Pietas
- patricklewisbaker
- Nov 1, 2020
- 1 min read
Updated: Aug 21
The words “piety” and “pious” have an archaic ring; moderns find them hard to use without irony or a sneer. Pejorative senses of the words predominate, such as those the Oxford English Dictionary gives for “piety” (“a sanctimonious statement, a commonplace”) and for “pious” (“hypocritically virtuous; self-righteous; sanctimonious”). The words conjure in the profane mind the image of superstitious old women kneeling before statues in church, clutching their rosaries and holy cards. Only readers of old literature are aware of the richer and nobler senses of the words in the premodern West, as in the Confucian East, where the virtue of piety (禮 or li is the Chinese correlative) was regarded as the lynchpin of the social and political virtues. As Cicero wrote, “In all probability, the disappearance of piety toward the gods will entail the disappearance of loyalty and social union among men as well, and of justice itself, the queen of all the virtues.” Today, his prediction threatens to become reality…