5. The theological virtues

This chapter focuses on the theological virtues as initially presented in the Jewish tradition and then developed and augmented by later Christian thinkers. There is a hierarchical relationship among the theological virtues. Faith involves trust-based intellectual assent to revealed theological truths. Like faith, hope requires a trust in God and is the patient expectation—or habit—of waiting for the promised but ‘not-yet’ good that faith points to. But the fullness of the theological virtues is found in charity. In this virtue, a person is united with God and with others in a kind of ‘divine friendship’ that surpasses the boundaries of family, ethnicity, gender, and status.

4. Islamic and Confucian accounts of the virtues

This chapter evaluates how two different cultural traditions understand virtue, specifically Islam and Confucianism. The work of Al-Ghazzali provides insight into the central role of virtue for Islam. In living out the five pillars of Islam—the shahadah, salat, zakat, sawm, and the hajj—one becomes a person properly related to Allah and to others. In this context, adab (the manner in which people acquire good character) provides an entrée into Islamic accounts of the virtues. Meanwhile, while there are important differences between the thinkers in the Confucian tradition, they all emphasized the dao (the ‘way’) as providing the highest human good and the proper cosmic ordering of the universe.

1. Whose virtues, which vices?

This chapter provides an overview of the virtues. The virtues receive significant attention from philosophers such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The consensus across cultures and traditions is that a virtue is an excellent and stable quality of the soul that enables a person to act well regarding some kind of activity. That is, virtues are ‘good habits’. When thinking about the virtues, most people have in mind the moral virtues, but there are also intellectual and productive virtues. There are also characteristics that are marks of moral failure, such as dispositions to dishonesty, injustice, and greed. These dispositions to behave badly are the vices.

6. The capital vices

This chapter studies the capital vices and looks at the ways in which some of the virtues correct the harm that these vices do. A vice is a relatively stable disposition to behave badly; or in Aristotle’s words, ‘a vice is a bad habit of the soul’. The capital vices, as they are traditionally known, occupy an important role as a source for the other vices because their influence seems to afflict people to a greater degree than other vices. They often feed off one another and give birth to other vices. In their most typical listing, the capital vices are pride, envy, avarice, wrath, sloth, gluttony, and lust.

2. The moral virtues

This chapter discusses the four cardinal virtues. Aristotle describes prudence, or practical wisdom, as ‘right reasoning about what is to be done’. He considered it as the most important of the cardinal virtues since it has all human activity under its purview. Justice is the second most important virtue and involves ‘giving to others what they deserve’. The final two moral virtues are fortitude and temperance. Fortitude, or courage, concerns one’s ‘fight or flight’ emotions. It helps one to do the ‘difficult thing’ that one struggles to face. And temperance, or self-control, helps one to moderate one’s desires for food, drink, and sex.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter highlights some criticisms of the virtues. David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche both challenged the traditional construal of the virtues and their role. Hume’s approach to morality was based upon ‘moral sentiment’ where moral feelings were central to one’s deliberation about ethics and so one’s practical reason was simply a means to best secure the satisfaction of one’s various desires. Nietzsche argues that the traditional virtues are merely terms used and cultivated by the weak to control the strong. He draws up a ‘genealogy of morals’ and concludes that terms like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have no real meaning apart from self-descriptions of the people who employ them.

3. The intellectual virtues

This chapter examines the intellectual virtues. The belief that there are specific intellectual virtues goes back as far as ancient Greece. Intellectual virtues are habits of the mind that facilitate the pursuit of truth, the avoidance of error, or other epistemic goods. Conversely, intellectual vices are habits of the mind that frustrate these goals. And it is possible that a person with intellectual virtue might not necessarily possess moral virtue. The chapter then considers different intellectual virtues: intellectual honesty; intellectual curiosity; intellectual open-mindedness; intellectual courage and perseverance; and intellectual charity.