Design
Is Civic Virtue Universal?
Not all cultures agree on what it means to be generous.
Aristotle thought that a virtuous person was a happy person. People "seem to pursue honor in order that they may be assured of their goodness," he wrote in Nichomachean Ethics. But a relationship between virtue and happiness presupposes that everyone defines virtue the same way — and recently behavioral scientists have found that's not the case.
On the contrary, the value of civic virtue seems to vary around the world.