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The Necessary Virtue

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22.06.2026

Contemporary moral language is in a state of grave disorder, leaving only decontextualized fragments of a past in which virtue made sense. Aristotle understood that virtues are necessary dispositions to achieve the goods internal to shared practices, and that they only gain meaning within the narrative unity of a human life directed toward a common end. In this strip of land ringed by urgencies, the absence of this structure manifests as a crisis of survival. It is an emotivist illusion to believe that we are honest or loyal out of mere individual preference, ignoring that character depends on a community that sustains these qualities through a living tradition. Virtue does not develop in the isolation of autonomous choice, but in engagement with standards of excellence that demand the real risk of failure and renunciation.

What we observe in our current reality is the triumph of emotivism, an environment in which the concepts of integrity, courage, and fidelity are reduced to expressions of personal approval masked as objective judgment. On political stages and under media spotlights, these words are instrumentalized as tools of manipulation. When a leader asserts his righteousness during prime time, he does........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)