Virtuous life is difficult to achieve, psychologist says
In delivering the 2011 Hancock Lecture at Hart House Oct. 13, psychology professor Jordan Peterson took the audience on a wild ride through the Soviet gulags, Nazi Germany and the Garden of Eden as he discussed The Necessity of Virtue.
Peterson, a multi-year nominee for TVO’s Best Lecturer prize, held his listeners spellbound with his interesting mix of dry humour, literary and religious allusions and personality theory. Rather than proceeding directly from point A to point B as he spoke, Peterson wove a tale that wandered to and fro, but always moved forward towards a conclusion that his audience awaited eagerly.
“People who don’t live virtuous lives live poor lives, lives that don’t justify themselves,” he said. “Honesty is a big part of that and honesty is difficult.”
Peterson made a distinction between niceness and virtue, the latter as a moral value, the former not.
“Virtue, ethics and morality are not a field of study; it is a mode of being on which all fields of study rest.”
He noted that each person’s role in life in this world rests on virtue and the failure to live a virtuous life costs one’s conscience. Given that we are all interconnected, it also affects others.
“There’s nothing frivolous about virtue,” Peterson said.
His lecture then proceeded through an exploration of the suffering that is part of the human condition and how to conduct oneself in the face of that suffering, as well as reflections on the substance of both good and evil, drawing on the writings of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and the Bible, among other sources.
“I don’t think modern people believe in virtue easily, because our scientific forms of knowledge and materialism undermine our comfort in believing anything religious,” he noted. “One thing most modern people can believe in is evil.”
By understanding what evil is and what virtue is not, people have a starting point for living their lives in such a way that the evil they do is minimized. But to live virtuously, they must take responsibility for their own beings, Peterson said.
“If you want to be virtuous, you must take yourself seriously,” Peterson explained. “If life matters, everything we do matters. It puts a great responsibility on the individual and people generally don’t want to bear that.
“It’s not just you at stake. To the degree that you are virtuous, you increase the quality of being of those connected to you.”
Following the twists and turns of the lecture appeared to energize a sold-out Hart House Theatre, the venue filled with listeners from university age to senior citizens. The question period was filled with curious queries, achieving the purpose of an annual lecture aimed at identifying “innovative thinkers to create public conversations on issues relevant to young people but of interest to all Canadians.” The lecture will be broadcast as an upcoming TVO Big Ideas program.
Provided by University of Toronto
