Concept

Moral character

Overview

Moral character or character (derived from charaktêr) is an analysis of an individual's steady moral qualities. The concept of character can express a variety of attributes, including the presence or lack of virtues such as empathy, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, or of good behaviors or habits; these attributes are also a part of one's soft skills.

Moral character refers to a collection of qualities that differentiate one individual from another – although on a cultural level, the group of moral behaviors to which a social group adheres can be said to unite and define it culturally as distinct from others.

Psychologist Lawrence Pervin defines moral character as "a disposition to express behavior in consistent patterns of functions across a range of situations". The philosopher Marie I. George refers to moral character as the "sum of one’s moral habits and dispositions". Aristotle said, "we must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts."

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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1. Accordingly moral character is well called by the Greeks [Greek: ethos], for it is, to speak generally, a quality of the unreasoning element in man, and is called [Greek: ethos] because the unreasoning element moulded by reason receives this quality and difference by habit, which is called [Greek: ethos].[226] Not that reason wishes to expel passion altogether (that is neither possible, nor advisable), but only to…

   Plutarch, Plutarch's Morals

   States what Moral character is; the author is tied to Moral character in the knowledge graph.

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2. Again, Practical Wisdom[17] and Excellence of the Moral character are very closely united; since the Principles of Practical Wisdom are in accordance with the Moral Virtues and these are right when they accord with Practical Wisdom. These moreover, as bound up with the passions, must belong to the composite nature, and the Excellences or Virtues of the composite nature are proper to man: therefore so too will be the…

   Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle

   States what Moral character is; the author is tied to Moral character in the knowledge graph.

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3. They may be proofs of any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach of duty to others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are not socially obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to others. The term duty to oneself, when it…

   John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

   States what Moral character is; opens on Moral character.

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Philosophers who discussed Moral character

• Maimonides
• Mencius
• Plutarch

Related ideas

• Karl Marx
• Pleasure
• Loyalty
• Normative ethics
• Original sin
• Plato
• Prediction
• Religion
• Soul
• Golden mean (philosophy)
• Empathy
• Honesty
• Abraham Lincoln
• Aristotle
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Thought
• Greeks
• Morality
• World War I
• Courage
• Virtue
• Christianity
• Natural environment
• Social environment

Place in the tradition

Part of Consequentialism.

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