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Moral Excellence
Today we are talking about virtue. I will open with a question. What is virtue? I think it is something to do with truth but I can’t actually define virtue. A character held in high regard. It’s a feeling of goodness maybe. Hard to describe, no? Do we get the word virtual from virtue? As…
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Blind Passion is the Root of Suffering
Virtue is the only path to feeling good. As humans we move away from pressure, why? To preserve virtue, even to the point of applying pressure to preserve their own virtue. It does not feel good. So it’s safe to say all creatures main goal is to “feel good.” But there are many false ways to…
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Self Respect and Justice
Shall we focus on specifics of virtue? Self-respect is a virtue. Without self-respect we cannot understand the reasoning behind any arguments that tell us we should respect others. Self-respect doesn’t have to be taught. Children may not have the set of behaviours we call dignified, but they do naturally respect their own presence and intentions…
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Take Ownership
They say charity starts at home, and this is true. Charity is a virtue. If you are unwilling to return any good to the world, you obstruct any potential for the furtherance of that good. So eat the apple, plant the seeds. Eat the bread, pay the farmer. Receive help from your community. Help those…
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Love is Virtuous
Pleasure in life is a virtue. It’s a source of motivation, personal renewal, strength. Pleasure pursued passionately, though, leads to dissipation. Strength without application serves not to foster growth but stifle it, blinds one to the substance of the very life they chose to take pleasure in. This is why we speak of people as…
Category: Virtue
We all have at our heart a drive. An impulse toward life lived positively in as healthy and peaceful a way possible. But in the pursuit of moral excellence, it’s all too easy to sink into hubris. One can knowingly engage in a path of action leading to vice in the pursuit of moral excellence.
To be virtuous is to be vital without being reactionary. The only true virtue is virtue shared. All else is sentiment, and sentiment by itself is blind. Virtue is a necessity, but the necessities are not virtuous.
“Beauty without virtue is like a rose without scent.” Proverb
“People with virtue must speak out; People who speak are not all virtuous.” Confucius