Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books

The Importance Of Ordo Amoris

The Importance Of Ordo Amoris

Ordo Amoris means “the order of affections.”

In short: It’s another way of saying “priorities.”

The thing is that the priorities that one has in this life have to be mostly taught.

Children have to be shown that kindness should take a front seat to malice, charity should be prized above greed, and love should be preferred to hate.

One does not start out with an instinct for selflessness and virtue.

But misplaced priorities can easily manifest later in adults too.

A preference for spending and accumulation (instant gratification) over savings and wealth can lead to financial strain and bankruptcy – and a priority of lust, over parental/spousal responsibility can lead to broken families.

Again, this all feels hard to put a finger on without ethics as the unmovable root.

This all tips a hat back toward the necessity of classical education:

So we have returned once more to Lewis and Maritain and Weil and before all of them Augustine: the necessity of seeking the ordo amoris, of training the emotional responses before training the rational ones. But for Eliot this is vital not just for the young, but for all ages; and the instrument distinctively suited to such training is poetry.

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

Education Is Important, But Why?

Education Is Important, But Why?

Education is important, right?

Right.

We have to function as part of this world – this collective – with its means of exchange and its laws and norms.

We have to provide, put food on the table for our families, and read and write and pay bills.

But education (and with it everything else in this life) is something much deeper, isn’t it?

Gosh, I think so.

You only need to ask “why?” or “so what?” half a dozen times and suddenly you are at the crux of it all.

Education is important because all of the rest of life is important too.

Understand: Everything matters, forever.

While “it is obvious that man’s education must be concerned with the social group and prepare him to play his part in it,” and therefore it is true in a sense that “[ m] an finds himself by subordinating himself to the group,” nevertheless, “[ t] he ultimate end of education concerns the human person in his personal life and spiritual progress, not in his relationship to the social environment.” It is vital, Maritain believes, to grasp “that man has secrets which escape the group and a vocation which is not included in the group.”

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

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