{"id":2040,"date":"2020-02-07T09:51:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=2040"},"modified":"2020-02-07T09:51:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T14:51:00","slug":"on-manhood-the-warrior-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2020\/02\/on-manhood-the-warrior-part-i.html","title":{"rendered":"On Manhood: The Warrior Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous essay<\/a>, I argued that our contemporary culture offers males in search of manhood few viable models.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, all is not lost.\u00a0 But in order to realize his potential as a man in the future<\/em>, a male must first turn his attention to the past, <\/em>to an ideal type of Manhood with a pedigree that transcends time and place.<\/p>\n

It is history, that of both Western and other peoples, that presents males today with the ideal of the Warrior. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tellingly, there is something on the order of a cross-cultural, trans-historical consensus on the nature of the Warrior.\u00a0 The minds of men separated by centuries and geography, inhabiting different universes, are as one when it comes to the subject of the characteristics that distinguish the Warrior from all others.<\/p>\n

Crucially, physical prowess, though necessary<\/em>, is far from sufficient <\/em>to make one a Warrior.\u00a0 The Warrior must also possess intellectual excellence.<\/p>\n

Thus, the term \u201cWarrior-Scholar<\/em>\u201d is meaningless because it is redundant: It has always been understood that a Warrior, by definition, must be educated.<\/p>\n

Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, <\/em>made the point:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, a \u201cscholar,\u201d within this context, is not necessarily someone who teaches at a university or publishes in academic journals.\u00a0 These activities we associate with scholarliness, it is true.\u00a0 But the scholarliness of the Warrior, it has traditionally been understood, finds expression in his intellectual virtues, those of his mental habits that have been sewn through both his physical training as well as his education into the various arts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s critical to realize, though, that the Warrior insists upon the cultivation of his mind, not<\/em> for the sake of some abstract ideal of learning for its own sake; the Warrior does not recognize any distinction between theory and practice, mind and body.\u00a0 Quite the contrary: There are two, ultimately inseparable, reasons for why it has always been held that a Warrior without erudition is like a library without books, or a square without four sides:<\/p>\n

Firstly, Warriors around the globe knew long before the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt would argue for this thesis in the 20th<\/sup> century that between thinking<\/em> and morality<\/em> there is an indissoluble connection.<\/p>\n

Arendt and her family fled from their native Germany after Hitler and his Nazis had risen to power.\u00a0 After the war, Arendt attended the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.\u00a0 What she claimed to have observed is that Eichmann, who justified his conduct on the grounds that he was simply \u201cfollowing orders,\u201d wasn\u2019t at all the monster that she expected to see.\u00a0 Rather, he exhibited what Arendt memorably described as \u201ca curious, but quite authentic, inability to think<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inability to think, it is clear from Arendt\u2019s work, isn\u2019t necessarily a literal inability. <\/em>And it certainly isn\u2019t peculiar to Eichmann and Nazis.\u00a0 It is actually the unwillingness <\/em>to think critically to which she alluded, the unwillingness to think beyond the bumper-sticker slogans\u2014the stock phrases, clich\u00e9s, and conventionalities\u2014of the times.<\/p>\n

Eichmann\u2019s inability or unwillingness to think resulted in his committing evil at the behest of a superior in the chain of command.\u00a0 The inability or unwillingness to think on the part of a democrat (small \u201cd,\u201d notice), amounting as it does to an eagerness to be a herd animal, a mental conformist, or a sheep, can result in his committing evil as he goes along to get along with the mob.<\/p>\n

Right action depends upon clear thinking, an educated mind forms a virtuous character\u2014this the Warrior has always known well. \u00a0The Vikings had a saying that succinctly encapsulates this insight:<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in the sheath the sword must be sharp\u2014so too must the mind and the spirit be within the body.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Arendt noted, no less a figure than Socrates himself not only discerned, but aspired to embody in his person, the connection between thinking and morality.\u00a0 This is significant, for while it is easy to forget, the fact is that Socrates was a warrior. <\/em><\/p>\n

The same man who famously stated that \u201cthe unexamined life is not worth living\u201d was not only a decorated<\/em> war hero, but a celebrated<\/em> one. \u00a0During the Peloponnesian War (which raged for about 27 years), Socrates, who may have been as old as 48 years of age by this time, served gallantly.\u00a0 Multiple battles served as occasions for him to showcase his martial prowess.<\/p>\n

Yet for Socrates, who insisted that it is always better to suffer wrongdoing than to commit it, the exhibition of martial prowess in the service of a just cause, like the just cause (of his beloved Athens) that he was convinced he advanced, is the function of moral excellence.<\/p>\n

The idea that war is somehow outside the boundaries of morality\u2014an idea that is far too prevalent nowadays\u2014is one that neither Socrates nor any other warrior could fathom.<\/p>\n

Secondly, the Warrior values the development of his mind as much as his body because of his particular vision of the person as a unity <\/em>of body and <\/em>mind.<\/p>\n

In other words, the Warrior sees the human being as a spiritual unity. <\/em><\/p>\n

All that this last point means is that the Warrior ethos resolutely excludes that view of the human being entailed by contemporary Western atheism. \u00a0It is radically incompatible, in other words, with what\u2019s known as materialism<\/em>, the metaphysical doctrine which asserts that there is no spirit, soul, or mind, that all things are simply matter in motion. The Warrior ethos is incompatible with materialism not just because the Warrior denies its truth\u2014we are, after all, more than worm food\u2014but as well because materialism all too readily gives rise to hedonism and egoism, the doctrines, respectively, that pleasure and the self are the greatest of all goods.<\/p>\n

The Warrior, in glaring contrast, is committed to a life of self-transcendence. He recognizes a spiritual order that has purchased a claim upon him.\u00a0 For the Warrior who is Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, it is, ultimately, for the sake of God that he enthusiastically sheds blood, both that of the enemy and, if need be, that of his own.<\/p>\n

Yet one who lacks a belief in God, or Heaven, does not necessarily lack a belief in a transcendent spiritual realm (although I would argue, and have argued, that the logic of the concept of the spiritual points inexorably to God).\u00a0 The Warrior who defends his people, his tribe, his nation, and who does so as much for the sake of his ancestors<\/em> as for that of his contemporaries, reveals his spiritual orientation.\u00a0 So too do the Warriors who discern in the cosmos the expression of Logos <\/em>(Reason), or who affirm the Tao<\/em> (the Way), reveal theirs.<\/p>\n

In the next installment of this series, we will look at specific virtues prized by the Warrior irrespectively of when and where he has existed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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