What is a virtue and what is a sin? Is it possible to say that our actions are evil or good? Every age and culture have their own answers to these timeless questions. For example, in the Western Protestant tradition, the human body and its desire have been considered to be inherently evil, but that is not a position taken for granted in other cultures. Virtue and sin seem to represent a duality that is as old as humankind.



This anthology explores how perceptions of virtues and sins have changed through history. The essays take ancient Greece and Rome as their starting point, move to the early Christian period from St Augustine to Dante, and then on to more recent philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The writers, Swedish as well as international researchers, also touch on everything from Confucian China and ancient India to self-help books, transhumanism and AI as well as the existence or non-existence of human rights.