freedom and cooperation

Families need norms for organizing the lives of its members. Good family norms promote good values such us collaboration or protection. It is the same in any other social organization: schools, offices and factories, neighborhoods and cities, nations and supra-national organizations. All of them need norms, rules and laws to help people live together. These rules have to find an equilibrium between two important values:

• • Individual freedom. Each one of us wants to act without any restriction. We all want maximum freedom to develop our personal projects, to follow our impulses and to get what we want.

  • Social cooperation. Each society needs that all its members work together towards the common good. Sometimes, our personal projects, impulses and desires are in harmony with the common good. Other times we have to obey norms that ask us to control our impulses and redirect them towards the happiness of the group. Just norms promote important social values such as:

    • Equality

    • Justice

    • Solidarity

    • Happiness

    • Rationality

    • Honesty (sincerity)

    • Public health

    • Public education

    • Preserving the natural environment

    • Etc.

Virtues for living together

For humans, living together is much more preferable than living alone. However, living together requires to obey social norms, rules and laws. Sometimes obedience is hard: we have to leave aside our impulses and desires and instead we must obey social norms. However, social norms are there for a reason: they help us living together.

The first time a child shares its cake instead of eating it all by itself is the hardest time. But if the child practices sharing with others, it will become less and less difficult. If a person decides to share with others, maybe small things first and more important ones later, he or she will become a generous person. This lead us to the concept of virtue.

Aristotle, the ancient philosopher that lived in the fourth century before the Common Era, said two important things about virtues:

• 1. Virtues are habits. If you want to become a virtuous person, you should start doing small virtuous actions. Later on, as virtue grows stronger in you, you should attempt more important actions. In the end, you will practice virtue effortlessly.

  2. Each virtue has not one, but two opposing vices. For example, tolerance (a virtue) is not just the opposite of intolerance (a vice) but also the opposite of being excessively tolerant (which is another vice).

Another classical example (given by Aristotle himself) of virtue as an intermediate state between to extremes equally harmful is courage: a courageous person is not a coward nor a person without any fear: