Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control - God, truth, justice, nature, even death. The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all. This in turn fosters the ability to be ashamed when we show moral flaws exceeding the normal human allotment. The Greeks before Plato saw reverence as one of the bulwarks of society, and the immediate followers of Confucius in China thought much the same. Both groups wanted to see reverence in their leaders, because reverence is the virtue that keeps leaders from trying to take tight control of other people's lives. Simply put, reverence is the virtue that keeps human beings from acting like gods. To forget that you are only human, to think you can act like a god - this is the opposite of reverence. Ancient Greeks thought that tyranny was the height of irreverence, and they gave the famous name of hubris to the crimes of tyrants. An irreverent soul is arrogant and shameless, unable to feel respect for people it sees as lower than itself - ordinary people, prisoners, children. The two failures go together, in both Greek and Chinese traditions. If an emperor has a sense of awe, this will remind him that Heaven is his superior - that he is, as they said in ancient China, the son of Heaven. And any of us is better for remembering that there is someone, or Someone, to whom we are children; in this frame of mind we are more likely to treat all children with respect. And vice versa: If you cannot bring yourself to respect children you are probably deficient in the ability to feel that anyone or anything is higher than you. * * * It is a natural mistake to think that reverence belongs to religion. It belongs, rather to community. Wherever people try to act together, they hedge themselves around with some form of ceremony or good manners, and the observance of this can be an act of reverence. Reverence lies behind civility and all of the graces that make life in society bearable and pleasant. But in our time we hear more praise of irreverence than we do of reverence, especially in the media. That is because we naturally delight in mockery and we love making fun of solemn things. It is not because, in our heart of hearts, we despise reverence. In my view, the media are using the word 'irreverent' for qualities that are not irreverent at all. A better way to say what they have in mind would be "bold, boisterous, unrefined, unimpressed by pretension" - all good things. Reverence is compatible with these and with almost every form of mockery. The one great western philosopher who praises reverence is Nietzsche, who is also the most given to mockery. Reverence and a keen eye for the ridiculous are allies: both keep people from being pomopous or stuck up. * * * Reverence compels me to confess that I do not know exactly what reverence is. I can't do any better for justice or courage or wisdom, though I have a pretty good idea in each case. I would say that courage is a well-developed capacity for feeling confidence and fear in the right places, at the right times, and in the right degrees of intensity; that is, courage lies somewhere between fearlessness (which often looks like courage) and timidity (which no one would mistake for courage). This account of courage has a grand history -- it comes from Aristotle -- but is hardly a complete definition. I would call it a definition-schema -- something like a form full of blanks that we need to fill in as best as we can, after life experience and critical reflection. The schema for courage tells us that we can't go wrong by being courageous, but it does not tell us how to be courageous. It points to a distinction between courage and fearlessness, but it does not spell out the difference between them -- aside from the obvious point that one is always good while the other can go too far. Before filling in the blanks in the schema we would need to know the difference between right and wrong. That looks easy enough in some cases, but seems to call for divine wisdom in others. I cannot claim divine wisdom, and so I cannot give a full account of any of the virtues, least of all reverence. My schema for reverence looks like this: Reverence is the well-developed capacity to have the feelings of awe, respect and shame when these are the right feelings to have. This says that reverence is a good thing, but not much more, except by pointing to further questions. Sometimes it is right to be respectful and sometimes wrong; that's obvious. Sometimes our feelings should rise to the level of awe, but not always. So when should we be respectful, and how deep should our respect be in each case? Of what should we be in awe? No capsule definition will tell you. Nor can any human wisdom give you a complete and final answer. The best answer I can give is this book. * * * The four amateur musicians in a pool of light have reached the last note of Mozart's 'Dissonant' Quartet, and they have done so more or less at the same time. They find contact with each other's eyes, all looking to the first violin to see how long to draw out the note. Then they fall silent for a moment, subdued by a sense of awe none of them could fully explain. They find contact with each other's eyes, all looking to the first violin to see how long to draw out the note. Then they fall silent for a moment, subdued by a sense of awe none of them could fully explain. They are not impressed by their own playing; all are conscious of measures counted incorrectly, of pitches missed. They know the piece, however, and they have been aware of harmonies they have not played or heard: from one perfectly resolved dissonance they can extrapolate the perfections of the piece. Their egos as musicians were out of the picture. They have no audience to make them self-conscious; each has for a time lost the sense of being an individual with goals and values that might be at variance with those of the others. They have followed the lead of the first violin without feeling themselves to be followers, and she has led without feeling herself to be a leader. She has not been annoyed at slowing down for the barely competent cello during a hard passage, and the cello has outdone himself, drawn by her musicianship to play better than usual. There was ceremony at the start -- the chairs and music stands arranged in a certain way, respectful discussion of what to play, decision deferred to the first violin, no audible complaints about the viola's first note, and so on. There is also, plainly, a hierarchy at work. The first violin is the first violin and by happy coincidence the best musician of the four. All know roughly where they stand in this pecking order, but all are happy to be where they are, and they play without envy. And tonight, for once, no one has apologized for missing a note; no one has been conscious enough to take personal responsibility. And that is good in the context of this group effort, in which every apology breaks the spell. What spell? They have felt awe. But at what? Not at Mozart; they have not been thinking of him either. Not at the elegant counterpoint Mozart has used; though conscious of the demands it makes on them, and the beauty that emerges from it, they are not analyzing this music as they play it. They would say, if asked, something like, "That Mozart!" or "What a lovely piece!" But those remarks, which will soon break the silence, also break the spell. They do not quite catch the mood or explain it. There really is no saying what it is that they feel has brushed them in their imperfect performance. * * * Any virtue can be abused. Tyrants can exploit the courage and reverence and even the justice of theur peoples. We have seen this in our own time; vicious rulers in both European and Confucian cultures have taken advantage of their people's habits of respect, habits bread in reverence. Savage commanders exploit the courage of their troops. Honesty among friends is prohibitively dangerous when the friends are likely to be reporting to the secret police. To say that virtues are always good, then, is overly simple. They are never bad in themselves, but they can lead to trouble in a bad context. People pay a high price for clinging to virtue when they find themselves in a vicious system, and so one of the classical goals of statecraft is to build a system in which virtue may safely flourish -- so that one may call for virtue without demanding enormous sacrifices. Also, most people's virtues are not complete, and partial virtues may be very bad indeed. A soldier may follow a vicious leader into danger and be party to a terrible crime. In doing this he may show some measure of courage. But a soldier who had a full measure of courage would not be party to a crime, he would instead join the resistance against the vicious leader. * * * Reverence does not stop at any of the boundaries that human beings make among themselves; reverence overlooks differences of culture, social class, age and gender. Reverence is more democratic than Greek democracy, which was limited by age and birth and gender. Reverence calls us to be conscious of bare humanity, the humanity of our species. The ancient Greeks were very clear about this: reverence is about just being human, and not about a distinctly Greek or Persian way of being human. * * * Students should treat teachers loyally as people from whom they have much to learn; teachers should treat students respectfully as fellow-learners. Teachers must not pretend to omniscience, and from this it follows that they must be open to the possibility of learning something from their students. But what could an expert teacher possibly learn from a student? Many things, but at least these: how much the student knows or does not know about the subject, how fast the student is capable of learning, why the student wants to learn in the first place, or what might prevent the student from learning or wanting to learn. When a teacher refuses to learn at least this much from students, they will say that the teacher does not respect them - and consequently they will withhold respect from the teacher. The virtue that is missing in that case -- the virtue that would supply the respect that is missing on both sides -- is reverence. In an ideal classroom everyone treats what is to be learned with a reverence that generates mutual respect among teacher and students. * * *