Manliness

Understanding Manliness

Archived virtue.net wording

Valor, excellence, courage, character, and worth. Vir meaning "man" (don't worry women, I extrapolate a little on this virtue).

The earlier website’s “don’t worry women” aside is an informal, dismissive remark, not an ancient Roman definition. This reading treats courage, excellence and worth as open to anyone.

The box preserves the earlier website’s statement. The reading is contemporary commentary, not a verified ancient definition.

A person learning a craft admits that they cannot yet perform a difficult step and asks for instruction. That admission can cost pride while giving excellence a route forward. Courage and capability are made more substantial through learning. The admirable choice is available to anyone; gender, dominance and bodily prowess do not grant ownership of it.

Cicero’s principal disputant in Tusculan Disputations II.XVIII explicitly derives virtus from vir and ties courage to a male ideal. That is evidence of one ancient gendered argument, not proof that the website’s English list is ancient or uniform. The contemporary reading rejects a gender boundary and the passage’s demand to prove excellence by despising pain. Learning, gentleness and requesting help remain available to anyone.

Manliness: finding the balance

A learner cannot yet perform a difficult craft step.

The overextension is performance of a gendered ideal, not excessive excellence. Neither gender nor bodily prowess determines who can act courageously or whose worth counts.

Manliness gives…

Acknowledging a limit can make instruction possible and let competence develop honestly. The benefit is a better relation to learning, not a promise that a skill, audience approval or courage will secure self-worth.

What Manliness makes possible

Courage can involve physical danger or social, professional and relational costs, sometimes together. Those expressions deserve recognition without becoming assignments to prove oneself. Here the invitation is an ordinary reflection on a skill, its worthy purpose and the support it needs. Declining danger, having limited capacity or needing help does not diminish a person’s worth.

Manliness in ordinary life

• Correcting your own account can involve reputational cost without physical danger. Such moral courage is not necessarily easy or minor.
• Physical courage can concern ethically defensible protection under danger. That expression is acknowledged without assigning hazardous acts as exercises or making greater risk a progression target.

Nearby virtues, different work

Humanity leaves room to learn, Dignity separates worth from performance and Prudence considers risks and means. Perseverance can support practice; none requires proving a gendered entitlement to excellence.

Perseverance · Dignity · Humanity · Prudence

Manliness and its counterfeits

Counterfeit of Manliness as contemporary excellence: the proof of dominance. A learner hides uncertainty and seeks a contest to recover pride. It resembles courage while making another person or unnecessary danger the means of reassurance. A fitting response keeps the worthy purpose and asks for appropriate help.

How to cultivate Manliness

Name the purpose of the skill and the kind of assistance it needs. Treat courage as facing fear for a defensible end, with physical, social or overlapping costs, rather than conformity to a gender test. Read the historical ideal critically beside the overview’s account of patriarchy.

Try it today

Choose a safe ordinary skill you freely want to learn. Identify one step you do not yet understand and an appropriate source of instruction. Asking a question or postponing an unsafe attempt can complete the exercise.

Questions worth returning to

What would count as excellence here if nobody’s gender or status entered the judgment?

Notice what changed, what remained uncertain and whose needs the choice served. You may adapt, pause or skip the exercise; risk and endurance are not proofs of worth.

Quotations and further reading

Read these passages beside their context and the earlier website wording. Their notes identify both useful distinctions and historical limits.

1. for the name “virtue” comes from vir, a man, and courage is the peculiar distinction of a man:

   Marcus Tullius Cicero · Tusculan Disputations; On the Nature of the Gods; On the Commonwealth

   Tusculan Disputations II.XVIII; continuous clause · C. D. Yonge, Harper & Brothers, 1877; only Tusculan selections intended

   Voice in this passage: Cicero’s principal disputant, marked M., arguing about courage and pain

   The principal disputant explicitly genders his etymological argument. This is historical evidence to question, not the contemporary article’s standard: courage, learning and worth remain open to anyone, and pain is not a test of them.

2. that mildness and gentleness, as they are more agreeable to human nature, so also are they more manly;

   Marcus Aurelius · The Thoughts (Meditations)

   Meditations XI.18; continuous clause · George Long; linked edition

   Voice in this passage: Marcus Aurelius reflecting on conduct

   Marcus uses the gendered vocabulary to commend gentleness over rage. The contemporary reading retains gentleness without reserving it to men or adopting his nearby judgment that pain signifies weakness.

3. anger does not therefore come to assist courage, but to take its place.

   Lucius Annaeus Seneca · Minor Dialogues Together with the Dialogue on Clemency

   On Anger I.13; continuous clause · Aubrey Stewart, 1889

   Seneca distinguishes courage from an incitement to violence. His surrounding derogatory references to age, illness and complaint are not adopted; asking for help is compatible with courage.

4. Howsoever fortune fall, one and undivided shall be our peril, one the escape of us twain.

   Virgil · Aeneid

   Aeneid II.709–710; Mackail prose · J. W. Mackail, prose translation, Macmillan 1885

   Voice in this passage: Aeneas addressing Anchises

   Aeneas makes shared responsibility for a dependent parent part of heroic courage. This character’s promise need not be restricted by gender and is not a demand for limitless caregiving or dangerous self-sacrifice.

5. we have learned to wage them justly not less than bravely.

   Livy · History of Rome, Books I–VIII

   History of Rome V.27; continuous clause · D. Spillan; Bohn edition, 1853

   Voice in this passage: Camillus, in Livy’s reported speech

   Camillus refuses an advantage gained by betraying children. Courage is constrained by justice here, though his punishment of the teacher and his conquest remain problematic parts of Livy’s story.

6. Together with thee did I experience the [battle of] Phillippi and a precipitate flight, having shamefully enough left my shield;

   Horace · Works: Odes, Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry

   Odes II.7; continuous clause · Christopher Smart, revised by Theodore Alois Buckley; linked edition

   Voice in this passage: Horace’s lyric speaker addressing Pompeius Varus

   Horace’s reunion poem admits flight and a discarded shield. The self-mocking memory complicates polished martial identity; the word shamefully belongs to the poem and is not a judgment imposed on fear or survival.

7. he loves his very enemies, and so loves them that he desires that his haters and detractors may be turned to righteousness

   Augustine of Hippo · City of God, Book V

   City of God V.19; continuous clause · Marcus Dods; online text revised and edited by Kevin Knight

   Augustine’s Christian account locates strength in the desired good of an opponent. His aim includes conversion and heavenly fellowship; the contemporary reading keeps non-cruel conduct without requiring his theology or contact with an unsafe person.

Continue through Roman Virtues