What is manliness? Manhood, happiness, and virtue

Happiness is more than just being able to put on a smiley face. To be truly happy, a man must develop quality character.

What does it mean to be “manly”? This question is likely to provoke many responses. To a more traditional mindset, manliness means a particular kind of physical strength, athletic ability, and stoicism. A “real man” is a male human who displays these kinds of characteristics.

Others might say manliness is more of an emotional disposition. A man keeps his feelings to himself to stay strong and support those around him. “Real men don’t cry” is a common refrain.

In some societies, manliness has been associated with warrior culture: whoever kicks the most ass is the biggest man. Of course, this view of manliness is particularly unsuited for peaceful times, so the warrior ideal has also been blended with other traits like self-sufficiency, willingness to work hard, and providing for a family.

Throughout history manliness has usually meant whatever the dominant functions of ruling-class or dominant men have been in different societies. Because of this, whenever changes occurred that rendered those traits less relevant, the attitude has often been that not only social roles but even manhood itself was under attack. To make matters worse, because manhood has often been associated with dominant social roles, characteristics associated with “womanhood” have been given subordinate status.

Is there such a thing as a universal manliness?

Because manliness has generally been associated with advantageous traits in particular culture- and time-bound situations, it is very difficult to speak of any kind of “transcendent” manly qualities. The minute we attempt to do so, we will inevitably begin to describe them in terms of how they are understood in our own time and place, and thus risk falling victim to the same impossibility that has plagued other attempts to define manhood.

Some Christian attempts to define manly qualities have fallen into exactly this trap. For example, Mark Driscoll’s many tirades against “effeminate” men inevitably attempt to invoke Biblical principles to uphold certain narrow characteristics he considers “manly.” In doing so, he ironically makes a particular narrow, hypermasculine ideal the standard instead of Biblical theology and Christian spirituality.

People have spilled lot of internet “ink” on Driscoll’s antics, so I won’t go into great detail here, but what I have in mind is quite different from his Kick-ass Jesus^TM portrayal of manhood.

Manliness as happiness, or eudaimonia

The tradition of virtue ethics, which finds its fullest classical exposition in the works of Aristotle, provides lays the groundwork for my understanding of manhood. I do not claim it is universal in the sense of always being true in the same way regardless of time and place. Manhood is relentlessly particular, and must always be embodied by particular men in particular places. Our understanding of manhood and virtue is always changing, and this change is necessary as life circumstances change. Still, many of the insights of virtue ethics are quite ancient and yet remain helpful despite how much has changed in the 2500-ish years since Aristotle wrote his Nicomachean Ethics.

According to the Aristotelian tradition, the pinnacle of human living is found achieving eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is sometimes translated “happiness,” which captures a certain aspect of its meaning, but more fully it means a state of human flourishing or excellence. The  meaning of life is to be happy, but happiness consists of achieving that which is good for a human being.

The word “virtue” itself comes from the Latin virtus, which means manliness or masculine strength. According to the virtue tradition, being manly involves living life in such a way that one seeks to flourish as a man, and to become that which is good for a man.

From Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, eudaimonia is achieved through activity of the soul (or rational activity) that is in accordance with virtue (Gk: arete, also translated “excellence”). Achieving eudaimonia as a man means coming to embody all the best qualities a man can attain–the qualities God created men to have–and ridding the self of desires and behaviors that inhibit those qualities.

Manhood is not the opposite of womanhood; it is that for which male human beings strive as they grow out of childhood. Manhood is maturity.

What makes that “manly”? Women can do that too!

Absolutely! Virtue is not something that is specific only to men, nor is eudaimonia. Women are certainly full moral agents capable of exercising virtue and vice, and of obtaining the goods of excellence.

It is extremely important to emphasize women’s equality when talking about virtue traditions, especially because virtue philosophers themselves have not always believed that. For example, Aristotle wrote in his Politics that a woman has some of a man’s deliberative faculty, but without his authority. The fact that virtue itself comes from the Latin word for “manhood” tells you want the Romans thought about it.

Moreover, as my goal is specifically to speak of Christian character and virtue, we must begin with Galatians 3:28 when speaking of gender: there is not “male and female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.” For Christians, the human good is always defined by the person of Jesus and the ways the early church strove to emulate him. There is no good theological reason to restrict attainment of the good according to gender.

What makes virtue and eudaimonia ”manly” in this sense is not anything inherent to them that is unattainable to women, but the fact that men seek to live them out as men. Men strive for excellence as embodied male human beings. They live in response to the ways modern societies form men, and the social expectations placed upon them.

Of course these things change over time; men are clearly formed in different ways socially today than they were 500 or even 50 years ago. But the fact remains that men, as embodied male human beings, experience life and pursue virtue in ways that respond particularly to how contemporary society forms men (or, perhaps, how it does not form them).

Women may certainly pursue excellence just as much as men, but the ways they do that are formed by their bodily life and social experience as women.

The upshot of this view is that manhood is not defined as the opposite of womanhood; rather, it is that which adult male humans strive to attain as they grow out of childhood. Manhood is less about the quality of gender, and more about maturity.

Christianity and the virtues

There is another important matter about virtue and theology we need to consider in an introduction, and that is the question, “Is the virtue tradition one of righteousness by works?” Simply put, some have said that the virtue tradition is incompatible with Christianity because virtue is about human effort and striving to become better whereas salvation is by grace.

The short answer is that it’s extremely simplistic to think of grace as only something opposed to or apart from human action. Medieval Christians were often much better at seeing grace and earthly actions as working together than we moderns. Furthermore, and more basically, there are a number of statements in the New Testament that urge human action; the key is that human activity is always in response to God’s grace and the work that God is already doing in us.

Salvation is always the work of God, and God’s grace is always at work in making us into more holy people. But grace does provoke a response, and the appropriate response is to strive for the most excellent life possible knowing that, by God’s grace, we can in fact live the good life as God has intended.

Conclusion: The virtuous life and Christian manliness

Manliness is not about being strong or having emotionally control. It is not about bringing home the bacon for your family. It is about striving for excellence as a man, responding to God’s work in us and in the world by seeking to live the good life on God’s terms. Of course, God’s terms for the good life might not be the same as what we’ve been conditioned by our culture to believe, but that’s a topic for another article.

Related posts: