Integrity

Hypomnemata

To live in agreement with Nature; in agreement with your daimon; in agreement with moral virtues. To contemplate, what a life of moral virtue means - to internalize it and then to choose it and then to live it.

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Neither corrupt, nor legalistic. Both the Sadducees and Pharisees lacked integrity. As Jesus observed, they appeared white and clean on the outside, but on the inside they were full of rot and corruption.

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To hold yourself to the standards you love; to hold yourself accountable, especially when no one is watching.

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Don't confuse integrity for honesty. Integrity requires sound reasoning and conclusions, and then having the discipline to stick to them - to keep your inner resolve equal to your external actions. Integrity may demand honesty, but they are not the same.

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As Marcus notes: be ready to state whatever is on your mind when asked. And with all sincerity and honesty, you will be able to speak the moral concepts which ought to be on your mind at all times. Love of Nature and what she sends your way; love of self and rationality; love and service for others.

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The boy who cried wolf was forgiven and given grace. But then he lost it along with his integrity when he continued to lie.

Thoughts

Leaders of religion and more specifically Catholic, Mormon and some evangelical leaders, have lost their moral footing when they ceased possessing integrity. The Catholics hid child-abuse scandals while preaching chastity. Mormons preached honesty and honest tithe-paying while hiding and obfuscating the truth of their history, teachings and monetary holdings. While they shake down poor Africans for more money, they go to great lengths to hide and then not use charitable donations to relieve the suffering of its members and others.

It's one thing to not profess honesty, integrity and moral virtues and to live a life of hedonism. But it is quite another to preach a life of morals and then not practice what you preach. In a word, this is hypocrisy.

Integrity is deciding on a way of life based on sound, logical reasoning; and then adhering to that code of conduct by both believing it and living it. It is a keeping your beliefs and conduct reconciled. It may be easier to help someone who agrees with the belief of keeping both internal beliefs and external actions in agreement, but who lacks morals, than to help someone who does not think it necessary to keep the inner and external aligned and believes in morality.

If you knew the integrity of a car were compromised, would you get in it? Even if there were no scratches or visible damage on it? We put much trust in our engineers to ensure the integrity of our vehicles, bridges and buildings. We want our leaders and architects to be knowledgeable, truthful and people of integrity. Or else we lose confidence in them and simply cannot trust what they say.

Quotes

[1] As Epictetus was remarking that human beings are born for fidelity, and that anyone who damages it is damaging the distinctive quality of man, there happened to enter someone who passed for a scholar and had once been caught in adultery in the city. [2] But if we lay aside this fidelity, continued Epictetus, to which we are born, and set out to seduce our neighbour’s wife, what exactly are we doing? What else, to be sure, than ruining and destroying? Destroying what? The person of fidelity, integrity, piety (Epictetus, Discourses 2.4).

What then can escort us on our way? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. This consists in keeping the divinity within us inviolate and free from harm, master of pleasure and pain, doing nothing without aim, truth, or integrity, and independent of others' action or failure to act (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.17).

Train yourself to think only those thoughts such that in answer to the sudden question 'What is in your mind now?' you could say with immediate frankness whatever it is, this or that: and so your answer can give direct evidence that all your thoughts are straightforward and kindly, the thoughts of a social being who has no regard for the fancies of pleasure or wider indulgence, for rivalry, malice, suspicion, or anything else that one would blush to admit was in one's mind (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.4).

Never regard as a benefit to yourself anything which will force you at some point to break your faith, to leave integrity behind, to hate, suspect, or curse another, to dissemble, to covet anything needing the secrecy of walls and drapes (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.7).

They cannot admire you for intellect. Granted - but there are many other qualities of which you cannot say, 'but that is not the way I am made'. So display those virtues which are wholly in your own power - integrity, dignity, hard work, self-denial, contentment, frugality, kindness, independence, simplicity, discretion, magnanimity (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.5).

Remind yourself of your duty to be a good man and rehearse what man's nature demands: then do it straight and unswerving, or say what you best think right. Always, though, in kindness, integrity, and sincerity (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.5).

if you feel yourself falling away and losing control, retire in good heart to some corner where you will regain control - or else make a complete exit from life, not in anger, but simply, freely, with integrity, making this leaving of it at least one achievement in your life (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.8).

Particular qualities too of the rational soul are love of neighbour, truthfulness, integrity, no higher value than itself. This last is a defining quality of law also. There is thus no difference between the true principle of philosophy and the principle of justice (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.1).

He is one of the first to advocate contributing to the common good by devoting one's resources to charity. These are details in the larger plan which Musonius keeps ever before his hearers, namely to prepare a social order herein men may find a "benevolent and civilized way of life." Resting upon the integrity of the individua}, the high moral and spiritual qualities of husband and wife in marriage, the deep loyalty of the family, the will to cooperate with one's neighbor and a concern for the welfare of one's city, Musonius' goal is to make men honorable and responsible citizens of the city of God (Musonius Rufus, p. 30).

it is a mark of folly to do in a slothful and rebellious spirit whatever one has to do, or to direct the body in one direction and the mind in another, and thus to be torn between utterly conflicting emotions (Seneca, Letter 74.32).

Citations and further reading

Aurelius, M., & Hammond, M. (2014). Meditations.

Epictetus, ., Hard, R., & Gill, C. (2014). Discourses, fragments, handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Musonius, R. G., & Lutz, C. E. (1947). Musonius Rufus - "the Roman Socrates". New Haven, Conn: Yale Univ. Press.

Seneca, L. A., & Gummere, R. M. (1917). Ad Lucilium epistulae morales: London: Heinemann.