virtues
Virtue — the Greek aretē and its cognates — occupies contested terrain across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as an ethical ideal, a psychological capacity, a theological gift, and, in Nietzsche’s provocative rereading, a potential disguise for resentment and the will to power. The corpus encompasses at least four distinguishable orientations. The Platonic tradition, represented by the Meno and Protagoras, frames virtue as a philosophically unstable unity: something sought as a single essence yet perpetually fragmenting into justice, temperance, courage, and prudence, and remaining uncertain as to whether it is teachable at all. The Stoic lineage, mediated through Long and Sedley, insists on virtue as a stark binary — present or absent, never merely progressing — and as choiceworthy for its own sake. The Christian ascetical tradition, above all in the Philokalia, recasts virtue as inseparable from divine grace: the cardinal virtues are real but remain ‘shadows and prefigurations’ without the animation of the Holy Spirit. Nietzsche, and Jung reading Nietzsche, rupture the entire classical economy by insisting that conventional virtue is often a ‘brake,’ a vehicle of revenge and social conformity, and that authentic virtue is power affirmed as a ruling idea. Hans Jonas introduces the Gnostic anti-virtue: the deliberate contempt for all worldly aretē as an expression of the alien-god theology. These tensions — nature versus grace, unity versus plurality, cultivation versus gift, authentic power versus reactive moralism — make virtue one of the most generative and contested nodes in the library.
nothing is in between virtue and vice, though the Peripatetics say that progress is in between these. For as, they say, a stick must be either straight or crooked, so a man must be either just or unjust
The Stoics articulate virtue as an absolute binary — straight or crooked, present or absent — and enumerate its fourfold primary structure subordinating all secondary moral qualities.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
Virtue is no sooner discovered to be teachable, than the discovery follows that it is not taught. Virtue, therefore, is and is not teachable.
Plato’s Meno stages the foundational aporia of virtue: its teachability is both logically entailed and empirically refuted, leaving its nature unresolved.
, Meno, -385thesis
It is power, this new virtue; it is a ruling idea, and around it a subtle soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge.
Zarathustra redefines virtue not as conformity to external law but as concentrated, self-commanding power — a ruling idea wed to self-surpassing will.
, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883thesis
there are others who go along, heavy and creaking, like carts carrying stones downhill: they speak much of dignity and virtue — their brake they call virtue!
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra exposes conventional virtue as a reactive formation — a brake on life, a disguise for revenge — systematically mocking each type of false virtuous posture.
, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883thesis
Without such grace the whole bevy of the virtues is moribund; and in those who appear to have attained them… solely through their own efforts they are but shadows and prefigurations of beauty, not the reality itself.
Gregory of Sinai asserts that virtues acquired through unaided human effort are mere simulacra; only the animating grace of the Holy Spirit renders them genuinely alive.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Their doctrine nullifies temperance and the justice inborn in the human character and brought to fulness by reason and exercise, and in general everything by which a man can become worthy and noble.
The Gnostic depreciation of worldly virtue is identified by Jonas’s source (Plotinus/Porphyry) as a systematic nullification of the classical moral order — temperance, justice, and the entire structure of earned nobility.
, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958thesis
virtue is one thing, the source of virtue quite another. The material house is not identical with the house conceived in the intellect… So with us: it is from the Supreme that we derive order and distribution and harmony
Plotinus distinguishes virtue as it inheres in the soul from its transcendent source in the One, arguing that the soul participates in but is not identical with the principle from which virtue flows.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
virtue is the power of governing mankind… ‘virtue,’ Meno, or ‘a virtue’? … I mean as I might say about anything; that a round, for example, is ‘a figure’ and not simply ‘figure’
Socrates presses Meno’s definition of virtue as governing power toward the distinction between virtue as a unified essence and the many particular virtues, establishing the central dialectical problem of the dialogue.
, Meno, -385thesis
we begin by abstaining from evil because of fear, and from this we advance to the practice of virtue through strength; from the practice of virtue we advance to the discrimination conferred by the spirit of counsel; from discrimination to a settled state of virtue
The Philokalia articulates a graduated ascent through virtue — from fear-based abstinence through active practice to a ‘settled state’ that becomes cognitive and spiritual insight.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
the transformation of the classical aretē-concept in the stage of actual discourse joining issue with the philosophical tradition… it is the impact of transcendental religion in general which leads to this reinterpretation of the ethical
Jonas traces how transcendental religion — exemplified in Philo Judaeus — radically reinterprets the classical virtue-concept, displacing autonomous moral cultivation with other-worldly reference.
, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958supporting
he who has come to apprehend the principle of virtue will clearly have no way of knowing the state that is contrary to the intelligence… he knows virtue only as it is, not as it is thought to be
Maximos argues that genuine apprehension of virtue’s principle removes all knowledge of its contrary — one cannot simultaneously know virtue and vice as co-present intelligibles.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
Lü [Treading] is the foundation of virtue… Fu [Return] is the root of virtue… Heng [Perseverance] provides virtue with steadfastness… Kun [Impasse] is the criterion for distinguishing virtue
Wang Bi maps virtue onto the hexagram system of the I Ching, distributing its structural aspects — foundation, root, steadfastness, cultivation, and discernment — across distinct cosmological moments.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
In Scripture the virtues are called ‘ways’. The greatest of all the virtues is love. That is why St Paul said, ‘Now I will show you the best way of all’
Maximos identifies the virtues with scriptural ‘ways’ and crowns the entire structure with love as the supreme virtue, subordinating all other moral paths to it.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
if we abstain from evil actions not through threat of punishment, but because we hate such actions, then it is from love of the Master that we practice the virtues
The Philokalia distinguishes servile virtue motivated by fear of punishment from free virtue motivated by love, privileging the latter as constitutive of the ‘perfect and complete man.’
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
he who immorally makes use of morality solely to deceive by his solemn display of virtue, and hides the evil disposition of his will under the outward form of piety, barters virtue for the guile of hypocrisy
The Philokalia warns against virtue as performance — a demonic inversion in which the outward form of piety conceals an evil inner disposition, echoing Nietzsche’s critique from within the ascetical tradition.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
distinguishing between innate virtues, the principles of which we possess by nature, and virtues which are from the Spirit, the grace of which we receive as a free gift
Maximos distinguishes natural virtues inherent in the soul’s structure from spiritual virtues freely granted by grace, insisting that the Logos alone discerns their precise boundary.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
One should not say that it is impossible to reach a virtuous life; but one should say that it is not easy. Nor do those who have reached it find it easy to maintain.
The Philokalia insists that virtue is achievable but arduous, requiring sustained divine participation and vigilance against the intellect’s natural vacillation toward material things.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
In the sentence, ‘It is your dearest Self, your virtue,’ self should not be written with a capital S — that is wrong. Nietzsche does not mean there the Self
Jung’s editorial correction clarifies that Nietzsche’s ‘self’ in relation to virtue is not the Jungian Self-archetype, preserving the distinction between depth-psychological individuation and Nietzsche’s concept of sovereign virtue.
, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988supporting
Banished in this way from your state of virtue and spiritual knowledge as if from your native land, you suffer all these things and more besides
Virtue is here figured as a homeland from which the soul is exiled when it refuses the corrective humiliation ordained by God, linking virtue to obedience and the acceptance of suffering.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
whatever is accompanied by justice or honesty is virtue, and whatever is devoid of justice is vice… virtue is doing what you do with a part of virtue
Socrates exposes the circularity in Meno’s definition — defining virtue through justice, which is itself acknowledged as a part of virtue — crystallizing the dialogical problem of the whole.
, Meno, -385supporting
soul acting under that guidance and performing act of virtue… Because there is war, we perform some brave feat; how is that our free act since had there been no war it could not have been performed?
Plotinus interrogates whether virtue-in-act can constitute genuine freedom, noting that virtuous performance always depends on contingent circumstances that lie outside the agent’s will.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
the whole practice of the virtues becomes as it were part of our nature, since henceforward the Lord, as He promised, comes and dwells in us
The Philokalia describes the telos of virtuous practice as a second nature: virtues so thoroughly habituated that divine indwelling becomes the animating principle of all action.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
As soon as anyone practices the virtues with true intelligence, he acquires a spiritual understanding of Scripture.
Maximos correlates virtuous practice with hermeneutical transformation — the active cultivation of virtue opens a new, spiritual mode of scriptural interpretation inaccessible to merely literal reading.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside
by mounting from one virtue to another we unite with the source of those gifts
The Philokalia presents the virtues as a graduated ladder whose ascending movement terminates in union with the divine source from which all virtuous gifts proceed.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981aside