Veritras et Sapientia-What A Heroic Society Is & Why ‘Muricah-2016-Is NOT Heroic

Mandeville, LA – [Editor’s note: Does the following brief passage from Macintyre’s chapter The Virtues In heroic Societies sound or look familiar to you? No, perhaps we need a crash course in heroism and Macintyre provides it-M.C.] M.l. Finley has written of Homeric society: The basic values of society were given, predetermined and so were a man’s place in the society and the privileges and duties that followed from his status’ (Finley 1954, p. 134). What Finley says of Homeric society is equally true of other forms of heroic society in Iceland or in Ireland. Every individual has a given role and status within a well-defined and highly determinate system of roles and statuses. The key structures are those of kinship and of the household. In such a society a man knows who he is by knowing his role in these structures; and in knowing this he knows also what he owes and what is owed to him by the occupant of every other role and status. In Greek (dein) and in Anglo-Saxon (abte) alike, there is originally no clear distinction between ‘ought’ and ‘owe’; in Icelandic the word ‘skyldr’ ties together ‘ought’ and ‘is kin to’.

But it is not just that there is for each status a prescribed set of duties and privileges. There is also a clear understanding of what actions are required to perform these and what actions fall short of what is required. For what are required are actions. A man in heroic society is what he does. Hermann Frankel wrote of Homeric man that ‘a man and his actions become identical, and he makes himself completely and adequately comprehended in them; he has no hidden depths. … In {the epics] factual report of what men do and say, everything that men are, is expressed, because they are no more than what they do and say and suffer’ (Friankel 1975, p . 79) . To judge a man therefore is to judge his actions . By performing actions of a particular kind in a particular situation a man gives warrant for judgment upon his virtues and vices; for the virtues just are those qualities which sustain a free man in his role and which manifest themselves in those actions which his role requires. And what Frankel says and suggests about Homeric man holds also of man in other heroic portrayals . Alisdair Macintyre – After Virtue

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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