XI JINPING ON VIRTUE
According to a Dec. 10, 2016 account in Xinhua, Chinese President Xi Jinping noted that “law is virtue put down in words, and virtue is law borne in people’s hearts,” and that both combined are essential to the proper governing of society and states.
Xi emphasized the “nourishing effect” of virtue and the importance of education in fostering virtue in order to “guide people to voluntarily assume their statutory duties, as well as responsibilities for society and family.” He stated that the rule of law should embody moral ideals and provide reliable institutional support for virtue such that “laws and regulations should promote the virtuous.” (Xi Jinping, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-12/10/c_135895641.htm)
LEIBNIZ ON VIRTUE
“VIRTUE is the habit of acting in accordance with wisdom, because it is necessary that practice accompany knowledge, in order that the exercise of good actions become easy, natural, and turn to habits, such that habits become a second nature.” (G. W. Leibniz, Textes inédits.)
“Thus, the sovereign wisdom has so well regulated all things that our duty must also be our happiness, that all virtue produces its own reward, and that all crime punishes itself, sooner or later … [This] is proper in order that there be re exercise of free virtue, of wisdom and of a non-mercenary love of God…
“Justice is goodness conformed to wisdom … Justice is nothing else than the charity of the wise, that is to say, goodness toward others which is conformed to wisdom. And wisdom, in my sense, is nothing else than the science of felicity.”
“The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.”
“Happiness is the point which centers all those duties which individuals and nations owe to themselves; and this is the great purpose of the law of nature. The desire of happiness is the powerful spring that puts man in motion: felicity is the end they all have in view, and it ought to be the grand object of the public will …To succeed in this, it is necessary to instruct the people to seek felicity where it is to be found; that is, in their own perfection…” (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘On Natural Law,’ c.1690.)
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