Civic Virtue

Abstract

Civic virtue has been one of the most recurrent concepts in the history of moral and political philosophy. The present ‘voice entry’ has a triple goal: first of all, it presents a brief sketch of its uses, with special attention to the changes that took place in the beginnings of modernity; secondly, it addresses analytically a comprehension of the two constitutive elements of the concept (the independent notions of “virtue” and “civic”); last of all, we intend to explore where does civic virtue come from for the liberals as well as the republican thinkers, the latter focusing on the importance of material Independence of individuals.