Anti-Climacus

WELL: I didn't read this particular article on manliness the first time it went around the evangelical blog circuit. But Diotima linked to it and made some interesting observations of her own, so I went ahead and read. This will require a fuller response, as I feel one coming on, but it will have to wait until after classes tomorrow, so the quippy response will have to do:

It seems like Mr. Moore is pushing a particular agenda of what men should be. I should begin by saying that I wholly advocate it, and think that all men should aspire to be cultured, well-rounded gentlement, who can balance their desires against those of others in a mature and responsible manner. Nevertheless, being not-so-far removed from my formative years, I think Mr. Moore might be neglecting some of the pressure-cooker aspects of teenagerdom.

Essentially, there seem to be two options for young men who don't want to turn into either of Mr. Moore's alternatives: the first is the Aristotlean way, by habituation in virtuous behavior from the youngest possible age. This seems to be Mr. Moore's preferred approach, and indeed is mine as well. The other seems to be making the benefits of a virtuously led life so attractive that any right-thinking person would choose it over other options.

But, with either option, a choice has to be made by the individual. Moore's panegyrics aside, I sometimes wonder how many of the boys fighting with the Duke of Wellington (to cite an example he uses) were actually inspired entirely by being manly and virtuous. My own suspicion is not that many. I was, in my formative years, a church-going Eagle Scout who did fantastically well in school. Nevertheless, as people who knew me back then will tell you, I didn't really develop my current balance of morals, manners, etc, until I got to college and made the conscious choice to. Perhaps I'm misreading the article (it is late, and I have only read it the one time), but he doesn't seem to think that boys nowadays can be anything but barbarians or wimps, and that strikes me as dead wrong.