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Can virtue be genetically engineered?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Larry Arnhart
Larry Arnhart*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115 larnhart@niu.edu
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Extract

We are not born virtuous or vicious. But we are born with innate temperaments and capacities that influence our acquisition of virtue by learning and judgment. As Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, “virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; but by our nature we can receive them and perfect them by habituation.”

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Type
Forum: Genetic virtue, reconsidered
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 2010, pp. 79 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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References

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