The Virtue of Integrity

The only way out of our wreckage is to rewrite the cultural script, to make excellence in character admired again.

Excerpt: Integrity is a virtue on which good character is built. Other virtues can be admirable but isolated. One can be courageous in the pursuit of injustice. A person can be honest but ungenerous, forgiving but lazy. Al Capone, after all, sponsored a soup kitchen during the Great Depression.

Integrity—whose root word, integer, means wholeness, a thing complete in itself—assimilates other virtues. A person of integrity possesses an inner harmony, a moral coherence. As the philosopher Robert C. Solomon put it:

“Integrity is not itself a virtue so much as it is a synthesis of the virtues, working together to form a coherent whole.”

Integrity is a subject of ancient interest. Plato believed that a tripartite soul included reason, desire, and spirit. For Aristotle, virtue was divided into moral and intellectual categories. Virtue was not a matter of isolated acts; it was an ingrained disposition, an orientation of the mind and heart, developed through practice and habituation. This led to a unified life, which in turn led to the highest human good: eudaemonia, or human flourishing, a life of purpose devoted to the good.

To be sure, people of integrity aren’t perfect. But they are individuals who possess an internal cohesiveness among distinct parts. Their values and behavior display a consistency that is the foundation of trust and mutual respect.