 Themes, two talks, first by Gregory Sadler on what kind of moral theory it is, and some other stuff. Second by Irfan Kawaja on physical appearance and moral character. However, we begin with Gregory Sadler from Marist College. Gregory, if you come forward, and his title again is what kind of moral theory does an ensemble hold? And we have, what, 45 minutes to read papers, so you can get up to questions and that. So, we're going to make some jibes back and forth about Benedictines and Franciscans. Today is actually the feast of St. Anselm, so I'm very happy to be giving the paper on his feast day. Anselm of Canterbury, famous to philosophy for his so-called ontological argument, is less well known for his moral theory. Equally worthy of attention, revealing itself to a tent of study that's surprisingly rich and original. What I intend this paper to do is to set out some main lines of Anselm's moral theory, motivated by providing an answer to the question, what kind of moral theory does Anselm hold? Can we effectively locate it under rubric typically disgusting contemporary classes in literature, like utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and the like? Or does it collectively fuse together elements or aspects of such moral theories? Or is it perhaps sui generis defying any such categorization, perhaps challenging the adequacy of such classificatory schemes? Two obstacles block the path to providing answers to these questions. One of these is the unsystematic nature of Anselm's moral thought as preserved in writing, which he never consolidated into a treatise resembling Aristotle's Nick and McCain Ethics or Connors' Groundwork. So, one must weave together threads running through his treatises, the letters, the Vita, the dicta ansami, even his prayers and meditations in order to generate a full view of his moral theory. There is, however, one central point around which the many aspects of his moral theory constellate. One concept and experience that is rectitude or rightness of will kept for its own sake, which, as Dam Kushe observed, appears alongside Id Qomayas Kogitari in a protest as one of St. Anselm's most central thoughts. You see this as we go through his works reoccurring. But this formula requires considerable unpacking and specification, which one needs to do following lines Anselm himself set out, again, in multiple and unpredictable locations. So the first part, categories of the good. One central aspect to any moral theory involves the basic good or goods the theory recognizes and values. What does it hold to be good? How does it order or arrange goods in relation to each other? What good, if any, does it ascribe priority to as the most valuable, as fundamental, even as the basis of other goodnesses? Anselm's works contain numerous recognitions of references to and distinctions between a surprisingly broad and rich variety of goods. Can we reduce these to some sort of general classification? In the monologian he says to himself, you are accustomed to consider nothing good except on account of some usefulness or on account of some intrinsic goodness, giving health and what conduces to health as examples of the former and beauty and what contributes to beauty of the latter. All goods in this view are either useful goods that is valuable and typically willed for the sake of something else or intrinsic, hynestum, goods, valuable and willed for their own sakes or on their own accounts. The monologian treatment also introduces several other important Anselmian doctrines, including the notion of distinctively different degrees as opposed to mere quantities of goodness or greatness, reflected not only in subjective evaluations, but objectively in the very being of things. He argues for an ontological dependency of goods on other goods, ultimately on the divine goodness, which later retells this as a dynamic unity of whatever it is better to be than not to be, including supreme wisdom, truth, goodness, beauty, greatness and justice among the other divine attributes. Just as importantly, he accords to reason not only a capacity to discern between and order goods and values, but also a normative requirement to employ this capacity rightly. He says, for a rational nature, being rational is nothing other than being able to distinguish the just from the non-just, the true from the non-true, the good from the non-good, and the more good from the less good. Ultimately, this apprehension of values assumes not only cognitive or inferential, but also affective and cognitive forms. Already in Anselm's earliest work, we glimpse the human being as called to distinguish and act upon their distinctions between different kinds and degrees of goodness, understanding and framing these perhaps by reference to a divine source and exemplar of goodness. So what additional lighter clarity do his subsequent works bring? Skipping over to David Etate for the moment, in David Etate, the distinction between goods willed for the sake of other things and goods willed for their own sakes gets revisited, framed in terms of whether one can will something unwillingly, in some respects, that is, whether one can have a will divided against itself and over several objects. Anselm uses health as an example of a good will for its own sake with drinking absinthe, which we probably wouldn't associate with health these days, but they did back then, as something willed for the sake of health, indicating that something like health might be regarded in certain situations, or by some persons, as an intrinsic good, by others as merely useful or instrumental. Considering a forced choice between willing the end of keeping rectitude of will or willing to preserve one's life or safety, Anselm introduces another important consideration, the unavoidable necessity to choose between different goods, to order them to prefer and to prioritize a theme he expands in the Daghasu family. Anselm introduces further refinements bearing on goods and the will in that work, most notably by distinguishing between two fundamental and determinative orientations of the human, or any other rational beings, royal angels, fallen angels, any other conceivable rational beings, the will to happiness and the will to justice. In later works, Anselm consistently refers to these as inclinations or dispositions of the will, affectiones distinguishable from the will as instrument, as well as the particular willings as use of that instrument, which are conditioned by these wills as inclinations. The will to justice can be lacking or present in a person, but the will to happiness is always present and active, although not always specifically configured in the same way. The will to happiness, he says, is a natural will for avoiding the detrimental and for having the beneficial. This involves willing those things and conditions which one considers in some way to be beneficial to oneself, willing happiness and to be happy, and whatever is regarded as conducive or necessary to realizing such desires. A thing may be beneficial in different ways. One thing is beneficial, he says, through its use or when used, another through what it brings about, still another through both. The category of the beneficial thus almost entirely encompasses the previous distinction between useful goods, valued for the sake of other goods, and intrinsic goods, valued for their own sakes. I had that qualifier almost, because although the category of the beneficial includes the entirety of the useful, a portion of intrinsic goods fall within another distinct category, the good of justice. So this is the second part. For Anso, justice is a different, higher, more valuable kind of good than the others which we've explored thus far. Justice in the full and primary sense of the term, rightness or moral goodness, the justice which, as he says, should be praised and whose opposites should be condemned, the justice which is, quote, that very good through which people are good, and an account of which the will is said to be good or just, exists or does not, is present or absent, within the will of a rational being. Correspondingly, he says, injustice is that very evil which we say is nothing other than privation of the good, or as he adds, the absence of a justice that has been abandoned. Since other than justice or injustice, nothing is called just or unjust except for the will, or on account of the just or unjust will, the justice or injustice, the specifically moral goodness or badness of other things including, these are examples he uses, actions, hearts, persons, states of affairs, even the kernel appetites, resides not in them, but it derives from the will's relation to them. Justice in Anso's thought is a specific modality of goodness a rational will can possess, a goodness qualitatively greater than the goodness of beneficial goods, and thus to be preferred to, valued more highly than merely beneficial goods or even a happiness. In fact, a rational being ought to have justice in its will, and insofar as it lacks justice, it is to that degree or in that way unjust, not as it should be, not as it was meant to be. There's a language that Anso muses constantly, it's the notion of deborah. The rational being received a free faculty of will precisely for the purpose he says, of willing what one should with it, that is justice and justly. But then what is justice? Adequally answering this from an Anselmian perspective requires a step by step process of setting up formulations which integrate with each other. One first step is to say that justice is doing or willing what one ought to, that is willing to act in accordance with some sort of identifiable rule or standard applying to the situation or to use the alternative formulation Anselm employs, what is fitting? Setting aside for the moment the issue of precisely how one determines what one ought to do or will, one can ask is Anselm has a student doer the day very tante, is this all there is to justice? Following a set of rules or commands, willing to do the right thing in the situation, and the answer is alone for Anselm. In order to be just, one must not only will the right thing, but also will it because of one should, or more simply expressed because one should. The reason why one will something matters. If one were to will what is right solely because of the apprehension desire and pursuit of production of the beneficial, like a dog for instance, he uses this example, loving his puppies through instinct there is no justice in the willing or action, although there is to be sure goodness. If one wills and does what is right out of vain glory or simply to avoid punishment, again at least in day very tante in the person's will there is thereby no actual justice one must will the right thing as the right thing because it is the right thing, not because of beneficial goods or happiness one also necessarily desires and wills. Anselm seems as intransigent and uncompromising as content at this point. When one wills justly, one wills he says rectitude of will kept for its own sake, which is in fact his definition of justice. Whatever other objects the will may have or desire it must also intend this one, or justice is lacking in the person who is willing. Often there exist compatibilities between these motivations of happiness or beneficial goods and the motivation of justice. In fact the well-ordered person he says, the will to justice tempers the will to happiness restraining the will's excesses, but there will also be incompatibilities, occasions where one must choose according priority either to happiness or benefit or to justice one at the expense of the other. In fact the object of the will to justice as Anselm tells us at multiple points by its nature involves an interesting and sometimes even puzzling self-referentiality he says by contrast to the will which is towards willing the beneficial, which is not the same thing that it wills the will which is towards willing rectitude is rectitude for nobody wills rectitude without having rectitude nor can someone will it unless by rectitude bringing God into the picture adds another dimension to Anselm's conception of justice. This enrichment or complication of his moral theory, depending on how you look at it, is inevitable for two main reasons. First is noted earlier Anselm's ontology including even the being of values is decidedly theocentric. God does not only act justly know what justice comprises, will justice or possess justice to his highest degree, God is justice itself. All other instances of justice in some way participating in the divine justice. So presumably any justice in the human being or will is going to involve some eventual reference to God. Second Anselm does in fact explicitly specify justice in relation to God at so many points in his works that I'm only going to provide a few representative passages. He says keeping rectitude of will for the sake of that very rectitude is for each person to will what God wills that person to will. Rather convoluted when you first hear it. There's a lot of wills in that sentence. Every rational will of the creature he says should be subject to the will of God. That one's a bit more straightforward. Every rational creature pose that obedience to God. Rectitude of well is present in someone when that person wills what God wills them to will. Again, the repetition of that. It's not only that, he also has to, he expresses this in terms of affections or emotions. Those who fill their hearts with love of God and neighbor will nothing but what God wills for another person wills as long as this is not contrary to God. So these are all ways of expressing the determinant content of justice for him. And they're all, as we can see, quite theocentric. So the third part. If one was to select a commonly referenced moral theory with which to associate Anselm's position at this point, it would not be surprising if it were either deontological or divine command ethics. Many characteristic Anselmian assertions sound like conscientism of Anla Leth. The absolute contrast between other goods, the useful, the beneficial, those we seek through an ineradicable will to happiness, and the good of justice seems much like contrast on duty's absolute priority over any objects of our desires and inclinations. The heterogenous diversity of goods desired for and as components of a state of happiness that Anselm acknowledges calls to mind Kant's own suspicions about whether happiness can even be adequately understood, let alone enjoy it precisely because it would comprise complete satisfaction of a being's inclinations and desires. Identification of distinctly moral goodness as justice in Anselm's case resembles Kant's own framing as willing not only in conformity to duty, but from duty. The focus on the will and its motives, unwilling justice for its own sake, with the object of maintaining justice within the will, also sounds like conscientism and medieval guard. So could Anselm be a conscient? There are good reasons to answer no. Among them the fact that justice in one's own happiness do remain integrally interconnected for Anselm, in contrast to Kant who stresses the disassociation between happiness and duty. Explaining precisely how this takes place goes beyond the scope of this paper, but it can be said that the unavoidably theological dimension of Anselm's theory plays a part. In fact, this is another point about this, this would render it hopelessly heteronymous to Kant in multiple ways. Not only does Anselm say explicitly that rectitude of will consists in obedience to the divine will, which would be bad enough from Kant's perspective, he also maintains that once justice has been abandoned by the will of a rational being, it can only be restored by God's grace. Such considerations raise the possibility that Anselm's moral theory is best understood as an example of divine command ethics. There are certain ambiguities about precisely what such a moral theory involves, but one generally agreed upon characterization is that the theory renders morality ultimately dependent on God, the divine will, or that will is promulgated in command so that practically speaking divine revelation becomes the source for moral standards and right action involves and is measured by obedience to or conformity with such revealed commands. If all that is meant by this is that God is the ultimate origin of goodness or justice, as we've already seen this is true of Anselm's theory. But divine command moral theory is typically interpreted as implying that God can, or even does, command actions which might seem to contradict morality, but which by virtue of being commanded by God thereby become morally right, even obligatory. Other typical commitments assert God or divine revelation to be the exclusive source of moral standards, goodness or rightness, or that a human being cannot be moral without knowing God's revealed commands, recognizing and following them solely because they are God's commands not because God happens or necessarily commands what in fact is good, right or moral. If we understand divine command theory along these lines, divine command theory is explicitly rejected by Anselm in multiple places. So the fourth part, does Anselm hold a natural law theory? What other moral theory or theories might Anselms be more closely aligned with? Perhaps in looking at a few passages where Anselm actually carries out moral reasoning, where we mentioned sources for moral reasoning and evaluation, more suitable candidates will suggest themselves. Not surprisingly, Anselm does refer to scripture as a guide for morality in two ways. At times the relation upon the meaning of passages leads him into drawing out interpretations for the nature and condition of the human being, human relations and interactions with the divine, and particularly while moral matters. At other times he cites appropriate passages to provide a basis, an example or just to inform a moral claim or line of argument that he makes. Interestingly, Anselm places equal weight on authoritative interpreters of scripture and Christian life, admonishing a fellow bishop, for instance, by saying he's quoted a few of the many authorities. If it's a sin to speak against the Lord and against so many holy fathers who truly understand the sayings of the Lord, what is it then to act against authorities? Yet, Anselm is no fundamentalist or ecclesial authoritarian. What qualifies such authorities is that they've demonstrated themselves to have developed genuine wisdom, a state which requires some moral as well as intellectual progress. In fact, faith and reason, the divine order and the natural human intellect are not radically opposed to each other for Anselm. Anselm writes a scripture as containing the authority for every truth reason infers, since it either clearly affirms them or does not in any way deny them. He asserts that the justice one ought to cultivate can be called the law of God since it's from God, but also the law of the mind, since it's understood by the mind. Just as the old law is called the law of God since it's from God and the law of Moses since it was provided through Moses. Anselm himself rarely uses the term natural law, but it would be no stretch to say this moral theory bears strong affinities with the natural law moral theory like that of Thomas Aquinas. For Anselm, all created beings permitted by the orders of divine providence, but we human beings participated in this in ways radically transcending those of non-rational beings through our uses of reason and through our willing, both of which permit us to go astray as well as rightly. So we're called in his view to employ reason to more and more fully discern and willingly co-operate with an order of law, a complexly structured normativity which has its source in the divine, but shares its intelligibility with the human being seeking to be as it ought to be or as it was made to be. Again, created human being, he tells us is rational so that it might discern between the just and the unjust between the good and the evil and between the more good and the less good. Otherwise, it would have been made rational in vain by a similar reasoning he says. It's proven that it received the power of discernment so it would hate and avoid evil and it would love and prefer the good, even more greatly love and prefer the greater good. So reason is a source for our grasp of this ordering built into this. One consequence of this bears directly on the human relationship with the divine through justice and ordering of goods. He says it's certain that the rational nature was made for this, that it should love and prefer the supreme good above everything else and not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake. And this bears intellectual implications as well. The rational creature ought to apply all of its capacity and will to remembering, understanding loving the supreme good for which and he knows himself to possess his very being. Both in general and in determinant relations, the human being must employ reason in one way or another to discern what is good and bad, what ought to be done, what ought to be avoided, not only in weighing and ordering various goods but also working out their concrete arrangements and implications and forming the will which ultimately chooses. To do this rightly is not only to strive towards one's final end, but also to realize what a human being was made to be and ought to be an action in willing and thinking, in desires, affections, emotions even in relationships. In fact, full rationality is not simply a given any more than is right volition and the functioning of both faculties in form and influence each other's development or degeneration in Anselm's moral theory. Everything said so far sounds compatible enough with Thomas' natural law theory, but as pointed out, Anselm rarely uses that term and certainly does not provide us with any systematically derived pre-sense of the natural law. So depending on how one wants to define that sort of theory Anselm may or may not fit. The last part of it the most promising prospect for assigning Anselm's moral theory is actually virtue ethics, not least because Anselm himself speaks in terms of virtue and vice so often. The admiral, his biographer tells us that Anselm engaged in sustained and systematic study in which he quote, uncovered the origins and so to speak the very seeds and roots and process of growth of all virtues and vices and made it clearer than light how the former could be attained in the latter avoided or subdued. I kind of wish Anselm would have actually written this down, but most of what he did was oral. One might raise a problematic question though. For simply talking about virtues does not necessarily entail a commitment to virtue ethics. It would seem that at least two other things are needed. A thinker would have to articulate a robust conception of virtues and vices as developed dispositions reflective of character and choice and would also have to make them central to rather than derivative in moral life development and evaluation. So does Anselm do this? Well, he maintains that virtues are good more ace. Qualities of the soul which were unstable now brought to the condition of habit says they exist and the soul is stable. The virtues are also products of the human use of the will. Right choices and commitments are both productive of and products of the virtues. They are also in accordance with the virtues conforming to their patterns and dictates. When the person's will is properly aligned, the soul and its powers are open to doing what God commands, what justice demands, what rightly used reason reveals, Anselm says. He says, for the soul is open to the inclination of the virtues and to willing what should be preferred. Memory to the remembering of what ought to be remembered, thought to thinking what ought to be thought upon, understanding to distinguishing what should be willed or remembered or thought, is raised up to charity, is disposed to humility, is strengthened towards patience and is open to, he says, the other virtues that should be generated. Now Anselm tells us in what we do have of his writings, much more about the monastic mode of life than others, but there's no reason to think that his consistent stress on the need to inculcate virtues and root out vices in that mode is not reflective of a broader attitude applying to all human beings. In a beautiful analogy, he even makes virtues central in the right use of reason. He says, just as the human body cannot subsist without frequent provision of food to it, so the soul cannot live by reason without frequent engagement with the virtues. So the virtues can be thought of as determinant ways in which the will to justice assumes a stable form in the human will, in the soul, in the human being, in the pattern of his or her life actions and relationships. The will to justice itself that should be noted can be stronger or weaker in a person and must develop through willing in actions so that it properly structures and eventually pervades the person's will to happiness. This entire complex of desires that we naturally have. Directing the person towards enjoyment of his or her true ends. One must also develop the capacity for perseverance within the will, for resisting the temptation to choose goods incompatible with justice. A kind of fortitude. Consisting in willing perseveringly. Cleaving constantly or consistently to rectitude a well kept for its own sake. In the end then, Anselm's moral theory is most adequately understood as a virtue ethics in which justice, humility, perseverance and charity are arguably and in different ways the most architectonic virtues. I'll close with a passage from one of Anselm's letters, writing as their avid to his fellow monks back, he says. This is fairly typical of him. My joy in this world is your virtuous life. I pray I deceit you that absent or present you may gladden my heart by living virtuously and satisfy my longing and joy by your goodness. Thanks. Thank you. Nice to meet you. It's just about under half an hour. Nice and time presentation. Alright, we now have about 15 minutes for questions from the audience. Yeah, this is a sort of meta question about the project as a whole. It seems to me that the conclusion in a way of your attempts to characterize Anselm, he doesn't actually fit any of the categories that contemporary theorists might want to put him in. Is that right or am I? Well, I think that he does fit virtue ethics. Okay. But virtue ethics, I mean one integral part of that tradition is we have to ask, well, whose virtue ethics? Right. So, you know, Eric was, you know, highly Aristotelian virtue ethics? Or are we looking at domestic virtue ethics? Or, you know, it's going to be connected with natural law? Yeah, I don't think he fits, he certainly doesn't fit Kant's version of deontology, which, you know, we assume to view as the exemplar. He doesn't fit the divine command theory. Clearly says no on that. Natural law is kind of a tough fit, although there's a lot of good alignments. Ethics of care is actually an attractive one because Anselm focuses so much on emotions, on relationships and how those laws ought to be structured, especially on love and caring. But the academic category of it, he wouldn't fit very well. But virtue ethics, he does. But virtue ethics, think of like Macintyre's version of virtue ethics, where virtue ethics cannot just be some category by itself to the exclusion of these other theories. It has to incorporate what's best in them. But going back to Aristotle, I mean, Anselm is doing something like that. So the elements of other theories, like the focus, very strong focus on the will and rectitude will act for its own sake, which looks like the anthology. We have to be incorporated into virtue ethics in order to make it work well. If the reason I would answer the question is, I was considering the possibility that maybe Anselm's theory is just sui generis, in which case trying to pigeonhole him a certain way might detract from the distinctiveness of the view. Some of the people who have written on Anselm's moral theory, there's not an awful lot out there seem to interpret him like that. But what I want to do is to sort of bring him into the fold of virtue ethics and say that he is, you know, one of the things that we often forget, in part because when we look at the medieval, those of us that are interested, tend, I think, to focus much more on scholastic philosophy and theology than monastic theology. Guys like Anselm get left out of the picture, although they were incredibly influential throughout the villages, even on the scholastic authors. So I don't want to bring Anselm back into the fold, you might say. The larger project that we've written on Anselm is both here. And so you're getting almost, you might say, just talking points in this one. Not particularly well supported, maybe. I'll just put on the floor a distinction which your doubts. You're talking about the end of an action. There are two ways of talking about the end and just before I talk you better to get a cup of coffee. Well, what you wanted was the coffee. For what you wanted yourself. And how you wanted it was in drinking. Well, drinking is the way well, hot coffee would be here. So what do you want? I want a cup of coffee, but I want it for me to drink. Yeah. Typically in when people criticize virtue theory, especially in the case of Aristotle and Aquinas and the notion of happiness being they say, well, this is too selfish, too self-focused. And they're accusing them of distinguishing the quadrant that you pursue the good which could, the good that's good to me. That's my happiness. Yeah. So the what you're desiring is subordinated to me as being what it is for the sake of it. Now, you rightly pointed out, I think that for Anselm, that too is an error. If you desire it for me, that's the love, concupiscence. Well, actually, he says there's good and bad concupiscence. But nevertheless, it's still desiring it for me. Anselm is fine with goods for me. With him, it's a question of the ordering of the goods. Right. And even with regular virtue ethics, you know, so people have been debating is Aristotle or the egoist. I think that's not a useful way to frame it because in order to enjoy happiness in a full sense, you have to be sharing it with other people. So you can't be just, you know, selfish. But that would be enough for Shirley for Anselm. Sharing the goodness with other people. That's what heaven is for him. Yeah, but Shirley, as you mentioned, the crucial thing is the love of justice. Yes. That's what you should want me to do. And doesn't he say in the fold of the devil, the devil's problem was to regard God as a good for himself and not as a good for others. Being my God. But he loved God with love and concupiscence, not love and justice. Is that right? Well, he talks about the will to happiness. Anselm doesn't use the language of concupiscence as he wants. As far as I can tell. And the devil screwed up by loving, by wanting, by desiring the best good you could possibly have, which is to be like God. Well, it's not that it was for himself. Anselm says he desired it inordinately because it's not a bad thing to want that for yourself. Anselm says if we said that, then being Jesus Christ would be a bad thing, right? So it's more a matter, and this is why I think again, Anselm bears a lot more similarities to virtue of others. The will to justice, he says, temper is the will to happiness. So it acts upon all these inclinations and desires that we have, and it straightens them out. It gives them to, you know, to invoke something versatility in a, at the right time for the right reason to the right degree. Anselm doesn't use that language, per se. And you have to dig, you have to do a lot of digging around to find examples. I think it's letters in this passage or that passage. But I think you can put them together systematically to get something very much like that picture. My comment is not quite right. I was trying to push the point that because of Anselm... You want it more like Kant? Well, I think this distinction is far more crucial for Anselm than it is in Aristotle or Aquinas, even though it's not denied by them. But this is crucial for him in a way that you don't find it in the virtue of it. It's a dispute that rumbles. Yeah, I mean loving yourself properly. Understanding what ought to be for you, what is your legitimate good, is social for Anselm. Sure, the question is not that this is okay, sure this is okay. The point is that ethics is really about loving the good, in this case God, for his own sake, regardless of himself. And that seems to be a point that is unseemletag since the Aristotle and Aquinas and it's big in Anselm. Well, in Aristotle, sure. Certainly in Aristotle, but it's a bit dodgy in Aquinas. It's big in Anselm, it's big in Skodas. Yeah, and as Skodas was informed. Right, so I'm trying to say that he's not, if he's in virtue of it, he says he's not in your Aristotelian mode of virtue. Yeah, I'd agree with that. You'd have to do a lot of pushing together. Okay, we have one question and you have a question? First here then. You said that Anselm rejects a divine commentary. Yes. And then earlier you said and maybe I missed the connection or the disconnect. When a person wills what God wills and to will. Yes. That person is doing right. That's rectitude of will, yes. How is that a rejection or that? I take the divine command theory to be going beyond just saying that a person will ought to be aligned with the will of God. I mean natural law theory says that as well. Divine command theory, and again this is kind of a goosey goosey term, isn't it? It means different things to different people. It tends to get invoked as the notion that God is the sole source of all commands, rules, those sorts of things. And so long as you follow those rules, you're okay. And if God were to change those rules tomorrow, that would be okay too because it's God. And Anselm considers issues like that in Herde's homo, the Prostologian monologian to a certain extent and he knew one other work and he says, well that wouldn't be God then if God were to actually change the rules of the game and he counts as if it's right and wrong, that wouldn't be God. That would be something else. God is following his own nature. Could God take away justice from a person? Anselm says no, once a person has justice, well not even God can take it away because why is that a restriction on God? No, because God wouldn't do that sort of thing. God would never command something that went against the goodness that God already knows. The divine command theory that we it's sort of an academic category as it often gets taught it sounds as if well God can switch things up if he likes. And that's what I'm saying Anselm is rejecting. That's why he's not a good fit for that. Thank you. One of the, I mean you've been contrasting Anselm with the other people and basically saying he's not like this in those respects. So we haven't had an awful lot of a positive account. I did anticipate that you were heading toward virtue theory actually fairly early. But it seems to me that there is one question that's this sort of outstanding here. He also, Anselm seems to be, I would guess, a neoplatonist in that he... In a very funny way. Definitely identifying God as sort of the source or defining basis of justice particularly and maybe secondarily other goods too. God is, he is a neoplatonist in that every one of the divine attributes is something within which other things participate. So God is the goodness by which other things are good but not necessarily primarily. God is the truth by which all of the truths are truthful. I mean, God is the life through which all things. Okay, that's what I suspected. Well, you know, again you can pick a thousand different virtue theories. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But one notorious problem for virtue theory is it tends to provide no account for why virtues, specific virtues are good. It just stops there oftentimes. Or it actually defeats itself by appealing to something and becomes, in a sense, something other than virtue theory. So if virtues really promote happiness then in an ultimate sense we have a kind of hedonism or a utilitarian... Or eudaimism. Yeah, well, right. And Catherine Rodgers actually thinks Anselm is a... I don't actually buy her. Well, so my question is simply this I guess, if he's primarily a virtue theorist then he is adding another component here. And that is a basis for virtue in God. And then there's... I mean, and I agree that I don't think it's divine command theory, certainly in the standard way, but there is still a basis of all virtue in God's nature. So is God ultimately the basis or defining explanation of all virtue or are we going to take virtue theory more like is imitating God that... Well, both friends are. I mean... He says this in the courteous poem, Christ actually gives us an example and say for humility. But then he unpacks it in a couple of different places and dictates and also in a lot of the letters what humility consists of. He's got some analysis we could put together. And he's not just referring to God in that. Like I said in here, I think all the virtues for Ansel can be conceived of as determinant ways in which the will to justice takes shape, takes hold of the human will, takes a stable form within it. So they're all ultimately ways of willing justice the right relationship to God for its own sake, within oneself possibly just superimposing it on the will to happiness, possibly contradicting our will to happiness when we curb our desires or things like that. I don't know that that turns them into no longer being virtues. No, I'm really one of that kind of virtue theory. One more question quickly. This is actually very close related to what you were talking about. It seems to me that if I understood you correctly that for Ansel justice plays a central, or the essential of these ethics. You say that what I'd like to do is to try to get some clear grasp of what justice is for Ansel. Especially if you want to make him a non virtue ethic a person who's a ascribed to virtue ethics but does it in a way by underpinning these virtues with justice which would make him no longer a virtue ethicist but at least then you would have a basis for the other virtues. Here's my question. You say, well, first of all, justice is central. And God is justice. And everything else is just by virtue of participating in this justice. But not necessarily directly. It's not as if just God and everything directly participates with God. I don't care about how directly or indirectly, God is supposed to be justice. I want to get a grip on what justice is because I don't know what God is. So that doesn't help me to say that God is justice. One of the implications of Ansel's doctrine is we don't in fact know what justice in its fullest sense is. Any more than we know a reason in its fullest sense is because it is God. We have intimations of it but ours are always they can always get better and better. Isn't that very destructive conclusion to come to for Ansel? Destructive in no way. Because, well, we can't know what justice is. There's a difference between the other virtues than we can't know what virtues are. There's a difference between not knowing period and not fully knowing. Can you give me some sense of what justice is for Ansel? Sure. Again, what's his definition of it? Willing rectitude of will kept for its own sake. So being thrown into a determinate situation in which you have to stick to what you ought to do as opposed to say your inclinations. What you ought to do is to be defined by what justice is and I don't know what that is. He's not providing anything like a foundational, okay, here's the three axioms of it and then it goes from... No, I just want to understand. You can't fling around terms loosely without defining them in some sense. He does actually. Well, then that's a real problem in my mind. Yeah. Because you can't get a grip on what justice is if rectitude of will will always being steadfastly willing what is just. But again, I don't know what that is. But how do you learn what a virtue is anyway? It's not somebody coming up to you and saying, okay, here's the definition. I'll just do this. Through practice, through being embedded in some sort of milieu. So if you want examples of all the different things, if you want examples of where Anselm gives instances, he says, here's the just thing, here's the unjust thing, here's why it's just, here's why it's unjust. There's a lot of individual examples in letters and little bits here and there in the treaties and even arguably in his prayers. But yeah, this is one of the challenges of Anselm. What he in fact did as the Admiral said, you know, uncovered the very roots and sources of the virtues and vices, he didn't write it down. Unfortunately, like a treatise. But if you've got these examples of justice, I don't know if you have time. Sure. That would be an inductive approach then to Okay. Because you probably want this well-rated, I think. Yeah, well, pushing this point. And it would actually, it might actually presuppose what you're trying to prove here, but as you can say, that's justice, that's searches, that's justice. Maybe not. Maybe you can just say, well, this is a certain kind of action that's similar to that kind of action, similar to this kind of action and what they have in common is this thing and I'm going to call that justice. That's fair enough. Yeah. You'll find that. Well, I have more to think about. Okay. Go ahead.