Virtues and Vices

How humanity’s view of virtues and sins has changed through the ages

What is a virtue and what is a sin? Is it possible to say that our actions are evil or good? Every age and culture have their own answers to these timeless questions. For example, in the Western Protestant tradition, the human body and its desires have been considered to be inherently evil, but that is not a position taken for granted in other cultures. Virtue and sin seem to represent a duality that is as old as humankind. 

This anthology explores how perceptions of virtues and sins have changed through history. The essays take ancient Greece and Rome as their starting point, move to the early Christian period from St. Augustine to Dante, and then on to more recent philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The writers also touch on everything from Confucian China and ancient India to self-help books, transhumanism, and AI, as well as the existence or nonexistence of human rights.