"Virtue" v. Struggle

To speak of people as virtuous or as evil is a misnomer. Even if there are people who do evil, they also do their best to be virtuous within the context they have placed themselves. People who are virtuous often see themselves as having vices that mar their character—which is always partly true.

Aristotle labels people as having “virtue” or “vice”—simple good and evil, black and white. But he also has a label of “conscientious”—people who are desiring to live a life of virtue, struggle with it and is always slipping into a life of vice. This is the struggling person, the one who knows what he or she ought to do, fights to do it, and fails.

It is this struggle that is the key to life. The virtuous person, as they struggle against their vice or vices, they retain their virtue. The evil person, with the amount of effort and help they seek to overcome their vice, can become virtuous. Perhaps they only become a struggler, a wrestler against the evil within their soul—but that fighter is of a noble character.

Far more noble than the one who looks at vice straight in the face and claims it is virtue. Far more noble than the one who lives in vice, and shrugs and says, “It’s the way of the world, what can I do?” Far more noble than the otherwise virtuous person who makes peace with their vice, no matter how many people it harms.

It is the struggle that makes one personally noble, more than the natural bent to do good. However, it is the success in that struggle that makes someone a positive person to live with.