonald (whose article has several good insights and quotes from others as well), sets up his dilemma so:
Though everyone struggles to recognize his or her own ethical lapses, the task of catching one’s own errors in judgment becomes especially challenging for high achievers, whether they run major companies or head up a small household. Reasons are several, but one looms largest: People in authority tend to lack the honest input that everyone needs to maintain a moral life.
Dr. Willard is quoted offering a positive vision of calling and moral accountability as a counterpoint to a more traditional perspective that sees ethical dilemmas as only shades of gray.
