Sure, we all know what integrity is: honesty, sincerity, morally upright, etc. Merriam-Webster defines it as:
firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility.
But somehow, I feel there’s more to it than that. This essay is the sort of exercise that Plato engaged in: taking concepts as real things, which he called ‘the forms’, and exploring the various aspects to see what they really mean.
Let’s start with the Latin root ‘integr-’, meaning entire or whole. A person with integrity is somehow a ‘whole’ or complete person. As Shakespeare commented, an integral person is ‘to thine own self true’, and it follows, ‘not false to any man’.
Freud’s theory of id-ego-superego is out of fashion these days, but it’s a nice model to gauge things by. If your id is out of control, you are a slave to your base desires, and you are not an integral person. On the other hand, if your superego is out of control, you are a slave to your moral precepts. That’s not really integrity, either.
Aldous Huxley wrote a fine book called Grey Eminence, in which he examines the personality of François Leclerc du Tremblay, a French monk who lived around 1600. He was absolutely devout and morally pure, spending hours every day in prayer and completely incorruptible — the very epitome of integrity. However, his strict moral values included the torture and massacre of thousands of heretics, as God directed him in his prayers. Is that really integrity?
Excessive emphasis on the superego plays a large role in the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment. As Prince Siddhartha, he led a lavish life of luxury (id-dominated). He then escaped that princely life, became a monk, and led a morally pure, ascetic life, almost starving himself to death (superego-dominated). Finally, he adopted his ‘Middle Way’ of balancing the id and the superego, that is, being able to engage in and to appreciate life without renouncing it entirely, and without becoming a slave to his desires (id).
Starving Buddha
What Freud and Buddhism have in common is an emphasis on balance — balance between the id and superego in Freud’s case, and balance between attachment and renunciation in the Buddha’s case. Even though the superego and renunciation can both satisfy the Merriam-Webster definition of integrity, I would argue that neither of these extremes constitutes integrity, as the fanatically extreme person, although honest, morally pure, and incorruptible, is not a whole person.
In order to be a whole person, one must combine the seemingly opposite extremes of id and superego into a unified and consistent whole, managed by the rational ego. Add this quality to Merriam-Webster and you get my personal definition of integrity.