I’m sensitive to your abjuration of semantic preoccupations here, and yet I simply must say this:
Virtue is not the word you’re looking for. Etymologically it comes from Vir (latin, meaning “man”) conjugated as Vir-tus (the strength or power of masculinity). In archaic English the denotative meaning of the word was something like “valor” or, dare I say, “nobility”.
Like everything in Western culture, the encounter with Christianity created a lot of semantic drift, where the qualities of virtue shifted away from the Bronze Age origins (masculinity, valor, strength, nobility, justice, determination, self-control) and towards the Christian ideals (faith, love, charity, chastity, humility). There was an historic period where these two notions of Virtue were explicitly joined into so-called “Cardinal Virtues” (representing the classic Roman perspective) and “Theological Virtues” (representing the newer Christian perspective). Eventually the Cardinal Virtues became subsumed and the Theological Virtues became, well, theologized as metaphysical ideals and their iconographic representation as virginal young women in late Christian artwork came to dominate the popular consciousness of them. Virtue stopped by Vir. I think this is probably the origin of the confusion between Nobility and Morality as constituents of Virtue.
There’s something of a mirror of this in Classical Chinese thought, where the Confucian Virtues and Daoist Virtues have some dynamic oppositional qualities in a similar way that Cardinal and Theological virtues do in the Christian West. It’s not a 1:1 mapping of course. It’s another interesting point of comparison though.
The Confucian Virtues (propriety, justice, wisdom, trustworthiness, and humaneness) look more like Nobility but bound within a hierarchical context. They’re oriented towards the ruling class.
The Daoist Virtues (effortlessness, naturalness, simplicity, compassion, humility) look more like the Christian virtues, but unbound from a hierarchical context. They’re universalistic and are accessible to everyone, but especially to those without temporal power. This mirrors the early position of Christianity within the late Roman Empire (a mass movement of the disempowered).
I have often contemplated on the dislocation of virtue from our Modern society, with its radically different structures of temporal power, but its radically similar structures of human striving and social conflict. What would a Modern set of Virtues look like? How can we re-fuse (as opposed to con-fuse) the collapse of Nobility and Morality into an amorphous blob?
Thank you, yes! This anticipates a goodly chunk of what I mean to say.
Ironically, it was the advent of deconstructive postmodernism that completed the triumph of Christian-derived virtue over nobility. (The alt-right "pop Nietzscheans" are right about this, I think, although terribly wrong about its implications.)
Regarding the semantic point, you haven't suggested an alternative to "virtue" for labeling what I want to label. (I'm open to one!) I am using the word as it is commonly understood in 2025 on twitter, for example. I agree that historically it meant something different, and that is a potential source of confusion, especially for people who know the history, but I am aiming for a relatively broad audience with these "sermonettes."
English is a pauper when it comes to mapping certain meanings to words. For a language with such a huge lexicon it sure seems to be missing a few important bits. So I guess my suggestion here is going to be a little bit of an obnoxious one, because it's not an English word and thus requires translation.
Te (德) as in Tao Te Ching (道德經) is my suggestion. My favorite translation of the word is from Ursula LeGuin, who renders it as "power" and titles her version of the text "The Way and the Power of the Way". This is a reasonably good capture of the original meaning of Virtue and a very good capture of the meaning of Te in the context of Tao Te Ching.
In Modern English, translating it as "power" is problematic because that word points at gross physical power rather than subtle spiritual power, which is the intended meaning of Te. So here's some other possible translations:
- alignment (in the sense of unobstructedness)
- efficacy (synonym of power or force, but with more neutral connotation)
- natural authority
- integrity
- inner strength
- excellence (c.f. "arete")
- vitality
But I think you're wanting a pointer at the view that integrates the socially-constructed morality aspect with the self-arising effectiveness aspect. In particular the word should contrast with Nobility. If a Noble person is inclined to heroism, then a Virtuous person is inclined to solidarity. If a Noble person is inclined to benign use of force, then a Virtuous person is inclined to harmonious effortless action. If Nobility has a masculine flavor (not in the anatomical sense, but in the Yang sense) then Virtue has a feminine flavor (Yin). But Virtue means YANG. Need to translate Yin, then.
For whatever it's worth: I find it valuable that you are pointing out that choosing "virtue" as the term opposite to "nobility" may not be ideal, providing reasoning for that assertion, and then, when asked for an alternative term, actually spend some time trying to come up with something.
Yet, at the same time I find that "virtue" works well enough for me. The way David explains his distinction "nobility/virtue" clicked for me: I feel like I quickly had a mental grasp of what he was going to talk about.
This is even more pronounced when I see the alternative that you suggest: "Te". While I find it interesting to learn about that word: If David is going for "commonly understood on 2025 Twitter", then "Te" is probably not an ideal choice either.
So, I find two things true at the same time: I find your thoughts on this very valuable; yet I also like David's original choice of "virtue". :)
David may have made the right choice because its more aligned with colloquial usage. I, however, am a logophilliac with an obsession over etymology and historical usage contexts.
I'm glad to hear you appreciated my response. What do you think of my suggestion of "Grace"?
What about “ideal”? As in “my ideal,” “the ideal,” “idea,” and “ideologue”? It works etymologically and contemporaneously. Focusing on the abstract form rather than receptivity to the arising and change of form.
…not that David’s writing by committee, thank god!
"Grace" seems really weak. "Grace" is essentially never used at all by modern secular Westerners. For Christian people it's a property rather exclusively attributable to God. It's vanishingly rare for anyone to encourage anyone else to be more gracious, which would anyway tend to mean to be more polite and not anything particularly related to morality, and "graceful" is hard work to get to act metaphorically for something nonphysical. "Morality" seems just right to me here.
To be honest: I wasn't really able to follow your train-of-thought here:
"If a Noble person is inclined to heroism, then a Virtuous person is inclined to solidarity."
-> Hmm, I don't think I would agree (or rather "vibe") with either statement by itself, nor by the second following from the first.
"If a Noble person is inclined to benign use of force, then a Virtuous person is inclined to harmonious effortless action."
-> I "vibe" with the first statement, but I cannot make the same mental leap to the second statement: ...why is a virtuous person inclined to harmonious effortless action?
"If Nobility has a masculine flavor (not in the anatomical sense, but in the Yang sense) then Virtue has a feminine flavor (Yin)."
-> Since I don't think in terms of Yin/Yang, I do not have an opinion on that part of the statement. Without the context of "Yin/Yang" using "masculine flavor" and "feminine flavor" do feel *off* to me when contrasting "nobility" with "virtue". I'm not in general opposed to sometimes use "masculine/feminine flavor" to describe certain phenomena, or at least roughly sketch them out. But in this case this feels misplaced.
"But Virtue means YANG. Need to translate Yin, then."
-> Since I wasn't able to follow the line of thinking above, this in turn did not connect with me either.
"Grace. That's the word I like here. Grace."
-> Since I was struggling to follow the line of reasoning above, I already mentally checked out when I got here. I wasn't sure if "Grace" was really a suggestion as an alternative to "Virtue", or maybe it was an alternative to "Nobility" (which doesn't make sense, since the topic is finding alternatives to "Virtue" -- but, again, I was confused at that point)?
My first impression is: The distinction "nobility/virtue" feels clearer to me than "nobility/grace". Two factors to consider, though:
(1) I already read David's post first, and therefore I'm already more used to this distinction, which may be the reason I'm favoring it.
(2) I had an intense day at work, lots of thinking and communicating and bug fixing (I'm a software developer), and I also have many other mental threads open right now -- and I'm about to go to the gym. MEANING: My current thoughts about this are not that deep, and I'm not ready to process the word "Grace" in any deeper way. -> So what I'm saying here really is just my very first impression. :)
If you don't like "morality", you could try "goodness", since that's the word you use here to describe the behavior you mean by "virtue". Other options might be "pop morality", "decency", or something like "altruizing" if you want some novel coinage.
"Virtue" is mostly archaic; nobody commonly uses it in the Victorian sense anymore. It's most commonly used as in "virtue ethics", ie, your "nobility". It's so confusing here that it might be worse than just saying "you know... That thing!"
Joining the chorus of people looking forward to this. In particular, I'm interested in whether there were historical circumstances where "nobility" was seriously promoted, developed and practiced at scale. Having directionally right "vibes" is one thing, but actually doing it well is quite another.
Yes... well, there will always be disagreements about what counts as noble or not. But explicit training in it was part of elite culture in the major Western nations for at least a century, arguably ending with WWI (which discredited it in many eyes) or the 1970s (when it was discredited almost entirely almost everywhere). I'm planning a follow-up post about this.
I'm still confused what the distinction is between what you've chosen to call nobility and virtue.
I think a few concrete examples would help. If I understand correctly, Napoleon is a good archetypical example of nobility without virtue. Does that fit?
Well, there will always be disagreement about what, and who, are noble. However: I defined nobility as the wise and just use of power. His invasion of Russia in winter is often used as a catastrophically unwise decision. And his invading, conquering, and looting numerous foreign countries does not seem just.
From Wikipedia:
> he is controversial because of his role in wars which devastated Europe, his looting of conquered territories, and his mixed record on civil rights. He abolished the free press, ended directly elected representative government, exiled and jailed critics of his regime, reinstated slavery in France's colonies except for Haiti, banned the entry of blacks and mulattos into France, reduced the civil rights of women and children in France, reintroduced a hereditary monarchy and nobility, and violently repressed popular uprisings against his rule.
Looking forward to reading more about this. One of the biggest open questions I have had about meaningness (which your recent posts against philosophy have stirred up) revolve around politics and power.
(Side note: video comments do not work in Firefox on Substack, and the video itself does not load for me)
So, nobility roughly corresponds to Greek "arete" aka excellence? As far as I can gather, this Greek concept revolves about warrior "virtues", performance, esthetically pleasing and elegant handling of situations. Nietzsche kinda talked about this, not sure that here specifically used this word, but I'm pretty sure he refers to this kind of "ethics" instead of normative morality of specific culture or time period.
They seem distinct from an analytical point of view, but from a very practical point of view - vice restricts freedom of action. So a person who is virtuous is much more likely to be able to hold an operate with power wisely, than a person who is in a grip of vice.
Can you give me an example of a person who had vices and used power wisely and benefited a lot of people?
looking forward to this topic series!
I’m sensitive to your abjuration of semantic preoccupations here, and yet I simply must say this:
Virtue is not the word you’re looking for. Etymologically it comes from Vir (latin, meaning “man”) conjugated as Vir-tus (the strength or power of masculinity). In archaic English the denotative meaning of the word was something like “valor” or, dare I say, “nobility”.
Like everything in Western culture, the encounter with Christianity created a lot of semantic drift, where the qualities of virtue shifted away from the Bronze Age origins (masculinity, valor, strength, nobility, justice, determination, self-control) and towards the Christian ideals (faith, love, charity, chastity, humility). There was an historic period where these two notions of Virtue were explicitly joined into so-called “Cardinal Virtues” (representing the classic Roman perspective) and “Theological Virtues” (representing the newer Christian perspective). Eventually the Cardinal Virtues became subsumed and the Theological Virtues became, well, theologized as metaphysical ideals and their iconographic representation as virginal young women in late Christian artwork came to dominate the popular consciousness of them. Virtue stopped by Vir. I think this is probably the origin of the confusion between Nobility and Morality as constituents of Virtue.
There’s something of a mirror of this in Classical Chinese thought, where the Confucian Virtues and Daoist Virtues have some dynamic oppositional qualities in a similar way that Cardinal and Theological virtues do in the Christian West. It’s not a 1:1 mapping of course. It’s another interesting point of comparison though.
The Confucian Virtues (propriety, justice, wisdom, trustworthiness, and humaneness) look more like Nobility but bound within a hierarchical context. They’re oriented towards the ruling class.
The Daoist Virtues (effortlessness, naturalness, simplicity, compassion, humility) look more like the Christian virtues, but unbound from a hierarchical context. They’re universalistic and are accessible to everyone, but especially to those without temporal power. This mirrors the early position of Christianity within the late Roman Empire (a mass movement of the disempowered).
I have often contemplated on the dislocation of virtue from our Modern society, with its radically different structures of temporal power, but its radically similar structures of human striving and social conflict. What would a Modern set of Virtues look like? How can we re-fuse (as opposed to con-fuse) the collapse of Nobility and Morality into an amorphous blob?
Looking forward to what you come up with here.
Thank you, yes! This anticipates a goodly chunk of what I mean to say.
Ironically, it was the advent of deconstructive postmodernism that completed the triumph of Christian-derived virtue over nobility. (The alt-right "pop Nietzscheans" are right about this, I think, although terribly wrong about its implications.)
Regarding the semantic point, you haven't suggested an alternative to "virtue" for labeling what I want to label. (I'm open to one!) I am using the word as it is commonly understood in 2025 on twitter, for example. I agree that historically it meant something different, and that is a potential source of confusion, especially for people who know the history, but I am aiming for a relatively broad audience with these "sermonettes."
English is a pauper when it comes to mapping certain meanings to words. For a language with such a huge lexicon it sure seems to be missing a few important bits. So I guess my suggestion here is going to be a little bit of an obnoxious one, because it's not an English word and thus requires translation.
Te (德) as in Tao Te Ching (道德經) is my suggestion. My favorite translation of the word is from Ursula LeGuin, who renders it as "power" and titles her version of the text "The Way and the Power of the Way". This is a reasonably good capture of the original meaning of Virtue and a very good capture of the meaning of Te in the context of Tao Te Ching.
In Modern English, translating it as "power" is problematic because that word points at gross physical power rather than subtle spiritual power, which is the intended meaning of Te. So here's some other possible translations:
- alignment (in the sense of unobstructedness)
- efficacy (synonym of power or force, but with more neutral connotation)
- natural authority
- integrity
- inner strength
- excellence (c.f. "arete")
- vitality
But I think you're wanting a pointer at the view that integrates the socially-constructed morality aspect with the self-arising effectiveness aspect. In particular the word should contrast with Nobility. If a Noble person is inclined to heroism, then a Virtuous person is inclined to solidarity. If a Noble person is inclined to benign use of force, then a Virtuous person is inclined to harmonious effortless action. If Nobility has a masculine flavor (not in the anatomical sense, but in the Yang sense) then Virtue has a feminine flavor (Yin). But Virtue means YANG. Need to translate Yin, then.
Grace. That's the word I like here. Grace.
For whatever it's worth: I find it valuable that you are pointing out that choosing "virtue" as the term opposite to "nobility" may not be ideal, providing reasoning for that assertion, and then, when asked for an alternative term, actually spend some time trying to come up with something.
Yet, at the same time I find that "virtue" works well enough for me. The way David explains his distinction "nobility/virtue" clicked for me: I feel like I quickly had a mental grasp of what he was going to talk about.
This is even more pronounced when I see the alternative that you suggest: "Te". While I find it interesting to learn about that word: If David is going for "commonly understood on 2025 Twitter", then "Te" is probably not an ideal choice either.
So, I find two things true at the same time: I find your thoughts on this very valuable; yet I also like David's original choice of "virtue". :)
David may have made the right choice because its more aligned with colloquial usage. I, however, am a logophilliac with an obsession over etymology and historical usage contexts.
I'm glad to hear you appreciated my response. What do you think of my suggestion of "Grace"?
What about “ideal”? As in “my ideal,” “the ideal,” “idea,” and “ideologue”? It works etymologically and contemporaneously. Focusing on the abstract form rather than receptivity to the arising and change of form.
…not that David’s writing by committee, thank god!
"Grace" seems really weak. "Grace" is essentially never used at all by modern secular Westerners. For Christian people it's a property rather exclusively attributable to God. It's vanishingly rare for anyone to encourage anyone else to be more gracious, which would anyway tend to mean to be more polite and not anything particularly related to morality, and "graceful" is hard work to get to act metaphorically for something nonphysical. "Morality" seems just right to me here.
To be honest: I wasn't really able to follow your train-of-thought here:
"If a Noble person is inclined to heroism, then a Virtuous person is inclined to solidarity."
-> Hmm, I don't think I would agree (or rather "vibe") with either statement by itself, nor by the second following from the first.
"If a Noble person is inclined to benign use of force, then a Virtuous person is inclined to harmonious effortless action."
-> I "vibe" with the first statement, but I cannot make the same mental leap to the second statement: ...why is a virtuous person inclined to harmonious effortless action?
"If Nobility has a masculine flavor (not in the anatomical sense, but in the Yang sense) then Virtue has a feminine flavor (Yin)."
-> Since I don't think in terms of Yin/Yang, I do not have an opinion on that part of the statement. Without the context of "Yin/Yang" using "masculine flavor" and "feminine flavor" do feel *off* to me when contrasting "nobility" with "virtue". I'm not in general opposed to sometimes use "masculine/feminine flavor" to describe certain phenomena, or at least roughly sketch them out. But in this case this feels misplaced.
"But Virtue means YANG. Need to translate Yin, then."
-> Since I wasn't able to follow the line of thinking above, this in turn did not connect with me either.
"Grace. That's the word I like here. Grace."
-> Since I was struggling to follow the line of reasoning above, I already mentally checked out when I got here. I wasn't sure if "Grace" was really a suggestion as an alternative to "Virtue", or maybe it was an alternative to "Nobility" (which doesn't make sense, since the topic is finding alternatives to "Virtue" -- but, again, I was confused at that point)?
My first impression is: The distinction "nobility/virtue" feels clearer to me than "nobility/grace". Two factors to consider, though:
(1) I already read David's post first, and therefore I'm already more used to this distinction, which may be the reason I'm favoring it.
(2) I had an intense day at work, lots of thinking and communicating and bug fixing (I'm a software developer), and I also have many other mental threads open right now -- and I'm about to go to the gym. MEANING: My current thoughts about this are not that deep, and I'm not ready to process the word "Grace" in any deeper way. -> So what I'm saying here really is just my very first impression. :)
Have you considered "morality"?
If you don't like "morality", you could try "goodness", since that's the word you use here to describe the behavior you mean by "virtue". Other options might be "pop morality", "decency", or something like "altruizing" if you want some novel coinage.
"Virtue" is mostly archaic; nobody commonly uses it in the Victorian sense anymore. It's most commonly used as in "virtue ethics", ie, your "nobility". It's so confusing here that it might be worse than just saying "you know... That thing!"
Yes! Looking forward to the practices
Joining the chorus of people looking forward to this. In particular, I'm interested in whether there were historical circumstances where "nobility" was seriously promoted, developed and practiced at scale. Having directionally right "vibes" is one thing, but actually doing it well is quite another.
Yes... well, there will always be disagreements about what counts as noble or not. But explicit training in it was part of elite culture in the major Western nations for at least a century, arguably ending with WWI (which discredited it in many eyes) or the 1970s (when it was discredited almost entirely almost everywhere). I'm planning a follow-up post about this.
I'm still confused what the distinction is between what you've chosen to call nobility and virtue.
I think a few concrete examples would help. If I understand correctly, Napoleon is a good archetypical example of nobility without virtue. Does that fit?
Well, there will always be disagreement about what, and who, are noble. However: I defined nobility as the wise and just use of power. His invasion of Russia in winter is often used as a catastrophically unwise decision. And his invading, conquering, and looting numerous foreign countries does not seem just.
From Wikipedia:
> he is controversial because of his role in wars which devastated Europe, his looting of conquered territories, and his mixed record on civil rights. He abolished the free press, ended directly elected representative government, exiled and jailed critics of his regime, reinstated slavery in France's colonies except for Haiti, banned the entry of blacks and mulattos into France, reduced the civil rights of women and children in France, reintroduced a hereditary monarchy and nobility, and violently repressed popular uprisings against his rule.
Looking forward to reading more about this. One of the biggest open questions I have had about meaningness (which your recent posts against philosophy have stirred up) revolve around politics and power.
(Side note: video comments do not work in Firefox on Substack, and the video itself does not load for me)
Thanks!
I use firefox and don't have this problem. Perhaps it's due to an add-on you have installed?
So, nobility roughly corresponds to Greek "arete" aka excellence? As far as I can gather, this Greek concept revolves about warrior "virtues", performance, esthetically pleasing and elegant handling of situations. Nietzsche kinda talked about this, not sure that here specifically used this word, but I'm pretty sure he refers to this kind of "ethics" instead of normative morality of specific culture or time period.
They seem distinct from an analytical point of view, but from a very practical point of view - vice restricts freedom of action. So a person who is virtuous is much more likely to be able to hold an operate with power wisely, than a person who is in a grip of vice.
Can you give me an example of a person who had vices and used power wisely and benefited a lot of people?
How would you draw the venn diagrams for Nobility, Virtue, Dignity and Honor?