In Praise of La Mitezza

Abstract

Among the ancients, ethics was resolved largely through the treatment of virtues. Suffice it to recall Aristotle's Etica Nicomachea, which was for many centuries a prescribed text. In our times such a treatment has almost disappeared. Today moral philosophers discuss values and choices, on both analytical and propositional levels, and their major or minor rationality, as well as discussing rules or norms and consequently rights and duties. One of the last significant writings devoted to the classic subject of virtue was the second part of Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (Die Metaphysik der Sitten), titled The Theory of Virtue (Die Tugendlehre), the first part of which discusses the Theory of Law (Die Rechtlehre). However, Kant's ethics is especially one of duty, and more specifically of inward as distinguished from outward duty, with which the theory of law is concerned. In the former, virtue is defined as the necessary willpower to accomplish one's duty, as the moral strength required by man to fight those defects which prevent or become an obstacle to the accomplishment of duty. Kant's theory of virtue is an integral part of the ethics of duty and, as explicitly and repeatedly declared, has nothing to do with Aristotelian ethics.