. . . (today) we accept, indeed regard as a platitude, an idea that Aristotle rejected, that someone can have one virtue while lacking others . For Aristotle, as for Socrates, practical reason required the dispositions of action and feeling to be harmonized; if any disposition was properly to count as a virtue, it had to be part of a rational structure that included all the virtues. This is quite different from our assumption (in the modern world) that these kinds of virtuous disposition are enough like other psychological characteristics to explain how one person can, so to speak, do better in one area than another. . . . (today) we do not believe in the unity of the virtues.
- Bernard WilliamsNothing produces such an effect as a good platitude
- Oscar Wilde