A River Runs Through It or Kalos Kagathos: Part 2

Last week I introduced the ancient Greek concept of kalos kagathos, often translated as beauty and goodness or beauty and virtue. The best example I have seen of this concept in America is through the movie A River Runs Through It. The book opens up with this line:

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

In my last blog I revealed the struggle I have had in our culture where it seemed that my two college majors were separated by some thick dark line. I majored in both religion and physical education not because I had two separate interests, but because they were two different ways of expressing the same spiritual orientation in life.

It wasn’t until I happened upon the concept of kalos kagathos in a museum in Greece that I discovered a philosophy that married the two into one discipline and one life. I felt like someone finally got me—even though that someone was a philosophy over 2,000 years old!

In the movie A River Runs Through It there are two sons of Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Maclean—Paul, a gambling, drinking local newspaperman, and Norman, a bright, ambitious college-educated man of virtue. You will have to watch the movie or read the book to get the whole story—and, believe me, it is worth it. But for my purposes today the book and movie perfectly characterize the concept of kalos kagathos without ever saying it out loud.

As the movie unfolds we discover how loosely Paul lives his life gambling with his money, with his health and with his life. BUT, damn, is he ever a master fly fisherman. Norman, on the other other hand, is studious, generous, kind and exudes a deep goodness about him.

As the movie nears the end, author, Norman Maclean, finally shows his full cards. Beauty and goodness (kalos kagathos) is revealed. Norman announces that he has taken a teaching position as a professor of literature at the University of Chicago. He has followed the path of virtue and goodness.

For those of us brought up in a religious tradition we might have framed Norman as the success and Paul as the failure. But in one very touching scene Maclean, the author, brings the concept of kalos kagathos home. Paul, who was like watching a ballet dancer on water when he fly fished, eventually was killed—probably for some gambling-related debt, but nothing was ever proven.

In this pivotal scene, Norman and his father are sitting along the banks of the Blackfoot River, where they had fished together, pondering Paul’s life., trying to make some sense of his death. I pick the script up here from the movie:

As time passed, my father struggled for more to hold on to asking me again and again, had I told him everything?

And finally, I said to him, "Maybe all I really know about Paul is that he was a fine fisherman."

"You know more than that,” my father said.

"He was beautiful.”

Brian Heron

Religious Innovator and Spiritual Pilgrim