By Terry Newell from Huffington Post "On March 4, 1865, with the Civil War finally approaching a victorious conclusion, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address. Rather than satisfy the audience's thirst for celebration and revenge, Lincoln gave a sermon on the meaning of the war...

By Nancy Sherman from The New York Times "The Stoic doctrine is essentially about reducing vulnerability. And it starts off where Aristotle leaves off. Aristotle insists that happiness depends to some degree on chance and prosperity. Though the primary component of happiness is virtue — and that...

By Mark Vernon from Gaurdian. "There is an intimate link between religion and morality. It's not fashionable to say so: many argue that talk of a link – and talk is all it is – should be stopped. After all, individuals can clearly be good without God, and religious individuals hardly stand much...

By Alison Flood from Gaurdian. "The as-yet-untitled book by the former Republican vice-presidential candidate was announced yesterday in a statement from her publisher, HarperCollins. The publisher told American press that the new book would 'include selections from classic and contemporary...

By Philip Pullman from Gaurdian. "At first sight, of course, vice is more attractive. She is sexier, she promises to be better companythan her plain sister virtue. Every novelist, and every reader too, has more fun with the villains than with the good guys. Goodness is staunch and patient, but wickedness...

By Mark S. M. Scott John Hick transformed the shape of thinking about theodicy in contemporary philosophical theology with his conception of the world as a “vale of soul‐making.” Suffering, he argues, enables our development as spiritually and morally mature persons. Without suffering we could not cultivate...

By Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Lindred L. Greer, Michel J. J. Handgraaf, Shaul Shalvi, Gerben A. Van Kleef, Matthijs Baas, Femke S. Ten Velden, Eric Van Dijk, Sander W. W. Feith. "Humans regulate intergroup conflict through parochial altruism; they self-sacrifice to contribute to in-group welfare and...

By Ingvild Almås, Alexander W. Cappelen, Erik Ø. Sørensen, Bertil Tungodden "Fairness considerations fundamentally affect human behavior, but our understanding of the nature and development of people’s fairness preferences is limited. The dictator game has been the standard experimental design for...

By Robert Sparrow "Since the first sex reassignment operations were performed, individual sex has come to be, to some extent at least, a technological artifact. The existence of sperm sorting technology, and of prenatal determination of fetal sex via ultrasound along with the option of termination...

By Frans Svensson "Conceived of as a contender to other theories in substantive ethics, virtue ethics is often associated with, in essence, the following account or criterion of right action: VR: An action A is right for S in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous agent would characteristically...

By Ragnar Francén "Motivational externalists and internalists of various sorts disagree about the circumstances under which it is conceptually possible to have moral opinions but lack moral motivation. Typically, the evidence referred to are intuitions about whether people in certain scenarios who...

By Thomas Ryan 'Compassion’—an engaging yet troublesome word? Recent studies on Thomas Aquinas prompt a reconsideration of the place of compassion as an emotion and a virtue in his treatment of the Christian moral life. Through an analysis of relevant texts in Thomas and in relation to contemporary...

By Christian Helmut Wenzel The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue by Jiyuan Yu offers an introductory comparison in overview between Confucian and Aristotelian understandings of virtue. By "Confucian ethics" Yu means, in a broad sense, what is included in the four classics...

By Richard B. Miller Eric Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship has two aims: first, to recast debates over modern liberalism as debates over the political implications of the Augustinian legacy and, second, to rationally reconstruct Augustine’s ideas...

By Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Lesley Sylvan Social emotions like admiration for another person’s virtue are often associated with a desire to be virtuous one’s self, and to engage in meaningful and socially relevant activities against any odds ( Haidt & Seder, 2007 ). These emotions can profoundly...