The Pietas Papers
Welcome to the blog. Below you’ll find the latest short reflections on duty, contentment, and virtue.
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The Only Crime Is Pride
All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride. — Sophocles, Antigone...
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The Pillar of Union: Washington’s Farewell and the Duty We Still Owe
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real...
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Pietas Is Power
…in all anger, recollect, that wrath is not the manly disposition; that calm meekness, as it more becomes the rational nature, so, it is more manly....
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Our Reason for Being
...we are not born for ourselves alone...men were brought into being for the sake of men, that they might do good to one another. - Cicero I find it...
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The Real War: Pietas vs. Hubris
It cannot, indeed, possibly be denied, that our being God’s creatures, and virtue being the natural law we are born under, and the whole constitution...
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On Exercising Contentment
Show me then your progress in this point. As if I should say to a wrestler, Show me your muscle; and he should answer me, “See my dumb-bells.” Your...
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Why Philosophy Matters
So when I turned my eyes towards her and fixed my gaze upon her, I recognised my nurse, Philosophy...And I asked her, 'Wherefore have you, mistress of...
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Freedom Through Conscience
…if you wish not to be disappointed in your desires, that is in your own power. Exercise, therefore, what is in your power. A man's master is he who...
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The Gateway to Clarity
The best posture of mind is that which seeks first, not orthodoxy, but clearness. Of course, truth is immeasurably the highest object of...
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The Most Human Things
His own conversation was ever of human things. The problems he discussed were, What is godly, what is ungodly; what is beautiful, what is ugly; what...
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It's Good to Be Picky
As one of the poets says: "From the good shalt thou learn good things; but if thou minglest with the bad thou shalt lose even what thou hast of...
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Duty Requires Community
Rights and obligations are correlative terms. Whatever others have a just right or title to claim from me, that is my duty, or what I am obliged to do...
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Soulcraft Rhythms
…just as poetry is forgotten unless it is often repeated, so instruction, when no longer heeded, fades from the mind. To forget good counsel is to...
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Realistic Gratitude
To show real gratitude is to recognize “that we are bound in duty” to respond to our moral sense. Growing up, I never liked the idea of gratitude....
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Grateful Successors
…a completed system of philosophy…is to be built up, only as systems of physical science are formed, by the careful inductions of successive...
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The Beauty of Virtue
Whatever controversies and variety of opinions there are about the nature of virtue, yet all excepting some sceptics, who deny any real difference...
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Training the Soul
I notice that as those who do not train the body cannot perform the functions proper to the body, so those who do not train the soul cannot perform...
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Polishing the Mind
His thinking…is often exclusive and angular, in consequence of its not being rubbed and polished and adjusted by being placed alongside of the...
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Perfect vs. Contingent Duties
Duty may be said to be either contingent or perfect…what is right in itself is perfect duty; that for the doing of which a satisfactory reason can be...
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On Inner Peace
I wish peace for myself as well as for others, and, in the search for it, must demand that self-evident truth be not ignored. When I, in company with...
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On True Contentment
…do as much as you can to deserve praise, and yet avoid as much as possible the hearing of it. - John Witherspoon I used to think of contentment as...
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The Middle Way of Pietas
What then is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it occurs. And how does it occur? As it pleases God… -...
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Introducing the Pietas Papers
It’s been several years since I launched my first online project called Engaged Awareness. At the time, I was an Army civil affairs officer, and my...
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