Moral Vices and their Relation to Human Nature

Document Type : علمی پژوهشی

Author

• Sayyid ‘Alī Ḥusaynī Sharīf

10.22067/philosophy.v43i2.11775

Abstract

The relation between ethics and human good and evil attributes and his nature is among the age-old discourses in the field of practical philosophy (wisdom). Since long ago, it has been of concern to the learned and the philosophers as to whether all ethics or a part of it in all human beings or in some of them is optional and acquired or non-optional, unacquirable, and unchangeable.
This writing aims at bringing up and defending the theory that excellences and virtues are existential affairs and objective and acquired facts; however, moral vices are non-existential affairs,
contradictions and lacking of virtuous faculties. Therefore, that the human nature is lacking in a virtue or excellence suffices to be regarded as the evidence of the opposite vice and since man in the very creation is void of excellences and is not born learned and equitable, the mere nature of man or the so-called human being in terms of its essence, is in this respect the evidence of vices and this means the “essentiality” of these features, in case the essential possibility is likely. That is to say, the vices, although being essential, like virtues are changeable and perishable and man’s free will and volition are effective on them. As a result of this, education would not lose its special standing.
Keywords: disposition, excellences, vices, essential attributes, acquired attributes, habit, nature.

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