Virtues and Vices

"Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice. ""Lyman Abbott"Virtues and vices are going to make up the core of your being, your sense of self. They may stem from your background or personality, or actively oppose them creating all sorts of cool fun inner conflicts. Either way they're important, and should be regarded in all major decisions.

You may choose only one of each at character creation... that's all you get.

If you accurately portray your chosen virtue or vice during a difficult or pivotal scene, you regain 1 willpower point. When your actions throughout a chapter clearly reflect them, you regain all of your lost willpower points.

Virtues
Your virtue will be your greatest strength, and the basis for your moral code.

Charity
Charity is the act of providing aid to the less fortunate. This could come in the form of money, possessions, vital resources, dedicated time and energy, etc. Charitable people are compassionate, they cannot see a person in need without feeling compelled to do what they can to help. They believe in doing good deeds to cultivate good will among everyone around them and treat others the way they would be treated.

With this virtue, your character will regain willpower when helping another person at considerable risk of loss or harm. This must be a legitimate sacrifice, something that you would suffer without.

Compassion, mercy

Possessed by philanthropists, saints, soup-kitchen workers

Faith
Faith, derived from Latin fides and Old French feid, is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In the context of religion, one can define faith as confidence or trust in a particular system of religious belief. Religious people often think of faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant, while others who are more skeptical of religion tend to think of faith as simply belief without evidence.

The English word faith is thought to date from 1200–1250, from the Middle English feith, via Anglo-French fed, Old French feid, feit from Latin fidem, accusative of fidēs (trust), akin to fīdere (to trust).

Stages of faith

Intuitive-Projective: a stage of confusion and of high impressionability through stories and rituals (pre-school period).

Mythic-Literal: a stage where provided information is accepted in order to conform with social norms (school-going period).

Synthetic-Conventional: in this stage the faith acquired is concreted in the belief system with the forgoing of personification and replacement with authority in individuals or groups that represent one's beliefs (early-late adolescence).

Individuative-Reflective: in this stage the individual critically analyzes adopted and accepted faith with existing systems of faith. Disillusion or strengthening of faith happens in this stage. Based on needs, experiences and paradoxes (early adulthood).

Conjunctive faith: in this stage people realize the limits of logic and, facing the paradoxes or transcendence of life, accept the "mystery of life" and often return to the sacred stories and symbols of the pre-acquired or re-adopted faith system. This stage is called negotiated settling in life (mid-life).

Universalizing faith: this is the "enlightenment" stage where the individual comes out of all the existing systems of faith and lives life with universal principles of compassion and love and in service to others for upliftment, without worries and doubt (middle-late adulthood (45–65 years old and plus).

No hard-and-fast rule requires individuals pursuing faith to go through all six stages. There is a high probability for individuals to be content and fixed in a particular stage for a lifetime; stages from 2-5 are such stages. Stage 6 is the summit of faith development. This state is often considered as "not fully" attainable.

Fortitude
Courage (also called bravery or valour) is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship, death or threat of death, while moral courage is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, discouragement, or personal loss.

The classical virtue of fortitude (andreia, fortitudo) is also translated "courage", but includes the aspects of perseverance and patience.

In the Western tradition, notable thoughts on courage have come from philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard; as well as Judeo-Christian beliefs and texts.

In the Hindu tradition, mythology has given many examples of bravery, valour and courage. Ramayana and Mahabharatha have in them many examples of both physical and moral courage.

In the Eastern tradition, some thoughts on courage were offered by the Tao Te Ching. More recently, courage has been explored by the discipline of psychology.

Characteristics of Courage

Daniel Putman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin - Fox Valley, wrote an article titled "The Emotions of Courage". Using a text from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as the basis for his article, he discusses the relationship between fear and confidence in the emotion of courage.

"First, in feelings of fear and confidence the mean is bravery (andreia).The excessively fearless person is nameless...while the one who is excessively confident is rash; the one who is excessively afraid and deficient in confidence is cowardly." — Aristotle

He states that "courage involves deliberate choice in the face of painful or fearful circumstances for the sake of a worthy goal". With this realization, Putman concludes that "there is a close connection between fear and confidence".

Fear & Confidence in Relation to Courage

Fear and confidence in relation to courage can determine the success of a courageous act or goal.[6]They can be seen as the independent variables in courage, and their relationship can affect how we respond to fear. [7] In addition, the confidence that is being discussed here is self-confidence; Confidence in knowing one's skills and abilities and being able determine when to fight a fear or when to flight it. Putman states that:

"The ideal in courage is not just a rigid control of fear, nor is it a denial of the emotion. The ideal is to judge a situation, accept the emotion as part of human nature and, we hope, use well-developed habits to confront the fear and allow reason to guide our behavior toward a worthwhile goal."

When trying to understand how fear and confidence play into courage, we need to look back at Aristotle's quote. According to Putman, Aristotle is referring to an appropriate level of fear and confidence in courage.[8] "Fear, although it might vary from person to person, is not completely relative and is only appropriate if it "matches the danger of the situation"."[8]The same goes for confidence in that there are two aspects to self-confidence in a dangerous situation.

"a realistic confidence in the worth of a cause that motivates positive action."

"knowing our own skills and abilities. A second meaning of appropriate confidence then is a form of self-knowledge."[8]

Without an appropriate balance between fear and confidence when facing a threat, one cannot have the courage to overcome it. Putman states "if the two emotions are distinct, then excesses or deficiencies in either fear or confidence can distort courage."

Daniel Putman identifies fear and courage as being deeply intertwined and that they rely on distinct perceptions:
 * "the danger of the situation"
 * "the worthiness of the cause"
 * "and the perception of one's ability."

Hope
Hope (lat. spes) is one of the three theological virtues in Christian tradition. Hope being a combination of the desire for something and expectation of receiving it, the virtue is hoping for Divine union and so eternal happiness. While faith is a function of the intellect, hope is an act of the will.

Aquinas defines hope as ""...a future good, difficult but possible to attain...by means of the Divine Assistance...on Whose help it leans". Hope is, by its very nature, always concerned with something in the future. Like the theological virtues of faith and charity, hope finds its "origin, motive, and object" in God. In Hebrews 10:23, St. Paul says, "Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope, for he who made the promise is trustworthy." Like the other theological virtues, hope is an infused virtue. It is not, like good habits in general, the outcome of repeated acts or the product of our own industry. Hope is bestowed by God at baptism.

In the Christian tradition, hope in Christ and faith in Christ are closely linked, with hope having a connotation that means the one with hope has a firm assurance, through the witness of the Holy Spirit, that Christ has promised a better world to those who are His. The Christian sees death not just as the end of a passing life, but as the gateway to a future life without end and in all fullness. Pope Benedict XVI states: "Whoever believes in Christ has a future. For God has no desire for what is withered, dead, ersatz, and finally discarded: he wants what is fruitful and alive, he wants life in its fullness and he gives us life in its fullness"

Hope can thus sustain one through trials of faith, human tragedies or difficulties that may otherwise seem overwhelming. Hope is seen as "an anchor of the soul" as referenced in the Epistle to the Hebrews of the New Testament. Hebrews 7:19 also describes the "better hope" of the New Covenant in Christ rather than the Old Covenant of the Jewish law.

Hope is opposed to the sins of despair and presumption; refraining from them is adhering to the negative precept of hope. The positive precept is required when exercising some duties, as in prayer or penance.

Some forms of Quietism have denied that a human being should desire anything whatsoever to such an extent that they denied that hope was a virtue. Quietism was condemned as heresy by Pope Innocent XI in 1687 in the papal bull Coelestis Pastor.

Justice
Justice is one of the four cardinal virtues in classical European philosophy and Roman Catholicism. It is the moderation or mean between selfishness and selflessness – between having more and having less than one's fair share.

Justice is closely related, in Christianity, to the practice of Charity (virtue) because it regulates the relationships with others. It is a cardinal virtue, which is to say that it is "pivotal", because it regulates all such relationships, and is sometimes deemed the most important of the cardinal virtues.

According to Aristotle, "Justice consists in a certain equality by which the just and definite claim of another, neither more nor less, is satisfied."

This is equal insofar as each one receives what he is entitled to, but may be unequal insofar as different people may have different rights: two children have different rights from a certain adult if that adult is the parent of one of them and not of the other. Aristotle developed the idea of equity to cover irregular cases so that "the ordinance is framed to fit the circumstances".

Macrobius saw Justice as existing on four different planes or levels, rising from the everyday political virtue at the lowest to the Archetypal Form of Justice at the highest.

Christianity

The just man, often mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of his conduct toward his neighbor. In Colossians 4:1 St. Paul counsels "Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, realizing that you too have a Master in heaven."

In Christian moral theology, Justice is a quality or habit which perfects the will and inclines it to render to each and to all what belongs to them. The object of the virtue of justice is the other person's rights, whether natural or bestowed by Church or State. Justice requires that all persons should be left in the free enjoyment of all their rights. The rights which belong to every human being inasmuch as he is a person are absolute and inalienable.

In Aristotle's wake, Thomas Aquinas developed a theory of proportional reciprocity, whereby the just man renders to each and all what is due to them in due proportion: what it is their moral and legal rights to do, possess, or exact. Justice toward God is called the "virtue of religion".

Modern developments

With the late modern rise in interest in virtue ethics, a new interest in articulating the virtue of justice has emerged. John Rawls saw justice as the typical virtue of the institution; Irene van Staveren saw it as that of the state, marked by such indicators as votes, legitimacy, public fairness and distributive rules.

Psychology

Moral justice has been linked to the sixth and highest of Kohlberg's stages of moral development.

Freudians consider that in the unconscious the image of the Father embodies a stern but fair justice; Jungians similarly see the archetype of the King as representing the right ordering of society.

Prudence
Prudence (Latin: prudentia, contracted from providentia meaning "seeing ahead, sagacity") is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. It is classically considered to be a virtue, and in particular one of the four Cardinal virtues (which are, with the three theological virtues, part of the seven virtues). Prudentia is an allegorical female personification of the virtue, whose attributes are a mirror and snake, who is frequently depicted as a pair with Justitia, the Roman goddess of Justice.

The word derives from the 14th-century Old French word prudence, which, in turn, derives from the Latin prudentia meaning "foresight, sagacity". It is often associated with wisdom, insight, and knowledge. In this case, the virtue is the ability to judge between virtuous and vicious actions, not only in a general sense, but with regard to appropriate actions at a given time and place. Although prudence itself does not perform any actions, and is concerned solely with knowledge, all virtues had to be regulated by it. Distinguishing when acts are courageous, as opposed to reckless or cowardly, is an act of prudence, and for this reason it is classified as a cardinal (pivotal) virtue.

In modern English, the word has become increasingly synonymous with cautiousness. In this sense, prudence names a reluctance to take risks, which remains a virtue with respect to unnecessary risks, but, when unreasonably extended into over-cautiousness, can become the vice of cowardice.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives a lengthy account of the virtue phronesis (Ancient Greek: ϕρόνησις), traditionally translated as "prudence", although this has become increasingly problematic as the word has fallen out of common usage. More recently ϕρόνησις has been translated by such terms as "practical wisdom", "practical judgment" or "rational choice".

Prudence was considered by the ancient Greeks and later on by Christian philosophers, most notably Thomas Aquinas, as the cause, measure and form of all virtues. It is considered to be the auriga virtutum or the charioteer of the virtues.

It is the cause in the sense that the virtues, which are defined to be the "perfected ability" of man as a spiritual person (spiritual personhood in the classical western understanding means having intelligence and free will), achieve their "perfection" only when they are founded upon prudence, that is to say upon the perfected ability to make right decisions. For instance, a person can live temperance when he has acquired the habit of deciding correctly the actions to take in response to his instinctual cravings.

The function of a prudence is to point out which course of action is to be taken in any concrete circumstances. It has nothing to do with directly willing the good it discerns. Prudence has a directive capacity with regard to the other virtues. It lights the way and measures the arena for their exercise. Without prudence, bravery becomes foolhardiness; mercy sinks into weakness, free self-expression and kindness into censure, humility into degradation and arrogance, selflessness into corruption, and temperance into fanaticism. Culture and disciplined actions should be about the beneficial action. Its office is to determine for each in practice those circumstances of time, place, manner, etc. which should be observed, and which the Scholastics comprise under the term "medium rationis". So it is that while it qualifies the intellect and not the will, it is nevertheless rightly styled a moral virtue.[2]

Prudence is considered the measure of moral virtues since it provides a model of ethically good actions. "The work of art is true and real by its correspondence with the pattern of its prototype in the mind of the artist. In similar fashion, the free activity of man is good by its correspondence with the pattern of prudence." (Josef Pieper) For instance, a stockbroker using his experience and all the data available to him decides that it is beneficial to sell stock A at 2PM tomorrow and buy stock B today. The content of the decision (e.g., the stock, amount, time, and means) is the product of an act of prudence, while the actual carrying out of the decision may involve other virtues like fortitude (doing it in spite of fear of failure) and justice (doing his job well out of justice to his company and his family). The actual act's "goodness" is measured against that original decision made through prudence.

In Greek and Scholastic philosophy, "form" is the specific characteristic of a thing that makes it what it is. With this language, prudence confers upon other virtues the form of its inner essence; that is, its specific character as a virtue. For instance, not all acts of telling the truth are considered good, considered as done with the virtue of honesty. What makes telling the truth a virtue is whether it is done with prudence.

Versus imprudence, cunning and false prudence

In Christian understanding, the difference between prudence and cunning lies in the intent with which the decision of the context of an action is made. The Christian understanding of the world includes the existence of God, the natural law and moral implications of human actions. In this context, prudence is different from cunning in that it takes into account the supernatural good. For instance, the decision of persecuted Christians to be martyred rather than deny their faith is considered prudent.

According to Thomas Aquinas, judgments using reasons for evil ends or using evil means are considered to be made through "cunning" and "false prudence" and not through prudence. However "imprudence" was not be considered a sin since it was not voluntary.

The Ancient Greek term for prudence is synonymous with “forethought". People, the Ancient Greeks believed, must have enough prudence to prepare for worshiping the Olympian gods. Exceptional were the foolish Bacchic cult, who lived an emotional and passionate lifestyle. Believing the antisexual Olympian traditions to be shameful, professors of the Bacchic cult celebrated the irrationality that governed their religion.

Integral parts:

Memoria : accurate memory; that is, memory that is true to reality; an ability to learn from experience;

Docilitas : an open-mindedness that recognizes variety and is able to seek and make use of the experience and authority of others;

Intelligentia : the understanding of first principles;

Sollertia : shrewdness or quick-wittedness, i.e. the ability to evaluate a situation quickly;

Ratio : Discursive reasoning and the ability to research and compare alternatives;

Providentia : foresight – i.e. the capacity to estimate whether particular actions can realize goals;

Circumspection : the ability to take all relevant circumstances into account;

Caution : the ability to mitigate risk.

Temperance
Temperance is defined as moderation or voluntary self-restraint. It is typically described in terms of what an individual voluntarily refrains from doing. This includes restraint from retaliation in the form of non-violence and forgiveness, restraint from arrogance in the form of humility and modesty, restraint from excesses such as splurging now in the form of prudence, and restraint from excessive anger or craving for something in the form of calmness and self-control.

Temperance has been described as a virtue by religious thinkers, philosophers, and more recently, psychologists, particularly in the positive psychology movement. In classical iconography, the virtue is often depicted as a woman holding two vessels transferring water from one to another. It was one of the cardinal virtues in western thought found in Greek philosophy and Christianity, as well as eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

Temperance is one of the six virtues in the positive psychology classification, included with wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, and transcendence. It is generally characterized as the control over excess, and expressed through characteristics such as chastity, modesty, humility, self-regulation, hospitality, decorum, abstinence, forgiveness and mercy; each of these involves restraining an excess of some impulse, such as sexual desire, vanity, or anger.

The term "temperance" can also refer to the abstention from alcohol (teetotalism), especially with reference to the temperance movement.

Envy
Envy (Latin, invidia), like greed and lust, is characterized by an insatiable desire. It can be described as a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of someone else. It arises from vainglory, and severs a man from his neighbor.

Malicious envy is similar to jealousy in that they both feel discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or rewards. A difference is that the envious also desire the entity and covet it. Envy can be directly related to the Ten Commandments, specifically, "Neither shall you covet ... anything that belongs to your neighbour"—a statement that may also be related to greed. Dante defined envy as "a desire to deprive other men of theirs". In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the struggle aroused by envy has three stages: during the first stage, the envious person attempts to lower another's reputation; in the middle stage, the envious person receives either "joy at another's misfortune" (if he succeeds in defaming the other person) or "grief at another's prosperity" (if he fails); the third stage is hatred because "sorrow causes hatred".

Envy is said to be the motivation behind Cain murdering his brother, Abel, as Cain envied Abel because God favored Abel's sacrifice over Cain's.

Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness, bringing sorrow to committers of envy whilst giving them the urge to inflict pain upon others.

In accordance with the most widely accepted views, only pride weighs down the soul more than envy among the capital sins. Just like pride, envy has been associated directly with the devil, for Wisdom 2:24 states: "the envy of the devil brought death to the world".

Gluttony
Gluttony (Latin, gula) is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste. The word derives from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow. In Christianity, it is considered a sin if the excessive desire for food causes it to be withheld from the needy. Because of these scripts, gluttony can be interpreted as selfishness; essentially placing concern with one's own impulses or interests above the well-being or interests of others. During times of famine, war, and similar periods when food is scarce, it is possible for one to indirectly kill other people through starvation just by eating too much or even too soon. Medieval church leaders (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) took a more expansive view of gluttony,[27] arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods.[28] Aquinas went so far as to prepare a list of five ways to commit gluttony, comprising:

Laute – eating too expensively

Studiose – eating too daintily

Nimis – eating too much

Praepropere – eating too soon

Ardenter – eating too eagerly

Of these, ardenter is often considered the most serious, since it is extreme attachment to the pleasure of mere eating, which can make the committer eat impulsively; absolutely and without qualification live merely to eat and drink; lose attachment to health-related, social, intellectual, and spiritual pleasures; and lose proper judgement: an example is Esau selling his birthright for ordinary food of bread and pottage of lentils. His punishment was that of the "profane person ... who, for a morsel of meat sold his birthright". We learn that "he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully, with tears".

Lust
Lust, or lechery, is intense longing. It is usually thought of as intense or unbridled sexual desire, which leads to fornication, adultery, rape, bestiality, un-natural sexual practices and other immoral sexual acts. However, lust could also mean simply desire in general; thus, lust for money, power, and other things are sinful. In accordance with the words of Henry Edward Manning, the impurity of lust transforms one into "a slave of the devil". Lust, if not managed properly, can subvert propriety.

Greed
Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice, cupidity, or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of desire. However, greed (as seen by the Church) is applied to an artificial, rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents are bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated excessively on earthly thoughts. Hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one attempts to purchase or sell sacraments, including Holy Orders and, therefore, positions of authority in the Church hierarchy. As defined outside Christian writings, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth. Like pride, it can lead to not just some, but all evil.

Pride
Pride (Latin, superbia) is considered, on almost every list, the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: the perversion of the faculties that make humans more like God—dignity and holiness. It is also thought to be the source of the other capital sins. Also known as hubris (from ancient Greek ὕβρις), or futility, it is identified as dangerously corrupt selfishness, the putting of one's own desires, urges, wants, and whims before the welfare of other people.

In even more destructive cases, it is irrationally believing that one is essentially and necessarily better, superior, or more important than others, failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and excessive admiration of the personal image or self (especially forgetting one's own lack of divinity, and refusing to acknowledge one's own limits, faults, or wrongs as a human being).

"What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools." — Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, line 203.

As pride has been labelled the father of all sins, it has been deemed the devil's most prominent trait. C.S. Lewis writes, in Mere Christianity, that pride is the "anti-God" state, the position in which the ego and the self are directly opposed to God: "Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."[38] Pride is understood to sever the spirit from God, as well as His life-and-grace-giving Presence.

One can be prideful for different reasons. Author Ichabod Spencer states that "[s]piritual pride is the worst kind of pride, if not worst snare of the devil. The heart is particularly deceitful on this one thing."Jonathan Edwards said "[r]emember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility."

In Ancient Athens, hubris was considered one of the greatest crimes and was used to refer to insolent contempt that can cause one to use violence to shame the victim. This sense of hubris could also characterize rape. Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for the committer's own gratification. The word's connotation changed somewhat over time, with some additional emphasis towards a gross over-estimation of one's abilities.

The term has been used to analyse and make sense of the actions of contemporary heads of government by Ian Kershaw (1998), Peter Beinart (2010) and in a much more physiological manner by David Owen (2012). In this context the term has been used to describe how certain leaders, when put to positions of immense power, seem to become irrationally self-confident in their own abilities, increasingly reluctant to listen to the advice of others and progressively more impulsive in their actions.

Dante's definition of pride was "love of self, perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour".

Pride is associated with more intra-individual negative outcomes and is commonly related to expressions of aggression and hostility (Tangney, 1999). As one might expect, pride is not always associated with high self-esteem but with highly fluctuating or variable self-esteem. Excessive feelings of pride have a tendency to create conflict and sometimes terminating close relationships, which has led it to be understood as one of the few emotions with no clear positive or adaptive functions (Rhodwalt, et al.).

Pride is generally associated with an absence of humility. It may also be associated with a lack of knowledge. John Gay states that "By ignorance is pride increased; They most assume who know the least."

In accordance with the Sirach's author's wording, the heart of a proud man is "like a partridge in its cage acting as a decoy; like a spy he watches for your weaknesses. He changes good things into evil, he lays his traps. Just as a spark sets coals on fire, the wicked man prepares his snares in order to draw blood. Beware of the wicked man for he is planning evil. He might dishonor you forever." In another chapter, he says that "the acquisitive man is not content with what he has, wicked injustice shrivels the heart."

Benjamin Franklin said "In reality there is, perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history. For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility."[48] Joseph Addison states that "There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride."

The proverb "pride goeth (goes) before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (from the biblical Book of Proverbs, 16:18)(or pride goeth before the fall) is thought to sum up the modern use of pride. Pride is also referred to as "pride that blinds," as it often causes a committer of pride to act in foolish ways that belie common sense. In other words, the modern definition may be thought of as, "that pride that goes just before the fall." In his two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler, historian Ian Kershaw uses both 'hubris' and 'nemesis' as titles. The first volume, Hubris, describes Hitler's early life and rise to political power. The second, Nemesis, gives details of Hitler's role in the Second World War, and concludes with his fall and suicide in 1945.

Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents are burdened with stone slabs on their necks to keep their heads bowed.

Sloth
Sloth (Latin, tristitia or acedia ("without care")) refers to a peculiar jumble of notions, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states. It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.

The scope of sloth is wide. Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia has a number of distinctive components of which the most important is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation. Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.

Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one should do. By this definition, evil exists when "good" people fail to act.

Unlike the other capital sins, which are sins of committing immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. For Chaucer, human's sin consists of languishing and holding back, refusing to undertake works of goodness because, he/she tells him/her self, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too grievous and too difficult to suffer. Acedia in Chaucer's view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work.

Sloth not only subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no care for its day-to-day provisions, but also slows down the mind, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of human's undoing.

Wrath
Wrath (Latin, ira) can be defined as uncontrolled feelings of anger, rage, and even hatred. Wrath often reveals itself in the wish to seek vengeance. In its purest form, wrath presents with injury, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of wrath can manifest in different ways, including impatience, hateful misanthropy, revenge, and self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse or suicide.

The neutral act of anger becomes the sin of wrath when it is directed against an innocent person, when it is unduly strong or long-lasting, or when it desires excessive punishment. "If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin." Hatred is the sin of desiring that someone else may suffer misfortune or evil, and is a mortal sin when one desires grave harm.

People feel angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended, when they are certain about the nature and cause of the angering event, when they are certain someone else is responsible, and when they feel they can still influence the situation or cope with it.

In her introduction to Purgatory, Dorothy L. Sayers describes wrath as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite"

In accordance with Henry Edward, angry people are "slaves to themselves".