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Recognizing Vices Disguised As Moral Goodness

Recognizing Vices Disguised As Moral Goodness

Last updated on: July 2, 2026 at 1:21 am by Henry Karlson

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Recognizing Vices Disguised As Moral Goodness 2026-07-02T01:21:09-05:00 Henry Karlson

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The seven deadly sins represent seven major vices we should resist and overcome. Painting: Hieronymus Bosch or follower, Detail of the Seven Deadly Sins / Wikimedia Commons

Vices, because they take on, abuse, or exaggerate some particular good, often are presented by those who embrace them as virtues. Sometimes, it is obvious that those who are making such claims are sophists; this is why only a few take Ayn Rand and her promotion of selfishness as being a virtue seriously. However, she is able to do this, and have some people believe her, because all vices contain some disordered good in them, a good which those who embrace the vices are able to point to and use to suggest the vice is really a virtue. The problem with vices is not that they cannot have good elements mixed in their execution, it is because they always have us seek after and embrace an insufficient or deficient good. Virtues, by their nature, are holistic, complementing with, and are interdependent with, every other virtue. Vices disconnect various elements of the good from each other, just as falsehood disconnects the elements of the truth from the greater truth. St. Albert the Great, in his exploration of the virtues, therefore began his text by warning his readers against taking vices as goods because of the way such vices try to imitate, and employ, some element of the good:

There are certain vices which frequently assume the appearance of the virtues. And thus, though they are actually vices, they are wrongly believed to be virtues. For example, severity can seem like justice. Cynicism can seem like maturity. Loquaciousness is sometimes believed to be affability. A dissolute person can seem to be filled with a spirit of joy.[1]

Pure evil does not exist. This is why, when engaging moral reflections, we can always find some good intention behind every act that is ever done. Once again, the problem with vices, the problem with sins, is that the good willed by them is a very limited, disconnected good; it seeks to exaggerate the importance of the good which is engaged beyond every other good, and with it, the proper, holistic good. Those who embrace vices thus have a means to justify what they do by pointing to the good which they see is obtained by what they do. Likewise, they say they work hard to obtain what they want, so that no one should deny their just reward, such as the accumulation of great amounts of money, fame, or power. While there is some element of truth to their argument, because, again, there is some good behind their desires, in reality, it is sophistry which ignore the expectations of justice. They might work hard, but we must question their objective; it is bad, no amount of work would justify them getting what they want. This is why few would accept thieves getting what they want, no matter how much work and effort the thief uses to steal from others. No one believes they should be able to keep what they stole. And yet, sadly, we see sophists would have us forget this when they justify the way the rich exploit the poor. The poor find their very needs, what is theirs by right, is unjustly taken by the rich; this is why many saints suggest many, if not most, of the rich are are thieves taking from the poor. The rich, just because they are rich, should not be seen as paragons of virtue, even if they work hard; we need to understand the kind of work they do. When it is is exploitative, undermining the universal destination of goods, their riches only highlight their vice.

We are constantly warned against having an unbalanced spirituality, one which seeks to hide our vices from ourselves, such as often happens by those who engage performative piety. They think their external performance is enough to render them virtuous. Many good spiritual practices, engaged piously, can help us, but when engaged with the wrong spirit, when they are unbalanced, and especially when they become performative, they no longer are tools for our virtuous development; rather, they can be tools which reinforce our vices. St. Gregory the Great understood how fasting, and with it, abstinence could be a good tool for spiritual reform, but he pointed out, when the tool became the goal, a goal which allows us to overlook the vices which rule over us and our mind, such abstinence is not truly virtuous:

In vain, then, is the body worn by abstinence, if the mind, abandoned to disorderly emotions, is dissipated by vices. And again, they are to be admonished that, while they keep up their abstinence without abatement, they suppose not this to be of eminent virtue before the hidden judge; lest, if it be perchance supposed to be of great merit, the heart be lifted up to haughtiness. For hence it is said through the prophet, Is it such a fast that I have chosen? But break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the wanderers into your house.[2]

Virtues go together; they complement each other. We need to embrace them all in a holistic fashion. Vices, on the other hand, will break apart the virtues, trying to divide the holistic good into parts, parts which no longer have any connection with each other:

For example, we speak of the interdependence of the virtues, but not of the interdependence of the vices. It is impossible for the vices to be interdependent on each other, for they are excesses and deficiencies. And excesses and deficiencies are opposites. So all who perfectly assume virtue are one and become one by the work of God.[3]

Saint Augustine commented upon the way vices harm us by undermining our holistic good; each vice hinders and hurts us in different ways while giving us some element of the good to have us focus on, a good which then covers or hides from us the harm which we are causing ourselves (and others). When seeking to be virtuous, we must do so by pursuing and promoting the greater good, a good which includes our holistic embrace of all the virtues, for only by taking them and working on them together can we truly be made whole:

Vice and death do no damage to anything except by depriving it of soundness, and vice would not be vice if it did no damage. If vice is the opposite of wholeness no doubt wholeness is good. All things are good which have vice opposed to them, and vice vitiates them. Things which are vitiated are therefore good, but are vitiated because they are not supremely good. Because they are good they are of God. Because they are not supremely good they are not God. The good which cannot be vitiated is God. All other things are of him. They can of themselves by vitiated because by themselves they are nothing. God keeps them from wholly being vitiated, or, if vitiated, makes them whole.[4]

It is important for us to keep in mind that that the source and foundation of every good, of every virtue, is God. Just as God is one, so the virtues come together and are one. This is one of the reasons why we can know they are meant to be interdependent and complement each other. Vice, like all sin, tries to undermine such unity, destroying the fullness of the good by breaking it apart into parts which no longer are connected with each other. Then it can take those parts, and further deconstruct them, breaking them apart more and more, into smaller and smaller parts, until it is able to destroy those goods and annihilate them. We must not let ourselves be tricked by the vices, by the way they present themselves as good. We do that by focusing on the greater good, and with it, the common good. In this way, we will be better equipped to resist temptation, for temptation will always promote some particular, lesser good to us, suggesting because it is good, it is something which we can and should do, despite how doing so requires us to sacrifice some other good or virtue.

[1] St. Albert the Great, The Paradise of the Soul. Trans. Robert Nixon OSB (Gastonia, NC: Tan Books, 2023), 1.

[2] St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule. Trans. James Barmby, DD in NPNF2(12): 44.

[3] Didymus the Blind, Lectures on the Psalms. Trans. Jonathan Douglas Hicks (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024), 191

[4] St. Augustine, “Of True Religion,” in Augustine: Earlier Writings. trans. John H.S. Burleigh (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953),242.

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