Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

This is Episode 3, The Necessity of Virtue.

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This lecture is called Virtue as a Necessity. And the reason I gave it that title is because

Virtue ethics morality isn't a field of study. It's a mode of being upon which all fields

of study rest. It's also a mode of being on which everything you do in your life rests

the way you understand yourself or fail to, the way you understand other people or fail

to. And more deeply than that, what role it is that you play in your life in the world.

One of the things I've learned, for example, being a clinical psychologist, has spent

thousands of hours helping people sort out difficult problems is that lack of Virtue

makes people ill. I'm not saying that my clients themselves lack Virtue. I suppose some

of them do and some of them don't, but to the degree that they're embedded in a network

of relationships where Virtue is fundamentally absent, they're tortured and tormented,

they're unable to find firm ground. And that's not a biological problem, even though biologically

fragile people might be hurt more by a lack of Virtue. A lot of what you do in a real relationship

with people, and at least to some degree a clinical relationship is supposed to be real,

is provide a forum where people tell the truth. And that's hard because people don't like

to tell the truth, particularly the truth is difficult. It's difficult for a variety

of reasons. So when I first thought about this lecture, I had a slightly different title

that the title was Virtue as an existential necessity. And that's a bit philosophical.

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