Virtue and Vice
Virtue in traditional African religion is often connected with the communal aspect of life. Examples include social behaviors such as the respect for parents and elders, raising children appropriately, providing hospitality, and being honest, trustworthy and courageous.
In some traditional African religions, morality is associated with obedience or disobedience to God regarding the way a person or a community lives. For the Kikuyu, according to Mbiti, God, acting through the lesser deities, is believed to speak to and be capable of guiding the virtuous person as one's conscience. But so could the Devil and its messengers. In indigenous African religions, such as the Azande religion, a person is said to have a good or bad conscience depending on whether he does the bidding of the God or the Devil.
Read more about this topic: African Folklore
Famous quotes containing the words and vice, virtue and/or vice:
“Me, what’s that after all? An arbitrary limitation of being bounded by the people before and after and on either side. Where they leave off, I begin, and vice versa.”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)
“In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)