Why the Cardinal Virtues?

Anyone who explores this website will notice that many specific virtues are organized around four central ones: prudence, justice, moderation, and courage. These are the cardinal virtues—from the Latin word cardo, meaning "hinge"—and they have been a cornerstone of Western moral thought for over two thousand years. In this post, we want to explain why these are the foundation for the Core Virtues program, and how they help to provide a framework for moral education. 

A Perennial Tradition 

The tradition of the cardinal virtues is not the invention of any single thinker. Plato first identified these four as essential to a well-ordered soul in his Republic. Aristotle gave them a more analytical treatment in his ethical writings, though he tended to lay greater stress on the multitude of specific virtues than on the unifying generalities that Plato pointed to. Some of the Roman Stoics and Neoplatonists were among the first to bring these insights together, organizing all of moral life around the cardinal virtues and stressing their importance for citizenship and statecraft. Latin Church Fathers such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome later recognized the consonance of this tradition with the teachings of Scripture and readily incorporated it into their moral theology. By the Middle Ages, despite ongoing disputes about the relationship between natural and theological virtue, the four cardinal virtues provided a relatively unchallenged framework for moral life in the West. 

The authority of the cardinal virtues, in other words, rests on common acceptance across centuries of reflection—a perennial tradition whose persistence itself calls for explanation. 

What Makes Them “Cardinal” 

That explanation is to be found in human nature. The cardinal virtues have endured because they correspond to the essential elements of good moral action—and this is what makes them exhaustive in a way that other groupings of virtues are not. 

To see why, we must think about what virtue is and what it is for. A virtue, in the classical sense, is a good habit—a stable disposition, acquired through practice, that inclines us to act well with consistency and ease. We need many kinds of habits to live and to live well, but the ones that matter most for character are habits of choice. These habits are the moral virtues: dispositions that shape how we desire and pursue what is good. When we speak of a person of good character, we mean someone who reliably chooses well—someone who sees what ought to be done and does it, not grudgingly or thoughtlessly, but readily and with serious intent. 

What, then, does it take to choose well? The question is worth dwelling on here, because the answer reveals the underlying structure of the cardinal virtues. 

A good person is one whose actions consistently accord with right reason. That is, a person is good when what he does is shaped by a sound understanding of what is genuinely good for himself and for others. Now, there are really only four general ways in which our actions can be brought into line with right reason, and each one of these corresponds to one of the cardinal virtues. 

The first is the most fundamental: reason itself must be set right with respect to moral matters. If we are confused or mistaken about what is good—if our practical judgment is poor—then even the best intentions will not prevent us from going astray. The virtue that perfects reason in its practical role, enabling us to see clearly what ought to be done in the particular circumstances we face, is prudence. This virtue is often called the "mother of the virtues" because without it, we may do good things by luck or obedience, but we cannot choose them through our own understanding—prudence, in other words, is what gives full life and existence to the other virtues. A child who obeys a wise parent acts well, but the rational excellence is in the parent's judgment, not yet in the child's. Prudence, then, is what enables us to direct our own lives toward what is truly good. 

The second way our actions are brought into accord with reason is by actually establishing what is right in external human works and affairs. It is one thing to know what ought to be done; it is another to carry it through, to put right order into our relations with others. This is the work of justice—the settled habit of giving to each person what is due, and thereby truly acting for the good of others, beyond the aims of natural self-interest alone.  

If we were purely rational beings—if reason and will were the only powers motivating us to action—then prudence and justice would suffice for our goodness. But we are not only rational minds; we are also embodied animals who are moved by passions and desires such as fear, anger, sorrow, and delight. These passions are good in themselves—we need them to live—but they do not always follow reason's lead. They can pull us off course in two broad ways, and each one of these calls for its own virtue to provide the necessary corrective. 

First, our desires can draw us toward pleasures and satisfactions that conflict with what reason knows to be good, either because we desire things we should not or because we desire things in the wrong way, at the wrong time, or to the wrong extent. The virtue that brings our desires under the governance of reason is moderation. It is worth stressing that moderation does not mean the mere suppression of desire; true moderation is a state in which reason permeates desire itself, so that we actually come to want what is genuinely good and to enjoy it rightly. In other words, desires that have been properly moderated by reason will themselves tend toward what is reasonable.  

Second, our fears and aversions can cause us to shrink from goods that are difficult or dangerous to pursue, even when we know we ought to pursue them. The virtue that strengthens us to hold firm when our pursuit of goodness meets with serious resistance is courage. Like moderation, courage is not simply the brute suppression of a passion; it is the formation of what may be called the “spirited” passions—fear, daring, anger, and the like—so that they support reason in striving for justice and in fleeing what is unjust. 

These virtues, then, describe the four general habits that are always required for acting well: reason must be sound in its practical judgment about what ought to be done (prudence); the will must be disposed to carry out what reason directs in the external realm of human action and operation (justice); our interior desires must not pull us away from what is truly good (moderation); and our internal fears must not hold us back from it (courage). Together, these virtues perfect all of the motivating sources of moral action that are given in our nature. The person who possesses these four habits thus has a certain completeness in goodness—a wholeness with respect to everything that is needed for right choice. Hence, these virtues are called “cardinal,” since they are the very “hinges,” so to speak, on which all other virtues turn. 

Why We Need More Than Four 

If the cardinal virtues are so comprehensive, one might reasonably ask why Core Virtues identifies additional ones—generosity, perseverance, humility, patience, and so on. 

The reason is that the very comprehensiveness of the cardinal virtues comes at the cost of specificity, and specificity matters a great deal for the practical work of becoming good. Habits form through repeated action in particular areas of life, and they tend to develop piecemeal. Consider courage: a person may be remarkably bold when faced with sudden physical danger and yet have real difficulty persevering through a long, wearying trial in which no dramatic act of bravery is called for. Both boldness and perseverance fall under courage, but they are genuinely different dispositions, shaped by different kinds of choices and experiences.  

The same is true across all four cardinal virtues. A person may govern the desire for food and drink quite well but have real difficulty moderating the desire for praise and recognition—which is why we distinguish moderation from humility. Someone may be scrupulously honest in speech but slow to fulfill the broader obligations of responsibility—which is why both are grouped under justice, but as distinct virtues with distinct demands.  

The tradition of grouping more specific virtues around the cardinal ones reflects these practical realities, and it gives educators and parents realistic targets for cultivating moral character in children. It is often easier to help a child see what perseverance looks like than to tell her to aim for heroic courage, which may not be immediately available to her, given her age and her circumstances. But because these specific virtues are understood in relation to the more general cardinal virtues, we need not lose sight of the larger picture. We can always understand how each particular effort at moral growth contributes to the wholeness of a good character. 

A Framework for Moral Education 

The cardinal virtues, then, give us a coherent account of what is required for good moral action—of the distinct roles played by reason, will, and the passions—and they provide a structure within which more specific virtues can be understood and taught. In times such as our own, when the language of virtue has grown thin, this kind of philosophical structure is especially valuable. It helps us to think clearly about what makes a human being good, about how particular areas of our moral lives relate to one another, and about what the long work of moral growth actually requires. Core Virtues is built on this tradition because we believe it remains the most illuminating framework available for the intentional formation of good character.