Open Thread: The Writerly Virtues?

What Does It Take to Perform and Persist as a Writer? Luke Timothy Johnson Has Answers. What About You?

I’ve been thinking about this question ever since dipping into Luke Timothy Johnson’s memoir, The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a Scholar. A onetime Benedictine monk and priest, Johnson is now a noted historian and New Testament scholar.

Toward the end of Mind in Another Place, he lists several moral and intellectual virtues scholars need to do their job. I think you can expand that category to include all writers, but I’d love to hear what you think.

Luke Timothy Johnson. Photo by Kaleen Enke.

“I’m using [virtue] as much as possible in the way the ancient Greeks used it,” Johnson explains, “to refer to ‘excellence.’” The virtues he outlines, intellectual and moral, both enable and exhibit excellence:

Intellectual virtues

1. Curiosity

2. Respect for evidence

3. Subject mastery

4. Wide and critical reading

5. Imagination

6. Clarity and cogency

Moral virtues

1. Courage

2. Ambition

3. Discipline

4. Persistence

5. Detachment

6. Contentment

7. Multitasking

Interestingly, he ranks curiosity and courage ahead of all others. Has he unfailingly displayed these virtues? No, by his own admission. But these two lists represent the standard by which Johnson measures himself and his work.

We are fully capable of developing these writerly virtues. Says Johnson, flexing a little Latin and Greek,

For Aristotle, aretē [virtue] was a quality of character (or disposition) that was, on one hand, inherent in some people, and, on the other hand, capable of being developed. Such development came about through repeated practice, or habit, which, when steadily cultivated, became a habitus (or dominant trait) that helped form the character of a person: habit (ethos) led to character (ēthos).

Virtue and character are like muscles: Work ’em and they get stronger.

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a Scholar (Eerdmans, 2022).

As I said up top, I’ve been noodling on these two lists of virtues for a while now, thinking I might write an essay on them. But now that it comes to it, I’d rather hear what you have to say. So, a handful of questions; answer whichever ones come naturally:

• What do you think of Johnson’s two lists?

• What’s missing? What doesn’t belong?

• How do these virtues play beyond purely scholarly pursuits, if at all?

• Can these virtues be developed as Johnson suggests? How?

• What writers do you think demonstrate these virtues well?

• Any examples of writers missing the mark?

• Which virtue matters most to you, either one listed or not?

“Curiosity is the intellectual itch that research scratches. As with physical itches, however, the more one scratches, the greater the itch grows.”

—Luke Timothy Johnson

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