Virtues and Vices

How humanity’s view of virtues and sins has changed through the ages

What is a virtue and what is a sin? Is it possible to say that our actions are evil or good? Every age and culture have their own answers to these timeless questions. For example, in the Western Protestant tradition, the human body and its desires have been considered to be inherently evil, but that is not a position taken for granted in other cultures. Virtue and sin seem to represent a duality that is as old as humankind. 

This anthology explores how perceptions of virtues and sins have changed through history. The essays take ancient Greece and Rome as their starting point, move to the early Christian period from St. Augustine to Dante, and then on to more recent philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The writers also touch on everything from Confucian China and ancient India to self-help books, transhumanism, and AI, as well as the existence or nonexistence of human rights.

Katarina Barrling, Associate Professor of Political Science, Uppsala University 
David Butterfield, PhD, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge
Par Cassel, Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan
Marie Kawthar Daouda, PhD Literature, Author and lecturer, University of Oxford
Torbjorn Elensky, Author and culture writer
Jessica Frazier, Lecturer in the Study of Religion, University of Oxford and Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
Peter Halden, Reader in War Studies, Swedish Defence University 
Thomas Idergard, Jesuit Priest, Chairman of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Stockholm, Columnist
Anthony Pagden, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Los Angeles, California. 
Ritchie Robertson, Emeritus Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature, University of Oxford
Hans Ruin, Professor of Philosophy, Södertörn University
Malise Ruthven, Independent Writer and Researcher, PhD Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge
Mateusz Strozynski, Associate Professor, Institute of Classical Philology, Adam Mickiewicz University 
Fredrik Svenaeus, Professor of Philosophy, Södertörn University 
Sten Widmalm, Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, Uppsala University