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Very Short Introductions #664
The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction
From the philosophy of Aristotle and Confucius, to Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae , to the paintings of Raphael, Botticelli and many more, fascination with the virtues has endured and evolved to fit a wide range of cultural, religious, and philosophical contexts through the centuries.
This Very Short Introduction introduces readers to the various the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and the theological virtues, as well as the capital vices. It explores the role of the virtues in moral life, their cultivation, and how they offer ways of thinking and acting that are alternatives to mere rule-following. It also considers the relationship of the virtues to our own emotions, desires, and rational capacities.
ABOUT THE
The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
This Very Short Introduction introduces readers to the various the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and the theological virtues, as well as the capital vices. It explores the role of the virtues in moral life, their cultivation, and how they offer ways of thinking and acting that are alternatives to mere rule-following. It also considers the relationship of the virtues to our own emotions, desires, and rational capacities.
ABOUT THE
The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
144 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2021
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April 25, 2021
Well, it's hard to know what to make of this book. It's certainly a departure from what I've come to expect from OUP's Very Short Introductions series. Namely, I've come to expect competent summaries of complex topics from experts in their fields, who generally back up any sweeping claims of fact with something resembling objective evidence. I don't mind authors taking sides on controversial issues, but at least give me some real arguments rather than baseless claims, equivocation, and treating the reader as if previously illiterate. Reading this book after one has read some books on evolutionary psychology and differential psychology, not to mention just about anything from the atheist literature, feels a bit like reading a book promoting alchemy or astrology after you've read some books on chemistry and astronomy, respectively.
The strange part is that the authors are not entirely pre-scientific. The book shows real promise in Chapter 3: The intellectual virtues - perhaps the chapter most amenable to moderns. I would say the book's high point comes with the reference to Frankfurt's On Bullshit. There we learn of the difference between lying and bullshitting - the liar actually cares what the truth is while seeking to mislead, whereas the bullshitter is simply indifferent to the truth. (In the movies, this would be the trope known as "the setup" - something that we'll be seeing again later in the film. It's a setup because the authors are about to bomb us with a truckload of indifference to truth when we get to the chapter on the "theological virtues" (the scare-quotes are mine, and necessary).) The rest of the book, despite the occasional nod to moral psychology, is for the most firmly and seemingly obliviously pre-Darwinian. It's as if one has unearthed a kind of intellectual fossil.
Now, there is value in presenting the history of what people believed in various times and places, and the book does a decent job of that on the often conflicting virtue traditions. But too often the authors seem to take an "in-universe" view, for example referring to "God" and "revealed theological truths" as if such things exist and have meaning - not simply that some people have believed and do believe in such things, with nothing approaching objective evidence of the sort that one might present in a court of law or at a scientific conference. That is, the kind of evidence that can be taken seriously by serious people. Now, maybe there are such unseen and undetectable things as gods and ghosts and fairies and John Frum, but if you think you can just take them as givens, without presenting a shred of evidence, in a work purporting to be serious scholarship, you are underestimating your readership. Some of us may even remember what you just told us bullshitting is - not caring about what is true.
For example, in this excerpt, the authors perhaps unwittingly declare that the laws of nature do not hold:
"Since hope is a theological virtue we are encouraged and strengthened by God in our efforts. If we were to imagine rowing a boat in a river, we can see that we make progress towards our destination by the effort in using the oars. But we are also aided by the current in the river. The effort we make and the movement of the water ideally work in concert together to get us to our destination. The theological virtue of hope is like this—we make an effort—but the effort is aided by divine power when our efforts are in the right direction."
Perhaps I misread the authors here - maybe they really mean to say "this is what a theologian would say" rather than "this is how things are." But they don't make that distinction explicit, so I'll take them literally to mean they claim that "God" actively meddles with our moral development. The authors argue by analogy (the form of argument Hume called the weakest) between a river - a real physical thing that generates measurable force - and "God", a purely imaginary construct that in reality generates nothing measurable. Now, perhaps there really is some "God" who "strengthens" us and "aids" in our real efforts. But to do this, as we learned by reading A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism, this "God" would have to inject some sort of energy or particles into our brains, to cause our nervous systems to behave differently than they otherwise would. When we use our brains, we are not conscious of how our brains are working (because, essentially, evolution did not "need" us to know). But thanks to science we can peer into our skulls and get some insight. Brains are information-processing machines, and they run on energy (or more specifically, on thermodynamic availability). Our thoughts are fueled by our recent meals. To the degree that our thoughts are influenced from outside sources, such as by sensory experiences or drugs, some sort of energy or chemicals must intrude into the brain, to trigger the cascades of neural discharges that we experience as our thoughts and emotions.
Consider how I am potentially altering the thoughts of distant strangers by tapping on my keyboard. A whole sequence of energy transfers occurs to send my thoughts into the brain of some hapless reader in the future. Every one of these energy transformations obeys the conservation laws. And with sufficiently sensitive equipment, it's possible to detect all that energy, where it came from, and where it goes. Everything happening between my brain and the reader's brain is fully in accord with inviolable natural law.
So what of the authors' claim that "God" is able to push us along in our moral development, like the mighty current of a river assisting a rower? Well, this can only mean that "God" is functioning in some way like the Internet and our computers that are transmitting some of my thoughts into some reader's brain, possibly causing the reader to think and feel somewhat differently than she might have otherwise. And what the Internet does is move energy around, with the end result of putting some photons onto the reader's retinae, which trigger patterns of neural discharge in the reader's brain that give rise to thoughts. If "God" is doing that - causing neurons to behave in ways they otherwise wouldn't - then "God" must be injecting energy into brains too.
But here's the kicker: where does this godly energy come from? If it is like all the ordinary energy in the universe, it is neither created nor destroyed, but rather it comes from some pre-existing store of energy by some natural process. For example, my brain is running on my recent meals, which were ultimately fueled by the Sun that enabled crops to grow. But if godly energy is natural energy, then it isn't godly at all. It's just another component of the great natural chain of cause and effect that we can trace back to the Big Bang. If that's all "God" is, then "God" isn't supernatural at all, but just another natural phenomenon that science might eventually figure out, like radioactivity or gravity or ballistics.
Of course "God" as commonly construed isn't natural at all, but supernatural. Thus if "God" is "strengthening" us, or doing anything else that wouldn't happen naturally, then "God" can only do this by violating the conservation laws. "God" must be creating new energy or particles de novo to inject into our brains from no identifiable physical source. Sort of like the biblical jar of oil that never runs dry, but keeps magically creating new oil.
Now, maybe "God" does override the laws of nature as routinely as the authors imply (thus altering the moral development of millions or billions of the faithful). But given that the conservation laws are among the most thoroughly confirmed of all the laws of science, to claim their routine violation as the authors do is extraordinary. And as Hume (and later Sagan and others) taught us, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yet the authors give us nothing but bare and baseless assertion, nothing which can even approach what is necessary to overthrow the last 400 years of science.
Much of the rest of the book is similarly troubling to the scientifically aware. Now, one doesn't have to agree with the findings of, say, evolutionary psychology, but to carry on as if the field doesn't even exist makes this work as unserious as a treatise on alchemy that pretends chemistry never happened. Whenever we are discussing human drives and their often destructive results, we have to ask why people are the way they are. After all, one of the intellectual virtues is curiosity, yet the authors seem remarkably incurious about human nature. The book doesn't even mention the word "evolution" (although it does give the occasional nod to our "animal nature"). The key missing insight is that our ancestors spent perhaps 200,000 years evolving in an environment drastically unlike the one we inhabit now. The relevant measure for a behavior was its contribution to reproductive fitness in the ancestral environment - which was the environment of hunter-gatherers. In other words, to a first approximation, people do what they do because their ancestors did what they did to slightly out-reproduce all their fellow hominids who didn't leave as many (or any) descendants today.
For example, the authors touch on the vices of gluttony and lust, two subjects that can barely be understood excapt in the light of evolution. For some serious analysis, see the book Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose. As an example, in the ancestral environment, the only available sources of sweets were natural items such as fruits and honey. Salt was another essential nutrient often in short supply - one often sees animals traveling great distances to salt licks, where they can find rare outcroppings of salt and other minerals generally lacking in their diets. Fats and calories generally were also difficult for our ancestors to come by. As the environment limited our ancestors' intake of sugar, fats, and salt, there was little need for them to evolve any natural control on intake. Fast forward to the modern environment, where food companies use technology to saturation-bomb us with concentrated bundles of these tasty treats such as doughnuts, candy, hamburgers, soft drinks, surgary lattes, and so on, and our Stone Age brains are often no match. We no longer have to walk many kilometers to lick salt off some rocks when we have salt-shakers on every table. Throw in labor-saving devices such as automobiles which cater to our evolved instinct to conserve our historically scarce energy, and the result is vast populations of moderns living in chronic calorie surplus, manifesting as the epidemic of obesity and overweight afflicting all developed nations and many developing nations today.
Lust works similarly. In the ancestral environment, most people lived in small bands of up to perhaps 100 individuals for their entire lives. Mating opportunities were scarce and thus there was little need for any naturally evolved internal check on mating behavior. There was nothing like today's large urban populations or mass media, which bombard us with sexual opportunity and imagery unimaginable during the first 200,000 years of human existence. It could hardly be surprising, then, that our Stone Age brains are not much better at handling sex than hamburgers. However, and perhaps mercifully, not everyone is as equipped for sex as they are for eating. Almost anyone can eat, since food is passive, but to have sex one must be attractive to potential partners who can actively reject us. And the obesity epidemic is of course working against attractiveness.
The strange part is that the authors are not entirely pre-scientific. The book shows real promise in Chapter 3: The intellectual virtues - perhaps the chapter most amenable to moderns. I would say the book's high point comes with the reference to Frankfurt's On Bullshit. There we learn of the difference between lying and bullshitting - the liar actually cares what the truth is while seeking to mislead, whereas the bullshitter is simply indifferent to the truth. (In the movies, this would be the trope known as "the setup" - something that we'll be seeing again later in the film. It's a setup because the authors are about to bomb us with a truckload of indifference to truth when we get to the chapter on the "theological virtues" (the scare-quotes are mine, and necessary).) The rest of the book, despite the occasional nod to moral psychology, is for the most firmly and seemingly obliviously pre-Darwinian. It's as if one has unearthed a kind of intellectual fossil.
Now, there is value in presenting the history of what people believed in various times and places, and the book does a decent job of that on the often conflicting virtue traditions. But too often the authors seem to take an "in-universe" view, for example referring to "God" and "revealed theological truths" as if such things exist and have meaning - not simply that some people have believed and do believe in such things, with nothing approaching objective evidence of the sort that one might present in a court of law or at a scientific conference. That is, the kind of evidence that can be taken seriously by serious people. Now, maybe there are such unseen and undetectable things as gods and ghosts and fairies and John Frum, but if you think you can just take them as givens, without presenting a shred of evidence, in a work purporting to be serious scholarship, you are underestimating your readership. Some of us may even remember what you just told us bullshitting is - not caring about what is true.
For example, in this excerpt, the authors perhaps unwittingly declare that the laws of nature do not hold:
"Since hope is a theological virtue we are encouraged and strengthened by God in our efforts. If we were to imagine rowing a boat in a river, we can see that we make progress towards our destination by the effort in using the oars. But we are also aided by the current in the river. The effort we make and the movement of the water ideally work in concert together to get us to our destination. The theological virtue of hope is like this—we make an effort—but the effort is aided by divine power when our efforts are in the right direction."
Perhaps I misread the authors here - maybe they really mean to say "this is what a theologian would say" rather than "this is how things are." But they don't make that distinction explicit, so I'll take them literally to mean they claim that "God" actively meddles with our moral development. The authors argue by analogy (the form of argument Hume called the weakest) between a river - a real physical thing that generates measurable force - and "God", a purely imaginary construct that in reality generates nothing measurable. Now, perhaps there really is some "God" who "strengthens" us and "aids" in our real efforts. But to do this, as we learned by reading A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism, this "God" would have to inject some sort of energy or particles into our brains, to cause our nervous systems to behave differently than they otherwise would. When we use our brains, we are not conscious of how our brains are working (because, essentially, evolution did not "need" us to know). But thanks to science we can peer into our skulls and get some insight. Brains are information-processing machines, and they run on energy (or more specifically, on thermodynamic availability). Our thoughts are fueled by our recent meals. To the degree that our thoughts are influenced from outside sources, such as by sensory experiences or drugs, some sort of energy or chemicals must intrude into the brain, to trigger the cascades of neural discharges that we experience as our thoughts and emotions.
Consider how I am potentially altering the thoughts of distant strangers by tapping on my keyboard. A whole sequence of energy transfers occurs to send my thoughts into the brain of some hapless reader in the future. Every one of these energy transformations obeys the conservation laws. And with sufficiently sensitive equipment, it's possible to detect all that energy, where it came from, and where it goes. Everything happening between my brain and the reader's brain is fully in accord with inviolable natural law.
So what of the authors' claim that "God" is able to push us along in our moral development, like the mighty current of a river assisting a rower? Well, this can only mean that "God" is functioning in some way like the Internet and our computers that are transmitting some of my thoughts into some reader's brain, possibly causing the reader to think and feel somewhat differently than she might have otherwise. And what the Internet does is move energy around, with the end result of putting some photons onto the reader's retinae, which trigger patterns of neural discharge in the reader's brain that give rise to thoughts. If "God" is doing that - causing neurons to behave in ways they otherwise wouldn't - then "God" must be injecting energy into brains too.
But here's the kicker: where does this godly energy come from? If it is like all the ordinary energy in the universe, it is neither created nor destroyed, but rather it comes from some pre-existing store of energy by some natural process. For example, my brain is running on my recent meals, which were ultimately fueled by the Sun that enabled crops to grow. But if godly energy is natural energy, then it isn't godly at all. It's just another component of the great natural chain of cause and effect that we can trace back to the Big Bang. If that's all "God" is, then "God" isn't supernatural at all, but just another natural phenomenon that science might eventually figure out, like radioactivity or gravity or ballistics.
Of course "God" as commonly construed isn't natural at all, but supernatural. Thus if "God" is "strengthening" us, or doing anything else that wouldn't happen naturally, then "God" can only do this by violating the conservation laws. "God" must be creating new energy or particles de novo to inject into our brains from no identifiable physical source. Sort of like the biblical jar of oil that never runs dry, but keeps magically creating new oil.
Now, maybe "God" does override the laws of nature as routinely as the authors imply (thus altering the moral development of millions or billions of the faithful). But given that the conservation laws are among the most thoroughly confirmed of all the laws of science, to claim their routine violation as the authors do is extraordinary. And as Hume (and later Sagan and others) taught us, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yet the authors give us nothing but bare and baseless assertion, nothing which can even approach what is necessary to overthrow the last 400 years of science.
Much of the rest of the book is similarly troubling to the scientifically aware. Now, one doesn't have to agree with the findings of, say, evolutionary psychology, but to carry on as if the field doesn't even exist makes this work as unserious as a treatise on alchemy that pretends chemistry never happened. Whenever we are discussing human drives and their often destructive results, we have to ask why people are the way they are. After all, one of the intellectual virtues is curiosity, yet the authors seem remarkably incurious about human nature. The book doesn't even mention the word "evolution" (although it does give the occasional nod to our "animal nature"). The key missing insight is that our ancestors spent perhaps 200,000 years evolving in an environment drastically unlike the one we inhabit now. The relevant measure for a behavior was its contribution to reproductive fitness in the ancestral environment - which was the environment of hunter-gatherers. In other words, to a first approximation, people do what they do because their ancestors did what they did to slightly out-reproduce all their fellow hominids who didn't leave as many (or any) descendants today.
For example, the authors touch on the vices of gluttony and lust, two subjects that can barely be understood excapt in the light of evolution. For some serious analysis, see the book Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose. As an example, in the ancestral environment, the only available sources of sweets were natural items such as fruits and honey. Salt was another essential nutrient often in short supply - one often sees animals traveling great distances to salt licks, where they can find rare outcroppings of salt and other minerals generally lacking in their diets. Fats and calories generally were also difficult for our ancestors to come by. As the environment limited our ancestors' intake of sugar, fats, and salt, there was little need for them to evolve any natural control on intake. Fast forward to the modern environment, where food companies use technology to saturation-bomb us with concentrated bundles of these tasty treats such as doughnuts, candy, hamburgers, soft drinks, surgary lattes, and so on, and our Stone Age brains are often no match. We no longer have to walk many kilometers to lick salt off some rocks when we have salt-shakers on every table. Throw in labor-saving devices such as automobiles which cater to our evolved instinct to conserve our historically scarce energy, and the result is vast populations of moderns living in chronic calorie surplus, manifesting as the epidemic of obesity and overweight afflicting all developed nations and many developing nations today.
Lust works similarly. In the ancestral environment, most people lived in small bands of up to perhaps 100 individuals for their entire lives. Mating opportunities were scarce and thus there was little need for any naturally evolved internal check on mating behavior. There was nothing like today's large urban populations or mass media, which bombard us with sexual opportunity and imagery unimaginable during the first 200,000 years of human existence. It could hardly be surprising, then, that our Stone Age brains are not much better at handling sex than hamburgers. However, and perhaps mercifully, not everyone is as equipped for sex as they are for eating. Almost anyone can eat, since food is passive, but to have sex one must be attractive to potential partners who can actively reject us. And the obesity epidemic is of course working against attractiveness.
March 7, 2022
Practicing virtue is just like practicing any other skill: rules help early on, but at true excellence, rules are no longer needed. For example, prophet Isaiah differentiates those merely following rules and those who have a more faithful inner disposition. Knowing that, let’s see what virtues are.
Aristotle defined virtues into 3 categories: moral (helps us live well and flourish), intellectual (helps us think well), and practical (helps us make things well). For Cicero, morally right actions spring from four cardinal (cardo means hinge, that on which a thing turns) virtues: fortitude, temperance, justice, and prudence. Augustine praised the four in his earlier work, but later (in The City of God) sees those as fundamentally flawed unless paired with the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity). In more recent times, Hume, Kant, and John Stuart Mill all have their notion of virtues. Recently, positive psychologists identified “high six” virtues (courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom) that exist throughout cultures. Among these, Plato saw justice as most important, Aristotle thought it was prudence, and Aquinas charity. There are a few alternative views of how virtue really works, but it all boils down to this: virtue function as a way of achieving happiness.
Intellectual virtues are the habit of minds that help us pursue truth and avoid errors: curiosity (Socrates says “philosophy has no other starting-point than wonder”), honesty, humility, and perseverance. Concerning humility: the Dunning Kruger effect says “People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact … The very same incompetence … deprives them the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s”. Socrates repeatedly stresses the importance of truth over persuasion. Plato claims knowing the good always leads to doing the good. Aristotle disagrees and separates virtues of thought and virtues of character. It turns out, untruth has shades too: For liars, the differences between the true and the false is important. For bullshiters, it’s not. To Frankfurt (author of “On Bullshit”), the indifference to the truth is the essence of “bullshit”.
Theological virtues (Christian) are faith, hope, and charity. Augustine went as far as saying without theological virtues, the cardinal ones are mere glittering vice. Aquinas is more reasonable and explains that we can grasp moral truths, but can’t consistently act on them. And the solution is divine grace where God doing for us what we can’t do ourselves. By receiving in faith the goodness that is God, people can participate the life of God. Faith is assent to truth that we decide not to verify. Of course, faith needs to be distinguished from gullibility and superstition. Aquinas defines hope as the patient expectation of a difficult but possible future good. Hope defends us against two kinds vices: despair and presumption. Those who fall into despair consistently refuse to see the good they desire as possible. Charity is a kind of participation in the life of God (as friends participate in one another’s life). Of course, outside Christianity, others have different virtues. Muslims have the 5 pillars (faith, prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage); Confucianism calls for 孝（filial piety), 义（righteousness, justice), 礼（ritual propriety), 智(wisdom) 信(trustworthiness) 仁(charity)、恕 (reciprocity as in golden rule).
Vices. A fairly standard list of vices with 7 at the head (capital): pride, envy, avarice, wrath, sloth, lust, and gluttony. Pride: vanity (which involves an audience), conceit (requires a comparison that elevates self), and arrogance (simply consider self superior w/o bothering to investigate). Wrath: anger itself is not necessarily vice (for instance when demanding justice). But when there is excessive anger (seething resentment) and it becomes a feature of the character, it becomes a vice.
Aristotle defined virtues into 3 categories: moral (helps us live well and flourish), intellectual (helps us think well), and practical (helps us make things well). For Cicero, morally right actions spring from four cardinal (cardo means hinge, that on which a thing turns) virtues: fortitude, temperance, justice, and prudence. Augustine praised the four in his earlier work, but later (in The City of God) sees those as fundamentally flawed unless paired with the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity). In more recent times, Hume, Kant, and John Stuart Mill all have their notion of virtues. Recently, positive psychologists identified “high six” virtues (courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom) that exist throughout cultures. Among these, Plato saw justice as most important, Aristotle thought it was prudence, and Aquinas charity. There are a few alternative views of how virtue really works, but it all boils down to this: virtue function as a way of achieving happiness.
Intellectual virtues are the habit of minds that help us pursue truth and avoid errors: curiosity (Socrates says “philosophy has no other starting-point than wonder”), honesty, humility, and perseverance. Concerning humility: the Dunning Kruger effect says “People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact … The very same incompetence … deprives them the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s”. Socrates repeatedly stresses the importance of truth over persuasion. Plato claims knowing the good always leads to doing the good. Aristotle disagrees and separates virtues of thought and virtues of character. It turns out, untruth has shades too: For liars, the differences between the true and the false is important. For bullshiters, it’s not. To Frankfurt (author of “On Bullshit”), the indifference to the truth is the essence of “bullshit”.
Theological virtues (Christian) are faith, hope, and charity. Augustine went as far as saying without theological virtues, the cardinal ones are mere glittering vice. Aquinas is more reasonable and explains that we can grasp moral truths, but can’t consistently act on them. And the solution is divine grace where God doing for us what we can’t do ourselves. By receiving in faith the goodness that is God, people can participate the life of God. Faith is assent to truth that we decide not to verify. Of course, faith needs to be distinguished from gullibility and superstition. Aquinas defines hope as the patient expectation of a difficult but possible future good. Hope defends us against two kinds vices: despair and presumption. Those who fall into despair consistently refuse to see the good they desire as possible. Charity is a kind of participation in the life of God (as friends participate in one another’s life). Of course, outside Christianity, others have different virtues. Muslims have the 5 pillars (faith, prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage); Confucianism calls for 孝（filial piety), 义（righteousness, justice), 礼（ritual propriety), 智(wisdom) 信(trustworthiness) 仁(charity)、恕 (reciprocity as in golden rule).
Vices. A fairly standard list of vices with 7 at the head (capital): pride, envy, avarice, wrath, sloth, lust, and gluttony. Pride: vanity (which involves an audience), conceit (requires a comparison that elevates self), and arrogance (simply consider self superior w/o bothering to investigate). Wrath: anger itself is not necessarily vice (for instance when demanding justice). But when there is excessive anger (seething resentment) and it becomes a feature of the character, it becomes a vice.
October 13, 2024
3,5 stars; this was pretty decent; the cardinal (on which actions ‘hinge’) virtues (justice, prudence, temperance, courage) make their familiar appearance and the author does an admirable job in presenting them in several cultural traditions all over the globe (universal so it seems!); supplemented with the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity (charitas) and there you have the seven capital (or lively) virtues, to be offset by the seven deadly sins (pride greed (or avarice), wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth).
October 31, 2021
Helpful introduction, some good insights.
March 31, 2024
“Virtue is a good quality of the soul by which we live rightly, and of which no one can make bad use, which God works in us without us.” — Thomas Aquinas
Does anyone care about virtues anymore? I wouldn’t have particularly thought so, but Craig Boyd says we’re undergoing a Virtue Renaissance! But which virtues? Plato’s 4 virtues, the Cardinal 7 virtues (along with those 7 Deadly Sins), Confucius’s 5, or the supposed universal High 6 Virtues? Take your pick. Or don’t. Nietzsche held virtues don’t really exist and that “traditional virtues are merely terms used and cultivated by the weak to control the strong.” That sounds like him, huh?
I was interested in this because Thomas a Kempis’ emphasis on increasing in virtues and decreasing in vices as a key part of Christian progress has stuck with me. And more recently, Richard Foster’s new book on Humility captured my imagination — particularly the idea of focusing on a single virtue for a whole year. I’m considering doing so with the Cardinal Virtues for seven years.
All said, this introduction does what the entries in this series often do well: provide me just enough information to wet my appetite for further learning in that area.
Does anyone care about virtues anymore? I wouldn’t have particularly thought so, but Craig Boyd says we’re undergoing a Virtue Renaissance! But which virtues? Plato’s 4 virtues, the Cardinal 7 virtues (along with those 7 Deadly Sins), Confucius’s 5, or the supposed universal High 6 Virtues? Take your pick. Or don’t. Nietzsche held virtues don’t really exist and that “traditional virtues are merely terms used and cultivated by the weak to control the strong.” That sounds like him, huh?
I was interested in this because Thomas a Kempis’ emphasis on increasing in virtues and decreasing in vices as a key part of Christian progress has stuck with me. And more recently, Richard Foster’s new book on Humility captured my imagination — particularly the idea of focusing on a single virtue for a whole year. I’m considering doing so with the Cardinal Virtues for seven years.
All said, this introduction does what the entries in this series often do well: provide me just enough information to wet my appetite for further learning in that area.
October 24, 2025
A short, plain, common-sensical introduction to the concept of virtues. I liked it a lot. A virtue, as understood in Greek thought, is a kind of skill, something one practices until it becomes part of one's nature. That can be something like playing soccer well, or violin, but this book focuses on the moral virtues. A virtuous life leads to a state of eudaimonia, inadequately translated to English as "happiness".
Though this framing comes from the Ancient Greeks, the concept of virtues is more or less a human universal, and though cultures have some disagreements about some of the virtues, there is quite a large area of consensus. The book looks at the Buddhist, Daoist, Islamic and Christian traditions, and discusses the concept of "capital" (from the Latin word for head) and "cardinal" (from Latin "hinge", since the other ones depend on them) virtues (and their counterparts, vices).
There is some discussion of tradeoffs, and of the boundary between intellectual and moral virtues. A good handbook for leading a more moral, intentional and virtuous life.
Though this framing comes from the Ancient Greeks, the concept of virtues is more or less a human universal, and though cultures have some disagreements about some of the virtues, there is quite a large area of consensus. The book looks at the Buddhist, Daoist, Islamic and Christian traditions, and discusses the concept of "capital" (from the Latin word for head) and "cardinal" (from Latin "hinge", since the other ones depend on them) virtues (and their counterparts, vices).
There is some discussion of tradeoffs, and of the boundary between intellectual and moral virtues. A good handbook for leading a more moral, intentional and virtuous life.
August 10, 2025
This isn’t a dry, objective study of virtue ethics. It’s moralizing in academic robes. The book parades Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as if their tidy theories still work in the chaos of real power, while skipping the messy parts—like Marcus Aurelius leaving Rome to Commodus. If Stoicism can’t pass virtue to your own heir, how solid is it?
The structure is pure priming: start with sanitized Greeks and Romans, then steer you toward Christianity’s “complete” virtue list, padded with emotional set-pieces—Mandela, Kolbe —presented as flawless christian moral icons. It reads more like a Watchtower issue than scholarship, telling you what to admire instead of giving facts to judge for yourself.
Nietzsche would call it herd morality sold as timeless truth. Virtue here is never stress-tested against the brutal realities of politics, power, or human failure. It’s a morality play for adults—neat, comforting, and useless when the real world gets ugly.
The structure is pure priming: start with sanitized Greeks and Romans, then steer you toward Christianity’s “complete” virtue list, padded with emotional set-pieces—Mandela, Kolbe —presented as flawless christian moral icons. It reads more like a Watchtower issue than scholarship, telling you what to admire instead of giving facts to judge for yourself.
Nietzsche would call it herd morality sold as timeless truth. Virtue here is never stress-tested against the brutal realities of politics, power, or human failure. It’s a morality play for adults—neat, comforting, and useless when the real world gets ugly.
July 5, 2025
This was solid! Boyd starts with Aristotle and demonstrates how virtues are essentially good habits and vices are essential bad habits. This was very similar to my senior thesis in college, so I was interested. I enjoyed the exploration of the cardinal virtues and how the virtues themselves are essentially the same across cultures (temperance = an appropriate attitude towards food, alcohol, sex) etc. but that they leave wiggle room in their application. An "appropriate attitude" towards sex looks different depending on your culture, values, etc. -- it can be as lightweight as "make sure you get consent and treat your partner with respect" or it can be pretty intense. I liked the breakdown of moral virtues, intellectual virtues, practical virtues, and theological virtues and how they intersected with one another. Exceeded my expectations!
December 19, 2022
The short introduction does its job – this pocket book provides concise summary of what virtue means in traditional thoughts, spanning the West and East, and also referencing three Abrahamic religions. Great food for thought, and this is spot on: the definition of virtue as consistent practice of the “fight or flight” mentality. The balance between moral and intellectual virtues/ inward vs outward is interesting; nice to see a parallel between Plato and Confucius. Easy to read, pretty illustrations, put me on snooze and I literally slept on it. 4 stars plus 1 because a friend gave this book to me, ty AM :)
January 2, 2023
Great introduction into the topic, providing explanations of the virtues and vices from not only Christian point of view but from the perspective of Jewish, Muslim and Eastern religions as well as different philosophical schools. Moreover, it exemplifies the virtues in situations and famous persons from real life or literary works, which makes the concepts easy to grasp even to people who know nothing of the theories and philosophies behind them.
August 3, 2023
Comparatively trivial compared to most VSI. I like the international perspective but still don't get why virtue ethics is so popular. The book includes a lengthy discussion of virtues but I do not think I really gained a deeper understanding of the philosophical foundations.
February 6, 2024
I was looking for a concise introduction to virtues and the title of this book delivers very well and provides a great appetizer for the whole topic with useful recommendations for further reading. I give The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction 5/5 stars.
April 14, 2024
While I picked up this book to ensure my basic understanding of 'the virtues', I found myself quite comfortable and knowledgeable about the vast majority of this slim volume. Nevertheless, while it wasn't personally edifying to a great extent, it will serve as a lovely guide to most readers beginning their journey, especially if they lack a background in Classics or Christian ethics. That being said, I did find the section of the ethics of Islam and Confucius a little 'out of place', as though they tacked the chapter into the book to be 'inclusive'. Even as someone who enjoys Muslim and Eastern thought, the addition seemed odd.
In short, a good primer for the initiated.
In short, a good primer for the initiated.
February 13, 2024
I enjoyed this book and the commentary on virtues and the different ideal moral good in different cultures. They also discussed vices across cultures and whether ideal good is achievable or not
March 19, 2024
Quick read, pretty solid, good intro
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