| Abstract [eng] |
From Plato Christianity borrowed the four classical virtues prudence or practical wisdom, justice, courage, and self-control; from Aristotle the distinction between intellectual and moral virtues. These borrowings cause considerable problems when transferred into the dense semantic field of the Lithuanian language for, unlike Latin (through which Lithuanians started their acquaintance with Christian philosophy in the 14th century), the Lithuanian language has no need of such distinction, which springs from the equivocate of virtue, for in its own lexicon it possesses distinct univocal names: for ethical virtue dorybė, and for intellectual virtue galia Thus, in the semantic field of the Lithuanian language, the Aristotelian distinction seems quite superfluous; for dorybė itself indicates morality without any additional qualification. Therefore the expression moral virtue seems an awkward pleonasm when formulated in purely Lithuanian words dorovinė dorybė. The substitution dorovinė by moralinė (moral) just conceals the problem, but does not solve it. Related to this there is another and even more serious problem: not only speculative but also practical, first of all didactically. The problem is how to name prudence, the first cardinal virtue, in Lithuanian. [...]. |
