Vice

A vice is a serious moral flaw in a person’s character. Thus, vices are not trivial personal failings, minor personality defects, or occasional lapses in behavior, but they are enduring traits that repeatedly cause people to act in morally deplorable ways. Examples of vice include intemperance, ungratefulness, dishonesty, cowardice, disloyalty, greed, unfairness, and malice.

Yet if vices are serious flaws, and so, one would think, to be avoided if at all possible, why does vice seem so common? One possibility is that vice is a part of human nature. We are, regrettably, morally flawed beings, and though we may resist, in the end vice is an inevitable part of human behavior. It is just a part of who we are.

Although this possibility has the apparent advantage ...