ABSTRACT
Suffering has instrumental value in the cultivation and exercise of virtues that are associated, not with strength and health, but with illness and disease. In addition, suffering has clear instrumental value in the development and cultivation of moral virtues, and in particular the executive virtue of wisdom. The idea that suffering is a fitting response to important spheres of the existence, and that enables us to deal appropriately with them, constitutes an intuitive reason in favour of viewing suffering as virtuous. Forms of suffering can be part of the class of virtuous motives, alongside feelings of compassion, benevolence, and the like. For the idea that physical or emotional suffering can be a virtuous motive clashes with the common-sense and intuitively plausible account of the disvalue of suffering.
