Section

Virtues & Vices

The qualities the moral traditions name as worth cultivating and the faults they warn against, paired where a tradition pairs them. The Western lists, four cardinal and three theological virtues, seven deadly sins, descend from Greek philosophy and from Evagrius Ponticus by way of Gregory the Great, and they are not the only lists: the Buddhist paramitas and kleshas and the virtues and vices attached to the sephiroth count differently. Each entry names its tradition.

Facts

Origins

Whose Classification This Is

The lists that lead this section are Latin Christian: four cardinal virtues taken from Greek philosophy through Cicero and Ambrose, three theological virtues from 1 Corinthians 13, and seven capital vices reduced from the eight thoughts of Evagrius Ponticus by Gregory the Great around 590. They are one tradition's scheme and other traditions' lists do not map onto them. 2

Overview

Scope of This Section

The named moral qualities traditions hold worth cultivating and the faults they warn against, each given in the list its own tradition draws up rather than merged into a single scheme. What one tradition counts as a single fault another divides, and the pairing of a virtue against a vice is a feature of particular schemes, not a universal. 1

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The Qualities to Cultivate and the Faults to Avoid

This section holds the moral vocabulary of the traditions: the virtues they name as worth cultivating and the vices they warn against, paired where a tradition pairs them.

The Western lists are the familiar ones, the four cardinal and three theological virtues, the seven deadly sins, descending from Greek philosophy and Christian teaching. Alongside them the atlas sets the moral categories of other traditions: the paramitas of Buddhism, the kleshas of Buddhist and yogic analysis, and the virtues and vices attached to the sephiroth in Kabbalistic correspondence.

Different lists, different logics

Traditions count and name the virtues and vices differently, and the differences are informative: what one tradition treats as a single fault another divides, and a quality prized in one setting may be muted in another. The entries give each virtue or vice in the terms of the tradition that names it, note the reason offered for cultivating or avoiding it, and pair it with its opposite where the tradition draws that pairing.

Because so many later systems attached a virtue and a vice to each of their divisions, the sephiroth above all, this material connects outward to Kabbalah & the Tree of Life and to the wider correspondence traditions.

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