Virtues

Virtues are defined at Wikipedia as moral excellence. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus good by definition.

Wikipedia currently claims that:

Virtues can be placed into a broader context of values. Each individual has a core of underlying values that contribute to our system of beliefs, ideas and/or opinions (see value in semiotics). Integrity in the application of a value ensures its continuity and this continuity separates a value from beliefs, opinion and ideas. In this context a value (e.g., Truth or Equality or Greed) is the core from which we operate or react. Societies have values that are shared among many of the participants in that culture. An individual’s values typically are largely, but not entirely, in agreement with their culture’s values.

Individual virtues can be grouped into one of four categories of values:

• Ethics (virtue – vice, good – bad, moral – immoral – amoral, right – wrong, permissible – impermissible)
• Aesthetics (beautiful, ugly, unbalanced, pleasing)
• Doctrinal (political, ideological, religious or social beliefs and values)
• Innate/Inborn (inborn values such as reproduction and survival)

It from this initial understanding that we are exploring how virtues in advertising may shape and hopefully are able to promote our collective societal values.

At this page we are examining both virtues and values as they relate to advertising. As a point of departure we have started with a lsit of 52 Values  indentified by the Foundation for a Better Life.