Anyone can be moral (or ethical) but only a passionate person can be virtuous

Thomas Aquinas was premodern but he was premodern in several ways. In some regards, we should be grateful that we have left that world behind. We should be grateful that we no longer live in a world where people believed that original sin was passed on sexually through the male. In other regards, we might feel ambivalent, for example, in that we no longer can easily believe that the world is oriented towards a single, divinely determined end. And there are other differences that we might simply regret.

Here is Thomas discussing "Whether all men have the same last end?" [I-II, Q1, Art. 7] He means by that whether we are aimed at the same last end and not, as our modern reading would imply, whether all humans have the same fate. It's an interesting question for, at first glance, people seem to have different goals in life. Indeed, we take it (correctly) that one of the great things about (real) liberalism is that it allows citizens considerable latitude in determining what the good life is for them. Thomas gives us an answer that may be compatible with that but isn't the usual one.

He begins, being a good medieval theologian, by making a distinction.

We can speak of the last end in two ways: first considering only the aspect of the last end; secondly, considering the thing in which the last end is realized.

I take this to mean that we can thing of the last end simply as something that is aimed at or we can consider it terms of the ways it is realized.

So, then, as to the aspect of last end, all agree in desiring the last end; since all desire the fulfillment of their perfection, and it is precisely in, and it is precisely this fulfillment in which the last end consists.

We might argue that we no longer believe that human beings have a given end which they seek to fulfill but I don't think that will hold. My counter-argument is an empirical one: most people seek to reach some sort of fulfillment of some end to which they feel they were ordained. Think of the notion of gender indeterminacy: the argument is made not in terms that a person can simply randomly pick a gender and go with it. The argument is always that people have some deep, inner sense of what they really are and a desire to become that. Which brings us to:

But as to the thing in which this aspect is realized, all men are not agreed as to their last end; since some desire riches as their consummate good; some, pleasure; others something else.

Gender identity would presumably fit under "something else". Thomas would be shocked, even stunned at the possibility but it's hard to think of a clearer example of people acting towards the end of happiness but seeing the thing through which happiness is achieved differently from others than through gender indeterminacy.

I also find it hard to imagine a project less likely to succeed. In a liberal society, however, we allow people to pick the thing that they believe will bring them happiness. That said, how do we determine what is the right answer, if only for ourselves. Here modern society has nothing to offer. We are sometimes told to look within ourselves as if there can be an answer there. Thomas's premodern answer still seems the right one to me.

Thus to every taste the sweet is pleasant but to some, the sweetness of wine is most pleasant, to others, the sweetness of honey, or of something similar. Yet that sweet is absolutely the best of all pleasant things, in which he who has the best taste takes most pleasure. In like manner that good is most complete which the man with well disposed affections desires for his last end.

We could say a lot about this. For example, "What are well-disposed affections?" In this particular instance, Thomas would likely say they are the ones in accord with natural law and go on to argue that the idea of gender fluidity is contrary to natural law. That is problematic because it involves an inconsistency in the use of natural law. Simply put, Thomas rarely uses the notion of natural law to directly derive norms in this way. Indeed, the only matter in which he (and the Catholic Church follows him in this) makes such derivations seems to be in matters of sexual morality. That sort of inconsistency tends to be self-refuting.

There is much more to Church arguments in this regard than the current culture would allow. It seems to me that if you wanted to make certain you'd be miserable, trying to live a gender identity contrary to your sexual identity is right up there with opioid abuse and divorce as a way to bring it about. But that is a different argument from simply deriving laws from some perceived regularity in nature.

The more interesting aspect of this for me, however, is how it plays out in terms of how we deal with self-mastery.

Mastery, noun
1.comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject or accomplishment.
"she played with some mastery" synonyms: proficiency, ability, capability;
2. control or superiority over someone or something.
"man's mastery over nature" synonyms: control, domination, command, ascendancy, supremacy, preeminence, superiority;  

In the modern world, we tend to think of moral self-mastery entirely in terms of the second. Self-mastery is just an antiquated way of saying "self-control" for us. Thus the notion that we can medically over-rule our chromosomes. Far better, it seems to me, is the first definition that says we can play the roles that are given to us with mastery.

I'll stop there for now.

"Feel your feelings"

That's a bit of advice I keep seeing. It's pretty good advice, to a point. In order for this advice to be any good to you, however , you need to know how to feel them.

Your goal is to extract the greatest experience of flavor from the rum, so don't be in a rush to decide whether you "like" a particular rum or not. Suspend judgment for as long as you can. The minute you decide that you "like" the rum (or not) you stop noticing the rum and start paying attention to your judgment. Your evaluation gets in the way of your perception and tasting is a game of sharpening perception. (from A Short Course in Rum by Lynn Hoffman)

That advice can be applied to a far-wider range of experiences than just tasting rum.

One place that definitely can be applied is to feeling your feelings. Start off by noticing them. Just sit, or stand, there and feel what you are feeling. Suspend judgment as to what these feelings mean, whether they are good or bad and what you have to do about them.

Since reading his book two years ago, I've come to think that Mr. Hoffman is correct in that if you start paying attention to your judgment you lose touch with thing you should be experiencing. He's too polite to say so but the further problem is that your judgment tends to become a performance. You want people to know what you think and you want them to be impressed that you have the sort of fine, discerning tastes that they should respect.

Feelings are no different. When I decide I'm feeling sad, or happy, or vindicated I don't just get stuck on that judgment, I start to behave in accord with it. My "feeling" becomes a performance. It's a way, I suppose, of paying attention to my judgment and it rapidly becomes a way of getting others to pay attention as well. I don't think it's healthy.

Sometimes understanding the lesson is a simple matter of paying close attention to the language used. Compare these two expressions:

1. Feel your feelings
2. Express your feelings

Those are two very different expressions and yet the second is often offered as a replacement for the first. We're often told that we should learn to express our feelings. That is good advice if there is some positive benefit to letting others know how we're feeling. Oftentimes, however, people tell us that expressing our feelings is a way of "getting them out", as if expressing them was a way of letting off steam that might otherwise cause our internal boiler to explode. If little boys, for example, aren't taught to express their feelings they will learn the habit of bottling them up and, boom, male suicide rates will spike.

And male suicide rates have risen so it all seems vindicated.

Except for one tiny problem and that is that male suicide rates have risen. They used to be lower back when men were taught not to express their feelings. That doesn't prove that expressing their feelings has made men more likely to commit suicide. There may be other factors at play. There almost certainly are. It does, however, cast serious doubt on the claim that rising suicide rates are proof that men need to "express" their feelings.

The thing about expressing feelings is that, as Hoffman tells us,  it tends to validate our judgments about them and, therefore, to amplify to replace our actual feelings with a need to validate our judgments. You can prove this for yourself with a simple experiment. Next time you're all alone, think of some past betrayal. Say out loud what happened and then say how angry it made you. Just keep talking about it, expressing your anger. It's a virtual certainty that your voice will rise and your feelings will get stronger and stronger. If you really let it go, you'll work yourself up into an intense rage. If we're honest with ourselves, we will realize that this will work even if our judgment about this past betrayal is wrong, even if we were not actually betrayed.

If you tell yourself you're sad, or angry, or jealous, you will start to feel that way even though, and this is the really important thing, you might be wrong about how you're feeling.

Far better to feel your feelings. Just spend sometime noticing yourself and what you're reactions are instead.

I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing

When I was in Grade 2 I got so sick they thought I would die, my father sat by my bedside and read me The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My father died last week.

It's a great book even if deeply flawed. Like all great children's literature, it achieves a transfiguration of the commonplace by taking a commonplace situation and projecting it into an exotic world. You think you're reading all about a boy and an adult floating down the Mississippi in order that both may escape—the boy from his violent, alcoholic father and the adult from a life of slavery. What you're actually reading is the story of a boy and his father, for that is who Jim really is. The notion that fatherhood is something like being a runaway slave is shocking and, for many, offensive but there it is. Children's literature cheats in this way all the time and this is really no different from the notion that there is a passageway to a magical world through the back of the closet.

Jim's life is a fiction and not a documentary account of slavery. Anyone who read this hoping to get a glimpse into what life was like before emancipation would be seriously misled. This is a book of fiction that doesn't even attempt to get history right. But it gets something right about what a son owes his father. 

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell"—and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.

Liberty's liquor

"Bourbon fanciers, who often claim for their tipple the title of "America's spirit," drink one of the most regulated spirits known. To be labelled bourbon, it has to be made with a certain percentage of corn and aged in a certain kind of barrel. But excessive regulation is not the spirit of America. Unrestricted experimentation is. Rum embodies America's laissez-faire attitude. It is whatever it wants to be. There have never been strict guidelines for making it. There's no international oversight board, and its taste and production varies widely, leaving the market to sort out favourites. If sugarcane and its by-products are involved, you can call it rum. Rum is the melting pot of spirits—the only liquor available in clear, amber, or black variations."

And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the World in Ten Cocktails by Wayne Curtis