... how 'bout that thing called virtue.

We have all heard of ethics and the moral compass. How about virtue. It seems that things haven't changed all that much in a few thousand years. To be virtuous one must practice virtue. Whether a person is referencing personal or professional relationships if there is little concern of how an individual does "business", be it the business of character or the business of market, there can be no practice of virtue if the only concern is success. The only practice of virtue comes from the fettered attempts to practice it. Virtue is not an equation, but a state of grace. As with wisdom one may never quite know when they have achieved a standard practice of virtuous action. Only when we come to understand we lack true virtue and regularly question our own virtue do we brush nearer to it.

When virtue is its truest its comes with no pushing or pulling, there simply isn't anything challenging its existence. It seems almost innate in the individual. Virtue for the sake of itself, no apparent worldly gain or quite motive only that virtue, in and of itself, is the proper course. Although Aristotelian thinking suggests that phronesis (practical wisdom) is a necessary attribute for acting accordingly with regard to the practice of virtue.

Why then do we discuss virtue at all when its apparent there is a certain abstract nature and seeming birth right for one to confer the ability to practice it? Lest one be fooled it is the practice that helps define virtue. Perhaps one individual is born with more favorable attributes suited to the curiosity of greater philosophical questions but, is the practice of virtue a birth right? The continuum exists even in virtue. If virtue is a practice then how can one presume it to be untouchable for those not born with philosophical questions burning holes in their cribs. The practice of virtue aided by practical wisdom is the picture of maturation in a well intentioned adult. Where on the continuum that adult sits is a matter of practice.