Ideal and Virtue
Given the complexity of putting ideals into practice, and resolving conflicts between them, it is not uncommon to see them reduced to dogma. One way to avoid this, according to Bernard Crick, is to have ideals that themselves are descriptive of a process, rather than an outcome. His political virtues try to raise the practical habits useful in resolving disputes into ideals of their own. A virtue, in general, is an ideal that one can make a habit.
Read more about this topic: Ideal (ethics)
Famous quotes containing the words ideal and/or virtue:
“Many Americans imagine simpler times even as a storm of social change swirls about, blowing parents here and children there. Sure, the 1950s ideal world would be wonderful. But knock on the nation’s doors: Ozzie and Harriet are seldom at home.”
—Leslie Dreyfous (20th century)
“I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this “truth,” a most welcome veil over a pudendum—and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)