From the Editor’s Desk: The Public Discourse Monthly Roundup

[T]he original meaning of the word virtue is a good habit, particularly a habit of excellence. The reason this is significant is, if we understand that virtues are habits that anyone can acquire through practice, then virtue is no longer this abstract ideal that we’re aspiring to, but something we can all do and become. If you want to grow in restraint, for example, each day, practice some small effort of restraint and steadily you will build the virtue of restraint, like you would build a muscle. The virtues are like psychological or spiritual muscles, which all of us already have, but which have to be exercised to be strengthened.

Ancient civilizations knew this. The ancient Greeks and Romans would habituate themselves to virtues like courage and wisdom; they would practice them and honor them. The virtues became a sort of human operating system, underlying every personal and social achievement. This was true for almost every major civilization through the millennia, until a couple of hundred years ago, when we started to abandon the pursuit of virtue.

Alasdair MacIntyre tells this story in After Virtue. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying the book, his argument is that virtue had become associated with religion and was rejected during the Enlightenment, along with many other things religious. MacIntyre explains that people in the past shared a clear idea of what the virtues were and why they mattered. Virtues were habits that helped people live good lives, guided by traditions and communities. Over time, however, the Enlightenment tried to rebuild a sense of morality using reason alone, and that project failed utterly. MacIntyre argues it failed because reason alone could not give people strong, agreed-upon rules for how to live. The result was a moral world where people often talk about values, rights, and maybe even virtues, but these words lack any real foundation.

“Against the world.” That’s the nature of an entrepreneur. They’re looking at the world entirely differently. And in most cases, entrepreneurs are providing a superior outcome at a lower cost. There are times that it’s a higher cost, but even if it’s a higher cost, it’s a superior outcome. So yes, entrepreneurs, people who are willing to make a contribution, who are willing to take risks, are the whole basis of an economy. And if you don’t have those entrepreneurs, you have a socialistic economy.

A way out is for young people to figure out how they can make a contribution at whatever level, within companies, within organizations, within churches. And, as you stated, it needs to come from the ground up; it’s not going to come out of the federal government. It needs to come from the individual. And, as you probably know, in modern-day colleges, they talk about collaboration, as if people sitting around at a table would figure anything out. And there was a comment by Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera. He said that if you put five intelligent people around a table, you’re going to get the lowest common denominator; you’re going to get bad ideas. But one of those people at the table might say, “Here’s the best idea, here’s how it needs to be done.” That’s what entrepreneurship is. It’s not a blending of things down to where everybody feels good. It’s about unique ideas.