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A Simple Reflection on Virtue
Skidmore College Commencement
May 21, 2005
Philip A. Glotzbach
President
I now want to address a few final thoughts to the members of the
Skidmore College class of 2005—before we catapult you out into an
unsuspecting world.
Let me begin where Dr. Kuroda left off: with the thought that what you
do from this point forward—both how you construct your personal lives
and how you make your mark upon the world—will represent the ultimate
determinations of the value of your Skidmore education. Indeed, the
best way to honor the professors who have done so much to assist you
in reaching this point is to surpass them—in knowledge, in
achievement, and in virtue.
Virtue is rather an old-fashioned concept, isn't it? Something that we
don't often talk about these days. And yet the idea of moral
excellence combined with courage—and that is a serviceable definition
of virtue—is surely important today, perhaps more important than ever
in the history of humankind because we have reached a point where
your generation's individual and collective effects upon the world will far
eclipse those of preceding generations.
Consider the issue of global climate change. In her three-part New
Yorker article on this topic, writer Elizabeth Kolbert notes that
A few years ago ... the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen coned a term. No
longer, he wrote, should we think of ourselves in the Holocene, as the
period since the last glaciation is known. Instead, an epoch unlike
any of those which preceded it had begun. This new age was defined by
one creature—man—who had become so dominant that he was
capable of altering the planet on a geological scale. Crutzen, a Nobel
Prize winner, dubbed this age the Anthropocene. He proposed as its
starting date the seventeen-eighties, the decade in which James Watt
perfected his steam engine and, inadvertently, changed the history of
the earth.1
Crutzen's point is that with the invention of the steam engine, human
beings began pumping carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere in
heretofore unprecedented ways: a process that began altering ratios of
CO2 to other gases that had remained essentially stable for thousands
of years of human history and that has accelerated alarmingly over the
past century.
There is no question that through this process we human beings are
altering our climate. The only question that matters is how we will
deal with this reality. Will we work collectively to find a way to
lead this process of change? Or will we abdicate leadership by acting
as though this social process is somehow beyond our control?
The answer to this question will provide a good measure of your
generation's virtue—your capacity to combine moral excellence
with courage. I assume that you know the meaning of the term
"courage," and I'm not going to attempt a definition of "moral
excellence" here. But I will suggest that any serviceable notion of
moral excellence includes a concern for others, a concern that
extends ultimately to the future in which those others will live.
Well why should you care enough about the future that you might be
willing to act courageously to make that future a better one? Let me
suggest a reason for caring that does not pertain to most of you at
this point in your lives—a biological reason that is hard-wired
into our species: children.
Well why should you care enough about the future that you might be
willing to act courageously to make that future a better one? Let me
suggest a reason for caring that does not pertain to most of you at
this point in your lives—a biological reason that is hard-wired
into our species: children. In a very real sense, to hold in one's
arms a child that one loves is to hold a part of the future. Your
parents had that experience, and part of the meaning of this day for
them is that this moment symbolizes your entry into the adult
world—a moment they hoped and planned for over so many years (for
some of them, wondering if it would ever come!). My point is that to
love a child is to worry about the kind of world that child will in
habit. It is to be connected to the future in a concrete and
experiential way that transcends any abstract intellectual awareness.
This experience is surely one of the psychological foundations of
human morality—of moral excellence and hence of virtue.
The conclusion to this line of reasoning is not that you should
go forth and multiply—at least not immediately. Some of you will
never experience parenthood at all, and yet we expect you to be
virtuous even so. Rather, the conclusion I would like you to draw is
twofold:
First, you still have a great deal to learn, and part of that learning
concerns the existential meaning of children in the human community.
Since we have spent the last few days praising your academic
accomplishments, a small dose of humility at this point is surely not
a bad idea.
Second, the sooner you begin paying attention to children, getting
connected to them caring about them and the world they will in
habit, the sooner you will be on the path to a mature understanding of
moral excellence and hence, virtue. One way to forge that connection
is by spending time with children in your extended family. A second
way is to continue developing your moral imagination through
literature, plays, and films that include children as meaningful
characters. Along this lone, I recommend the book The Kite
Runner, this year's Saratoga Reads selection, and a book that many
of you already know.
Above all I urge you, as you begin the wonderful project of
constructing an adult life, to pause from time to time and give some
thought to the important concept of virtue. In doing so, always
remember that you carry with you—into your future—the
hopes and dreams of those who have nurtured you from the days of your
own childhood as well as all of us at your alma mater, Skidmore
College.
1Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Climate of Man-III: What Can Be Done?"
The New Yorker (May 9, 2005), p. 54.
Creative Thought Matters.
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