Integrity.

• Author: Lomasky, Loren E.

Many years ago, as an aspiring member of a paramilitary organization, I solemnly pledged that I would be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous....There were, I believe, 12 items on the list of virtues, but their variety made almost no impression. I understood myself simply to be promising to be a Good Boy.

Was Stephen Carter also a Boy Scout? I don't know, but he does offer a Swiss-Army-Knife, one-implement-does-it-all account of integrity. It is defined as "1) discerning what is right and what is wrong; 2) acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost; and 3) saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right from wrong." Knowing, doing, acknowledging: What more can you ask from a moral agent? Nothing appears to be missing. On this expansive conception integrity is not merely an important virtue or even the central one; it is the entirety of morality.

An advantage of this approach is that it renders virtually the whole range of behavior fair game for the author of a book titled Integrity. And if the author is as thoughtful, candid, and undogmatic as Carter, the result is a wide-ranging and stimulating tour of contemporary mores. Politicians, journalists, win-at-all-costs sports stars, and ordinary Americans who take their pleasures too seriously and marital vows not seriously enough are placed under the moral microscope and their various warts and blemishes diagnosed. Most of the critiques are sensible and some noteworthy for their insight: I shall presently return to the particulars of his indictments. But despite their considerable merits, one crucial ingredient is missing from the book: an appreciation of what is truly distinctive about integrity.

As etymology reveals, integrity is about integration. It is, thus, a meta-virtue. Integrity is not just another entry on a laundry list of traits people ought to have but rather serves as the glue that binds together the various facets of a person's character. That immediately prompts a question: Why should we suppose that any such glue is required; why isn't it enough that individuals possess a full measure of the excellences that are components of living well? Maybe "integrity" is just shorthand for all-around goodness. This brings us back to the comprehensive understanding that Carter offers.

Although I shall criticize that account, I hasten to acknowledge that Carter is in distinguished company. Until comparatively recently integrity was an inconspicuous, even redundant moral quality. The Hebrews had no need for it; theirs was a zeal for righteousness understood simply as fidelity to God's Torah. Nor did the Greek moralists include it in any listings of the cardinal virtues. None saw the need for such a moral binding agent. (Phronesis, "practical wisdom," was the nearest approximation.)

Socrates was notorious for maintaining paradoxically that all the virtues were at bottom one, indeed nothing other than knowledge. That appraisal was not generally accepted. Aristotle, for example, held that human excellences were irreducibly diverse: Courage is not the same as moderation which is not the same as justice, magnanimity, or friendship. Someone, therefore, could stand well along one of these dimensions yet in other respects be deficient. Nonetheless, optimal character integration posed no significant theoretical problem. The best way for someone to be is to excel with regard to all these traits. Complete virtue is the equivalent of a student scoring straight As. No doubt there will be few people with a perfect 4.0 moral average, but those who score lower do so because they fall short in one or more particular courses, not because there is some difficulty in principle about combining them.

But what if two classes are offered at the same time? Then enrollment in one necessarily entails absence from the other. The analogy raises disquieting questions. Suppose that excelling in one area of human accomplishment entails forgoing achievement somewhere else. Then the ideal of full human flourishing becomes unattainable. To secure one kind of personal good necessarily involves sacrificing another. And this will be a genuine sacrifice because what one gives up is an attribute that in some significant way makes life go better. Virtues on this conception do not merely displace vices; they also shut out other virtues.

The disturbing thought that not all good things can be tied together in a neat package first pricked the Western moral consciousness in the wake of initial encounters...