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Editorial

What is Virtue?

by Rick Lewis

“You are a citizen of a great and powerful nation. Are you not ashamed that you give so much time to the pursuit of money and reputation, and honours, and care so little for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul?” Socrates, The Apology*

Socrates said that we should be concerned with the improvement of our souls, and this is, after a manner of speaking, the focus of one of the two special features in this issue. For the subject of our first two articles is the nature of virtue, and how can the development of virtue be described except as the improvement of one’s soul? One of the classic questions of philosophy is “what should I do?” However, from the earliest times some have argued that this question is less important than the question of what kind of people we should be. If we can become better people, they say, then good actions will follow naturally.

This approach to life is known as ‘virtue ethics’, and was first advocated by Confucius, but in the West it is particularly associated with Aristotle.

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