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The Virtue of the Virtues |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Charles Taliaferro |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/2002 |
| Size: 2,188 Words, 13,255 Characters |
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A SMALL TREATISE ON THE GREAT VIRTUES
The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life
Andre Comte-Sponville
New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2001
352 pp., $27.50
In much ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, philosophers attended to the virtues. The four cardinal virtues received the most attention: justice, prudence, courage, and temperance or self-restraint. These and other virtues were believed to refer to different excellences or powers possessed by a good person. Here are some of the questions about virtue that exercised moral thinkers of the past: Are some virtues more fundamental than others? How can we distinguish virtue and vice? Can virtue be taught? Can virtues go wrong, as when someone's courage leads him to an early death? What is the relation betwee...
. . .
...s even more ghastly than they do in a skeptical, secular setting.
A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues is a humane, stimulating text. I feel sure that Comte-Sponville would be the last one to think he has said everything on the topic. His book can lead readers to broaden their perspectives of these humane virtues by taking into account the divine and more transcendent goods and virtues.
(818 of 13,255 characters)
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