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The Art of Living

The Six Core Virtues

Massimo Pigliucci finds six ethical ideals shared by all cultures.

The notion of virtue was central to much ancient discourse in ethics, most obviously in the ‘virtue ethics’ tradition we usually associate with Greco-Roman philosophies such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, Aristotelianism and Skepticism. But some scholars have made the point that the ethics of at least three of the big Eastern traditions, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism, also share a family resemblance with virtue ethics.

The word ‘virtue’ has nowadays fallen into disuse, perhaps because it reminds people of decidedly old-fashioned Christian virtues such as chastity and purity. Yet, ‘virtue’ comes from the Latin vir, which was in turn the translation of the Greek arete, and arete means excellence in the broadest sense, not limited to the moral realm. For example, not long ago I bought an arete bread knife, which cuts bread both cleanly and easily.

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