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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 10K a day who wrote (228306)	2/18/2002 8:55:11 PM
From: gao seng	Respond to of 769670

Calm down, dude. You take yourself way too seriously. DAVID YOUNT: Virtue Scripps Howard News Service Copyright © 2002 Nando Media Copyright © 2002 Star Tribune (February 18, 10:32 a.m. CST) - "Help your brother," Mohammed preached, "whether he is an oppressor or he is oppressed." Puzzled, his disciples questioned him: "It is right to help him if he is oppressed, but how should we help him if he is an oppressor?" "By preventing him from oppressing others," the Prophet replied, which pretty well explains the response of the U.S. and its allies to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. British critic John Carey recently noted that the terrorists "were to their partisans, martyrs, dying in a holy assault on western values." Carey judges that assault to be more unnerving than a mere crime, "not least because looking around at what in the main seems valued in the West - money, celebrity, drink, drugs, sex - it is hard to think anyone would readily die in defense of those." One of the lessons of 9-11 is that moral relativism is false. There is, clearly, evil in man and his world. But what of its opposite, goodness? Is virtue a sham? Not according to Andre Comte-Sponville, a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne, whose recent book, "A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues," has remained on the French best-seller lists for 14 months and has been translated into 24 languages. Comte-Sponville is not religious, but he agrees with the major faiths that self-love is the root of all evil. He admires courage as a virtue, but notes that the terrorists were religious fanatics, convinced that their martyrdom would gain them happiness in the afterlife. Such persons are not courageous at all, the scholar insists. Rather, they are only sacrificing innocent lives for their own benefit. Pride, the philosopher suggests, is less a vice that it is ignorance of one's own limitations. Humor, he believes, is a key virtue, because taking oneself too seriously is not reasonable. He believes the virtue of prudence to be more pertinent than ever these days, reflecting that carelessness about sex and the environment endanger human health and the health of the planet. Because Comte-Sponville is a religious skeptic, faith no longer lingers in his lists of virtues. Its absence, he acknowledges, poses a dilemma: people must be moral without believing in the truth of morality. Moreover, without faith, there is no basis for asserting the sanctity of human life, because we cannot sanctify ourselves. Nearly all virtues, he notes, can become vices (for example, tolerance of evil is itself evil). Cynics contend that the purpose of morality is to make oneself feel good, but most of us believe its purpose is to make things better for others. It may do both so long as "do-gooders" don't pander to their pride. Comte-Sponville is less persuasive when he takes a Gallic approach to amour by justifying adultery. More important than marital fidelity, he pleads, is to be "faithful to the truth of desire within ourselves" and to be faithful to the "grateful memory" of one's spouse's former allure. Tell that to your wife, Professor! 24hour.startribune.com