One form of ancient instruction was paraenesis, which lists various rules without a clear outline or progression of thought.
virtue
Meritocracy’s trail of humiliation
Michael Sandel considers some alternatives.
To believe that moral values and virtuous leadership are self-enforcing is to fool ourselves.
Good reading and the good life
Reading books is a virtuous act.
Why human rights and global ethics are inadequate concepts
In a globalized world, Michael Ignatieff argues, grand moral values have failed. What's left is virtue.
Is forbearance amid disagreement a Christian virtue?
We should forebear one another—not to ensure church unity, but because God forebears us.
A cure for liberalism?
John Milbank & Adrian Pabst consider Western society’s many problems and offer a prescription: virtue.
Telling the truth requires more than right thinking. It requires being a particular sort of person.
Hope without Optimism, by Terry Eagleton
This provocative book portrays hope as a virtue, a moral orientation that can be cultivated actively, a matter of will.
Pure Christian sex?
Human sexuality is fraught, particularly when mixed with the complexities of culture, religion, patriarchy, and adolescence.
The science of injustice
The Enlightenment view of autonomous human subjects is built into the law, so the criminal justice system floats on myths and superstitions.
The myth of a religion/science conflict
Are science and religion enemies or friends? Neither, says Peter Harrison—but they're both forms of virtue.
Virtue, says former senator John Danforth, is what's missing from the current political equation—and the church is a place where virtue can be taught and advocated.
Vainglory, by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
If vainglory is about stealing glory from God, it is unintelligible outside the house of faith. This may explain why Rebecca DeYoung's book flows against the current of attempts to reclaim narcissism and pride.
So much religious talk is about naming, about describing a general reality in particular terms. This is important. But in our increasingly secular culture, it’s always striking when someone gets at deep religious truth without bothering with religious language. For instance, Jay Smooth offers a pretty crisp explication here of the nature of sin and virtue.