Virtue (Latin virtus; Greek ἀρετή) is moral excellence. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus good by definition. The opposite of virtue is vice.
Virtues and values
Virtues can be placed into a broader context of values. Each individual has a core of underlying values that contribute to our system of beliefs, ideas and/or opinions (see
value in semiotics). Integrity in the application of a value ensures its continuity and this continuity separates a value
from beliefs, opinion and ideas. In this context a value (e.g., Truth or Equality or Greed) is the core from which we operate
or react. Societies have values that are shared among many of the participants in that culture. An individual's values typically
are largely, but not entirely, in agreement with their culture's values.
Individual virtues can be grouped into one of four categories of values:
A wide variety of qualities have been named as virtues.[1]
Four classic Western virtues
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The four classic Western Cardinal virtues are:
This enumeration is traced to Greek philosophy, and was listed at least by Plato, if not also by Socrates, from whom no attributable written works exist. Plato also mentions "Holiness".
It is likely that Plato believed that virtue was, in fact, a single thing, and that this enumeration
was created by others in order to better define virtue. In Protagoras and Meno, he states that the separate virtues can't exist independently, and offers as evidence the contradictions
of acting with wisdom (prudence), yet in an unjust way, or acting with bravery (fortitude), yet without knowing (prudence).
Aristotle's golden mean
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes every virtue as a balance point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait. The
point of greatest virtue lies not in the exact middle, but at a "golden mean" sometimes closer to one extreme than the other.
For example, courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, confidence the mean between self-deprecation and vanity,
and generosity the mean between miserliness and extravagance.
Prudence and virtue
Seneca, the Roman Stoic, said that perfect prudence is indistinguishable from perfect virtue. Thus, in considering all consequences, a prudent person would
act in the same way as a virtuous person.
The same rationale was followed by Plato in Meno, when he wrote that people only act for what they
perceive will maximize the good. It is the lack of wisdom which results in the making of a bad choice, rather than a good
one. In this way, wisdom is the central part of virtue. However, he realized that if virtue was synonymous with wisdom, then
it could be taught, a possibility he had earlier discounted. He then added "correct belief" as an alternative to knowledge,
proposing that knowledge is merely correct belief that has been thought through and "tethered".
