Vice facts for kids
A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhealthy habit. Vices are usually associated with a fault in a person's character or temperament rather than their morality.
Synonyms for vice include fault, sin, depravity, iniquity, wickedness, and corruption. The antonym of vice is virtue.
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Etymology
The modern English term that best captures its original meaning is the word vicious, which means "full of vice". In this sense, the word vice comes from the Latin word vitium, meaning "failing or defect".
Law enforcement
Depending on the country or jurisdiction, vice crimes may or may not be treated as a separate category in the criminal codes. Even in jurisdictions where vice is not explicitly delineated in the legal code, the term vice is often used in law enforcement and judicial systems as an umbrella for crimes involving activities that are considered inherently immoral, regardless of the legality or objective harm involved.
Vice squad
A vice squad, also called a vice unit or a morality squad, is generally, though not always, a police division, whose focus is to restrain or suppress moral crimes. Though what is considered or accepted as a moral crime by society often varies considerably according to local laws or customs between nations, countries, or states, it often includes activities such as gambling and illegal sales of alcoholic beverages. Vice squads do not concentrate on more serious crimes like fraud and murder.
Religion
Religious police, for example Islamic religious police units or sharia police in certain parts of the Arab-speaking world, are morality squads that also monitor, for example, dress codes, observance of store-closures during prayer time, consumption of unlawful beverages or foods, unrelated males and females socializing, and homosexual behavior.
Buddhism
In the Sarvastivadin tradition of Buddhism, there are 108 defilements, or vices, which are prohibited. These are subdivided into 10 bonds and 98 proclivities. The 10 bonds are the following:
- Absence of shame
- Absence of embarrassment
- Jealousy
- Parsimony (in the sense of stinginess)
- Remorse
- Drowsiness
- Distraction
- Torpor
- Anger
- Concealment of wrongdoing
Judaism
Avoiding vice is an important theme in Jewish ethics, especially within musar literature.
Christianity
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Christians believe there are two kinds of vice:
- Vices that come from the physical organism as instincts, which can become perverse
- Vices that come from false idolatry in the spiritual realm
The first kind of vice, though sinful, is believed less serious than the second. Vices recognized as spiritual by Christians include blasphemy (holiness betrayed), apostasy (faith betrayed), despair (hope betrayed), hatred (love betrayed), and indifference (scripturally, a "hardened heart"). Christian theologians have reasoned that the most destructive vice equates to a certain type of pride or the complete idolatry of the self. It is argued that through this vice, which is essentially competitive, all the worst evils come into being. In Christian theology, it originally led to the Fall of Man, and, as a purely diabolical spiritual vice, it outweighs anything else often condemned by the Church.
Roman Catholicism
The Roman Catholic Church distinguishes between vice, which is a habit of sin, and the sin itself, which is an individual morally wrong act. In Roman Catholicism, the word "sin" also refers to the state that befalls one upon committing a morally wrong act. In this section, the word always means the sinful act. It is the sin, and not the vice, that deprives one of God's sanctifying grace and renders one deserving of God's punishment. Thomas Aquinas taught that "absolutely speaking, the sin surpasses the vice in wickedness". On the other hand, even after a person's sins have been forgiven, the underlying habit (the vice) may remain. Just as vice was created in the first place by repeatedly yielding to the temptation to sin, so vice may be removed only by repeatedly resisting temptation and performing virtuous acts; the more entrenched the vice, the more time and effort needed to remove it. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that following rehabilitation and the acquisition of virtues, the vice does not persist as a habit, but rather as a mere disposition, and one that is in the process of being eliminated. Medieval illuminated manuscripts circulated with colorful schemas for developing proper attitudes, with scriptural allusions modelled on nature: the tree of virtues as blossoming flowers or vices bearing sterile fruit, The Renaissance writer Pietro Bembo is credited with reaffirming and promoting the Christian perfection of classical humanism. Deriving all from love (or the lack thereof) his schemas were added as supplements in the newly invented technology of printing by Aldus Manutius in his editions of Dante's Divine Comedy dating from early in the 16th century.
Dante's seven deadly vices
The poet Dante Alighieri listed the following seven deadly vices:
- Pride or vanity: an excessive love of the self. In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride is referred to as superbia.
- Envy or jealousy: resentment of others for their possessions. In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, envy is referred to as invidia.
- Wrath or anger: feelings of hatred, revenge or denial, as well as punitive desires outside of justice. In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, wrath is referred to as ira.
- Sloth or laziness: idleness and wastefulness of time or other allotted resources. Laziness is condemned because it results in others having to work harder; also, useful work will not be done. Sloth is referred to in Latin as accidie or acedia, which vice tempts a self-aware soul to be too easily satisfied, thwarting charity's purpose as insufficiently perceptible within the soul itself or abjectly indifferent in relationship with the needs of others and their satisfaction, an escalation in evil, more odious than the passion of hate
- Avarice (covetousness, greed): a desire to possess more than one has need or use for (or according to Dante, "excessive love of money and power"). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, avarice is referred to as avaritia.
- Gluttony: overindulgence in food, drink or intoxicants, or misplaced desire of food as a pleasure for its sensuality ("excessive love of pleasure" was Dante's rendering). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, gluttony is referred to as gula.
- Lust. In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, lust is referred to as luxuria.
Islam
The Qur'an and many other Islamic religious writings provide prohibitions against acts that are seen as immoral.
Ibn abi Dunya, a 9th-century scholar and tutor to the caliphs, described seven censures (prohibitions against vices) in his writings:
Epicureanism
Although not strictly a religion but a Hellenistic philosophy, Epicurean ethics prescribes a therapeutic approach to the vices with the goal of attaining a life of pleasure with the aid of the virtues. Most of the techniques used in Epicureanism involve challenging false beliefs and attaining beliefs that are aligned with nature. In this, Epicureanism posits an entirely naturalistic, non-religious theory of virtue and vice based on the rational pursuit of pleasure.
See also
