ABSTRACT
The Stoic view of virtue is restrictive and dangerous. It is also false, for there is nothing contradictory in supposing that people can possess certain virtues –virtues in the true sense, practised not from calculation but for their own sake – while lacking others. The only grain of truth we can salvage from the Stoic theory is that virtues do seem to strengthen one another. A rigid all-or-nothing attitude to virtue is not only -educationally counter-productive; it is also liable to slide into fanaticism. Absolutism in the practice of virtues can be harmful: if one practises and encourages virtues always and everywhere, regardless of the circumstances, one can make life intolerable both for oneself and for others. In real life acquiring virtues is a simple matter, for true virtue is a natural skill, learnt through our own experience of life and its conflicting demands, and through the society of good and thoughtful people.
