Can Virtue Be Taught?

Can virtue be taught? What I mean is: are virtues objective, real objects of knowledge that we can both know and teach like mathematics or biology? If we say no, then ethics may be seen to belong only to an esoteric knowledge known only by revelation, group consensus, convenience, or other like arrangements.

Some people certainly think this way. But if we admit that virtue and ethics are not concrete, real bodies of knowledge that we can know and teach, then why try? Why care about moral formation, right and wrong?

The question is an old one. For example, Plato (c. 427–348 BC) in both his Meno and Protagoras asks whether we can know virtue. As he explores the question, Plato realizes that no one has really learned or mastered virtue in this life. As Plato thinks about virtue then, he does not immediately think virtue can be taught unless God teaches a person directly (Meno 99e–100a).

Plato may have been right when he said virtue is a divine gift (Meno 99e, 100b). But that gift does not come from the “gods” but from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who created heaven and earth, and whose Son Jesus Christ came into the world to save us and bestow upon us the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Read more on this here: https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/col...