How Technique and Method Overcame Virtue

Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was a Catholic philosopher. He was raised Liberal Protestant and later became agnostic. He married, and later made a pact with his wife that if they could not find a higher meaning to life they would commit suicide together. After their search they became Catholic. Jacques is credited with being one of the key figures to bring St. Thomas Aquinas back to English-speaking culture. Pope St. Paul VI offered him a position as a Cardinal but he declined, an especially odd but honorific offer since he was a lay person. His political philosophy is not always clear or wonderful but his work on Art is fantastic.

In his paper on Art and Scholasticism, he seeks to rediscover what St. Thomas and the "School Men" had to say about art. He tried to develop this dialogue. In the work, he locates a problem with modern art, which is a larger problem for all fields and the Catholic life in general.

Thus method or rules, regarded as an ensemble of formulas and processes that work of themselves and serve the mind as orthopedic and mechanical armature, tend everywhere in the modern world to replace habitus, because method is for all whereas habitus are only for some. Now it cannot be admitted that access to the highest activities depend on a virtue that some possess and others do not; consequently beautiful things must be made easy. -Art and Scholasticism; Jacques Maritain

What does this mean?

Prudence is an intellectual virtue, meaning it governs the intellect to its right ends. St. Thomas says Prudence, or Wisdom, is simply right reason in action. So the "practical man" who does stupid stuff but it's always getting something done is not wise, he's just rash. Likewise, the book worm who doesn't know how to wash his clothes, cut down a tree, or clean his dishes isn't wise, because he doesn't know how to act. Art is very close to the virtue of Prudence, except the former is about making and the latter is about doing.

The Modern problem we face is that Prudence has been replaced with "techniques" and "rules" and "methods." We largely think these are "orthopedic," that is, they will heal us, make our lives better, put our families in order, help us find or create more time, and save us. At the same time we know they are "mechanical armature," that is, we think that the method or rule is the "engine" or the "power source" of our actions having practical effects. We think, "the technique works!" rather than "My habit works!"

For example, someone says, "I have 10 rules to help you have a healthier life," and following this list of rules is thought to be the thing that actually makes you better, without any reference to your will or intellect as the thing doing the changing, and without any reference to your appetite which is the source of the problems since you like unhealthy food. (Notice the "Decalogue" or "Ten Commandments" are ten rules but in the Catholic schema that direct you virtues -- an invitation to shape intellect and will. Thus mere method and mere technique have replaced virtue.)

Now, the truth is that Man simply is a creature of habitus. Hence, one cannot actually replace habitus with technique absolutely. One can only appear to do this. Some new habitus will continue since the human person acts out habit. This is simply how the soul, the form of the body, causes things (ie "formal causality"). The interior principle will remain the soul's habits, both intellectual and moral. What's this mean? It means its habit will be to defer to techniques that cause it to operate on dysfunctional habits, seemingly non-habit habits, or more sharply the habit of trying to always do the same thing no matter the person, place, circumstance, thing, time, etc.

We thus think of methods and rules as things external to us that will help us. These techniques, methods, or rules are received as substitutes for formed dispositions, rather than as instruments that a formed disposition uses so that the person may be further formed. And since they do the work, I have no need to internally change. The only internal change I need to is to pick up the latest pop psychology book on how to repair my relationships, how to parent, how to figure out my personality type or color or love language or enneagram, whether I'm left brain or right brain, etc. etc.

Pop Secular Psychology

Even Catholics are formed within a therapeutic culture that presents expert techniques of self-management as substitutes for spiritual formation, whether intellectual or moral. But when the techniques don't work and I don't become a better person I must come to the question, "What am I doing wrong?" The self-help book crowd is already two steps ahead though, so they always have the chapter on "Don't be so hard on yourself, it's a process." We bolster a failing Pelagianism with more Pelagianism, the "I don't need grace just self-mastery" heresy.

The trick played on us is that habitus formation is a process, whereas the methods and rules we're being sold aren't developed by us, they're employed by us. Thus once the method fails they appeal to your sense that you do need to change so it'll take time. So you go back to employing the method and not changing yourself. But since you don't change, nothing changes with your employment of the rule. Thus, the more one enacts the system, the more the system reproduces the demand for further techniques. At no point does it move to resolve the underlying problem of formation or lack thereof. This goes on till it fails, and you find yourself looking for the next pop psychology book.

See the trick? The result is a cycle of technique dependence without substantial formation. "Just follow best practices and procedure." The result is the replacement of wisdom with technical procedure.

Hoards of cultural and economic capital and resources are directed toward this cycle of procedural substitution and disappointment. This system tends to leave one feeling like a failure, yet also makes one feel increasingly dependent upon more techniques for relief. Freud and Jung are key representatives of the therapeutic culture, which has come to widely influence how the interior live is perceived by the average person. E.g. the assumed consciousness, subconsciouness, projection, etc. are taken as dogmatic truths. In many modern institutions, older Christian traditions of of spiritual formation increasingly gave way to therapeutic models. Spiritual formation of intellectual and moral habits to correct and direct the thoughts, words, and deeds by harmonizing one's soul, ie the intellectual, sensitive, and nutritive powers to their corrects ends, and the soul over the body were replaced by self-help and self-care primarily focusing on self-management, self-regulation, self-esteem, and psychological adjustment by removal of external problems to one's preferential beliefs, or by insinuating problems to the interior existed when no external evidence could be provided for a proper inference.

Questions once framed in terms of virtue, sin, discipline, and moral formation increasingly came to be interpreted through therapeutic categories centered on management, stress, trauma, dysfunction, and subjective wellness. The language and question of one's internal powers of intellect, senses, and nutrition needing to be harmonized with God, the Church, & Creation disappeared. The question of Man as inherently social, made for the common good, and the need for solidarity and subsidiarity disappeared. These were replaced with the consciousness, subconsciousness, the ambiguous and unitarian "Self," primarily concerned with removing shame by elimination of suffering and any pressure to be held accountable to a common good. Solidarity was replaced with a purely subjective counterfeit "compassion" and the common good was replaced with a "greater good" win which certain members of society were deemed less worthy and thus acceptable sacrifices for said greater good. With that change returned the ancient Dualisms, the assumption that we're all ghosts in machines, but now one is trying to employ methods and techniques to oneself and society for optimization. But I am my flesh. It is not my flesh suit. If you don't know what a thing is, you can't possibly diagnose nor fix it properly

Secondly, unless these people have lived a good life all the way till death, you can't actually trust their methods work. This is like asking someone who has never finished a race what the best way to finish a race is. Just because someone is doing well on the first stretch of the race, or halfway up, or even to the last stretch, doesn't mean they'll finish. Thus seeking pop books on how to lead, how to parent, how to be successful, or how to make friends are all ultimately silly. Listen to the saints, they're in the hall of fame, living people aren't.

In psychology, we call the reduction of human action to mechanism "Behaviourism." This theory is so embedded in modern culture we tend to want to translate all qualitative human acts into quantifiable categories. E.g. the quality of "intelligence" got turned into a number (IQ). Behaviourism has formally been declared a kind of "heresy" in Secular psychology, an outdated theory but it keeps rearing its head in academia as well as government programs as a kind of standard. Popular authors have made billions on magical techniques, arbitrary rules, and methods based on sheer assertion, outdated research (i.e. its been debunked with research), or anecdotal evidence (trying to draw a universal law from a story of it working one time). Philip Rieff was a secular, atheist, Jewish sociologist, and philosopher who could see through these tricks. If he can, then surely we Catholics, aided by the Light of Faith, can see through it. He famously called this kind of stuff "shamanism" in a modern disguise. It is a magic regulated by bureaucracies and self-help gurus. See Philip Rieff's The Triumph of the Therapeutic or Charisma for more on that problem.

So despite the fact Jesus has given us The Church and the Sacraments, we go searching elsewhere. Despite the fact Jesus tells us "The Way is narrow" and few find it, we expect to find a broad and easy way in a pop psychology text. Somewhere, someone, is willing to give you that answer if you go looking for it. But do you want truth or comfort at the expense of truth?

Why do we seek Technique & Method?

We want healing now. And we want it easy, without internal transformation: long, arduous days and nights of keeping vigil, prayers of sorrow, torment, suffering, and pain which are all part of the cost of becoming better. He have to fight inclinations to do things wrong. It is ourselves we battle. The technique only promises a "no battle, no worry, no going to war with your vices" way out of our problems. And like the Devil's Temptation of Christ in the desert, they're all lies. Of course we need rules, but those can only be used by a prudent person correctly. The imprudent person will use the rules when they should suspend them and will suspend them when they should keep them. Or again, the bad carpenter will use the hammer wrong, and will swing in accordance with the "method" he's seen, but it won't be employed well. Methods and techniques are like training wheels - they're not designed to help you get control of life, they're designed to help you to no longer need them. Further, training wheels cease to function properly when treated as ends in themselves rather than as temporary tools given to formation of stable habit of riding. So too technique and method become dysfunctional when they replace stable habits called "virtues." We must keep means as means and ends as ends. We must become better, the method getting better isn't always the answer.

The ancients thought that truth is difficult, that beauty is loftiness of the object, it is absolutely necessary that an intrinsic force and elevation -- that is to say, a habitus -- be developed in the subject. The modern conception of method and rules would therefore have seemed to them a gross absurdity. According to their principles, rules are of the essence of art, but on condition that the habitus, a living rule, be formed; without it, rules are nothing. -Art and Scholasticism; Jacques Maritain

We want the effect of habitus without the cause. We want good things without hard work. We want excellence without virtue. We want glory without a cross. For this reason, the reign of method and technique when regarded as sufficient for human flourishing apart from grace and virtue, is contradictory to the Christian understanding of the person and salvation. The overall schema must presume a sort Pelagianism, tacitly presupposing the Crucifixion is unnecessary for salvation, and that The Incarnation was all for naught. This means The Father sent His Son to be killed for no reason, making him no better than the tyrant gods of pagan nations, another capricious Poseidon or Odin. All of that is built into a simple, worldly way of life with its practices that are constantly being pressed upon us as "helpful" or "practical."

Egalitarian Society and Virtue

Egalitarian societies, especially therapeutic and bureauratic ones, oriented toward procedural equality tend to privilege methods that can be universally applied regardless of interior formation. It tends to hate virtues and love the "techniques" as supreme in this modern sense of the term. This is because virtue creates inequality. And if there be any excellence, there must by implication be mediocrity and inferiority in terms of servile arts like craftsmanship, but also those of moral quality, like good and evil men. What's more, it means ethical mediocrity and inferiority are moral problems. In a society of virtue, the indifferent man isn't dismissed as "well, that's just Joe," but as "Joe's apathy is a problem inhibiting his happiness, his family's, and possibly his city's happiness. We need to help Joe. What's going on with him?"

But to maintain egalitarianism, as Maritain says, "beautiful things must be made easy." When the French Political Commentator, Alexis de Toqueville, visited America in the 1820's he commented on Americans love of abstract art. He said it was natural for Americans to love it, because it was so democratic, for anyone could do it. Whereas the ancient painters were proficient at ages 10 or 15 and, like the Pre-Raphaelites, masters by 20. Today our 10 year old do macaroni art, and our 20 year olds perhaps have graduated from stick figures, but probably not. This is symptomatic of an egalitarian ethos.

Within egalitarian, bureaucratic societies, moral breakdown must be characterized as "disagreements," which increasingly tend to be managed through "neutrality" and "tolerance" rather than through shared accounts of the Good, virtues, language, and practices. Following John Locke rather than Jesus, the virtue of indifference and glorification of mediocrity becomes key. Within these societies, moral conflict is often treated as manageable primarily through neutrality, tolerance, and procedural mediation, making thicker accounts of shared moral formation increasingly difficult to publicly articulate, little alone cultivate. This assumes there is no other way of creating peace and concord in a society, a flagrant disregard for historical examples to the contrary. In said egalitarian bureaucracies, one is led to believe nothing is better or worse, all is equal. "Everything is everything." Music and art suffer, virtue declines, and "everybody is just fine." Moral and spiritual Sloth sink in, the "malaise" (see: Evelyn Waugh and Walker Percy's novels) of Modern life takes over, anxiety, depression, and personality disorders come out of an extreme lack of rootedness, objective purpose, and overall message, "Everybody is so equal nothing you do matters. Oh, but also, be successful and do great things. But they won't matter. Enjoy life."

The article written last week on the Pre-Raphaelites is a perfect instance of the problem of technique and method without habitus formation. The Academy began turning Raphael's habitus into a method and technique that was then forced onto all their students as the only way of doing art. The Pre-Raphaelites rebelled as a natural human inclination toward habitus. They wanted excellence and not rote copying, which after a period of time simply leads to mediocrity. Every art increasingly risked becoming standardized imitation, detached from the living habitus of the artist who made it. This set the stage for machine art, for AI art, which threatens to replace artists altogether as a portion of human society.

What we need to overcome Technique & Method

If we are to escape the clutches of the shadow side of the Industrial Revolution, we shall need to abandon the self-help books, the 10 tips to perfect your life lists that litter internet sites and grocery stores, the attempt to Catholicize Secular Pop Psychology, and the spiritual but not religious yoga-vegan-meditation-consumer-ethic videos on youtube.

-We need great art once more.

-We need the virtues once more.

-We need permission to desire excellence.

Not the excellence of, "I followed the rules, I played the game, now gimme my success," but true greatness. We need permission to desire good things in this life, to be bold, to desire life as an adventure once more. We need to feel alive if we will overcome the malaise of Modern life. Ironically the rhetoric of mechanistic thought is "You can do anything you want or be anything you want," which is entirely the most depressing and quickest way to kill desire. It's like telling a man drowning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean he's "free to go any way he wants." He's got 360 degrees of choices, and the sharks are about. He truly doesn't want arbitrary choice here. He wants to know which of the 360 options is the one fastest way home. That's his hope, freedom, and happiness in the moment.

We shall need to stop living like machines, and start living like humans, for Christ was fully man. That means we must live within cultural and technical habitats that do not fragment moral formation, especially those around attention and memory, into isolated procedural units. The Word became flesh, not metal. He did not come to give Pelagian self-help tips and our Gospels look nothing like these books. He came to give us a font of grace within us through Baptism, that the Holy Ghost Himself would aid us in combatting evil passions and willing good deeds. It does not start by assuming I'm just fine and capable of employing the right technique and method. If I was alright, I wouldn't need Christ.

We need to be human. And to act as humans, not machines. We need not Christ-like methods, but Christ-like persons.

The best strategy for change is a holy life,

lived with the practices and traditions

that sustain the formation of the Catholic virtues,

and nothing else. And for this, there is one thing we shall need above all.

We need The Word that became flesh, and left us his Church and her sacraments,

which are not techniques, but living realities of grace,

that cannot be reduced to procedural method.” if we would truly become fully human.