The six virtues of my hexagon are ancient, cross-cultural, and remarkably stable. They show up in every major moral tradition, not as isolated traits, but as structural pillars of human moral life. Each one corresponds to how we orient ourselves in the three dimensions of the moral field: Relation, Suffering, and Intention (R–S–I).
The following table lays out my "virtue hexagon" and integrates a few different labels for each virtue, then expands on how each one functions within the R-S-I moral space defined earlier.
| Core Virtue (with Integrated Expansions) | Functional Role (Expanded Notes) |
|---|---|
| 1. Wisdom / Discernment / Humility | Governs the I-axis: perceiving reality clearly, correcting self-deception, and maintaining epistemic openness. Humility prevents ego-distortion, making the aperture of perception wide enough to see others, consequences, and truth without self-serving bias. Wisdom is the stabilizing intelligence of the moral system — the regulator of intention, the reducer of illusion, and the safeguard against fanaticism and dogmatism. |
| 2. Courage / Fortitude | Governs the S-axis in its “upward” form: willingness to face fear, pain, risk, and cost for the sake of the good. Courage metabolizes suffering into purposeful action rather than avoidance or domination. It prevents moral collapse under threat, fuels resistance to injustice, and provides the moral energy required to move toward the + apex even when the path is steep. |
| 3. Temperance / Self-Control / Patience | Regulates the S-axis as stability rather than intensity: managing impulses, appetites, emotional reactivity, and timing. Patience is temporal self-regulation—endurance without resentment, steadiness without collapse. Temperance protects the system from destructive high-frequency oscillations (rage, addiction, impulsivity) and from over-damping (apathy, emotional flatness). It stabilizes suffering so courage can act rather than combust. |
| 4. Justice / Right-Relation | Shapes the R-axis as structural fairness: balancing claims, honoring obligations, maintaining reciprocity, and recognizing others as ends. Justice is the geometry of interpersonal and social space—the equalization of moral distance between persons. It counters partiality, corruption, domination, and the gravitational pull of ego-centered relational collapse. Justice is the architecture of the moral plane itself. |
| 5. Compassion / Benevolence / Gratitude | Expands the R-axis outward: entering others’ experience, responding with care, and recognizing the good received. Compassion generates warmth, mercy, and willingness to repair harm; gratitude deepens relational resonance and reduces envy, resentment, and ego contraction. Together they widen the moral circle, soften the boundaries of the self, and provide the emotional oxygen for justice to be humane rather than cold. |
| 6. Fidelity / Truthfulness / Trustworthiness / Reverence | Bridges the R- and I-axes: aligning one’s commitments, words, and actions with truth and trustworthy continuity. Fidelity stabilizes relationships; truthfulness stabilizes intention; reverence anchors the whole system to principles higher than ego. This virtue is the glue of moral architecture—enabling trust networks, covenantal bonds, integrity over time, and alignment between inner will and outer action. Its shadow (blind loyalty, idolatry, dishonesty) corresponds to the deepest downward-apex collapse. |
But virtues don’t fail because we lack them; they fail because they bend. This is the concept of moral curvature: the way a virtue can distort either upward into excess or downward into deficiency, just as a beam can warp under tension or collapse under load.
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Wisdom becomes cold detachment when it overextends, and dogmatism when it collapses.
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Courage becomes recklessness in excess, and cowardice in deficiency.
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Temperance becomes apathy when rigid, and impulsivity when weakened.
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Justice becomes legalism in excess, and corruption in deficiency.
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Compassion becomes enabling when it overfires, and cruelty when it breaks.
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Fidelity becomes blind loyalty when too tight, and betrayal when too slack.
Every vice is simply a curved version of a virtue—a deviation away from the balanced moral plane and toward one of the two apexes: self-transcending love or self-protective domination.
This geometric way of thinking gives morality nuance, structure, and direction. It turns ethics from a verdict into a trajectory—a journey through the space of relationship, suffering, and intention.
| Ideal / Core Virtue | Excess ( + Curvature ) | Deficiency ( – Curvature ) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Wisdom / Discernment / Humility | Hyper-rationalism, cold detachment, over-analysis, intellectual pride, abstraction that suppresses empathy, “wisdom without humanity” | Delusion, dogmatism, arrogance, self-deception, ideological rigidity, closed-mindedness |
| 2. Courage / Fortitude | Recklessness, hubris, thrill-seeking, aggression masked as bravery, martyrdom complex, danger-seeking | Cowardice, paralysis, avoidance, conformity under pressure, fear-driven collapse |
| 3. Temperance / Self-Control / Patience | Apathy, emotional flatness, ascetic extremism, excessive restraint that stifles vitality, rigid suppression | Impulsivity, rage, addiction, compulsion, uncontrolled appetites, emotional volatility |
| 4. Justice / Right-Relation | Legalism, cruelty in the name of fairness, punitive zeal, dehumanizing rule-following, vengeance disguised as justice | Partiality, corruption, favoritism, injustice by omission, exploitation, double standards |
| 5. Compassion / Benevolence / Gratitude | Enabling, sentimentalism, boundaryless empathy, self-erasure, compassion that reinforces dependency, pity without clarity | Cruelty, callousness, indifference, spite, resentment, dehumanization |
| 6. Fidelity / Truthfulness / Trustworthiness / Reverence | Blind loyalty, idolatry, fanatic devotion, obedience without discernment, purity-obsession, sanctimony | Dishonesty, betrayal, manipulation, unreliability, hypocrisy, broken commitments |
Excess (+ curvature) = bending above the moral plane; the virtue “overfires,” becoming detached from empathy, proportion, or reality.
Deficiency (– curvature) = bending below the moral plane; the virtue collapses into ego, impulse, fear, or self-protection. These are not separate traits but geometric distortions of the same ideal vector.
