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date: 25 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article analyses the conception of virtue and vice in early modern Europe. It explains that there were two movements in conceptions of virtue during this period. The first is the Cartesian tradition wherein virtue is intimately related to the control of the passions and the other is the continuation of this theme in Britain in a more aesthetic version. This article describes how the concepts of virtue and vice were softened by an awakening interest in the social emotions and in the relationship between moral goodness and happiness.

Keywords: virtue, vice, Europe, Cartesian tradition, social emotions, moral goodness, happiness

Peter J. E. Kail

P J E Kail is University Lecturer in the History of Modern Philosophy, and Official Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St. Peter’s College, Oxford. He has published articles on Hume, Hutcheson, and Shaftesbury and is the author of Projection and Realism in Hume’s Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007) and the co-editor (with Marina Frasca-Spada) of Impressions of Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

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