A short Plutarch essay from the Moralia arguing that virtue, like any craft, must be taught and habituated rather than left to chance or nature.
"An Virtus Doceri Possit" ("Can Virtue Be Taught?") is a brief diatribe-style essay in Plutarch's Moralia, the vast miscellany of ethical, rhetorical, and philosophical short works that sits alongside his more famous Parallel Lives. The essay opens with a paradox: people readily accept that skills like piloting, music, and building are learned through instruction, yet balk at the idea that virtue itself is teachable, treating good men as almost mythical rarities alongside centaurs and Cyclopes.
Plutarch marches through everyday analogies to press his case. Children are taught to play the harp, dance, read, farm, ride, dress, cook, and even how to carve meat and hold a cup at table before they are trusted to do these things unsupervised. If such minor competencies require deliberate instruction, he argues, it is absurd to suppose that the far weightier business of living well, managing a household, a marriage, or a city, arises spontaneously or by luck. He invokes anecdotes and sayings from Diogenes, Aristippus, Heraclitus, the Spartans, and the general Iphicrates to reinforce the point, repeatedly likening virtue to a craft (techne) with its own teachers, precepts, and habituation.
The essay matters as a compact statement of the Greek philosophical commonplace, traceable to Socrates and Plato, that virtue is a form of knowledge and therefore can be cultivated like any other skill. Plutarch's rhetorical method, piling up vivid comparisons rather than building a formal syllogism, is characteristic of the Moralia's essay style: popular, anecdotal, and aimed at persuading an educated Greco-Roman audience rather than settling a technical philosophical dispute. The text as preserved is fragmentary, breaking off mid-argument, which is itself typical of how parts of the Moralia survive.
“good men are only named and spoken of, like hippocentaurs and giants and Cyclopes, while a work faultless and unblemished in virtue cannot be found”
— An Virtus Doceri Possit · read this chapter →
“O men, why, in calling virtue unteachable, do we make it nonexistent? For if learning is a coming-into-being, then the prevention of learning is its destruction.”
— An Virtus Doceri Possit · read this chapter →
“for Heraclitus says, "It is better to hide one's ignorance."”
— An Virtus Doceri Possit · read this chapter →
“And the Spartan, when asked what he provides as a tutor, said, "I make good things pleasant to children."”
— An Virtus Doceri Possit · read this chapter →
“Callias, who asked and said, "Who are you? An archer? A peltast? A horseman? A hoplite?" replied, "None of these, but the one who commands all of these.”
— An Virtus Doceri Possit · read this chapter →
It is a short essay from Plutarch's Moralia arguing that virtue is a skill (techne) that must be learned and habituated, just like music, piloting, or riding. Plutarch finds it absurd that people accept instruction is needed for minor crafts but assume good character happens by nature or chance.
Plutarch argues by analogy: since even trivial skills like carving meat at dinner or holding a cup properly require training from childhood, the far more important task of living well, managing a household, or ruling a city must likewise require deliberate teaching, not spontaneous luck.
No, the text as preserved breaks off mid-argument, discussing the value of practical wisdom (phronesis) as the ordering principle behind all other arts. This fragmentary state is common among the shorter pieces in Plutarch's Moralia.
He cites or quotes Heraclitus, Plato, Diogenes, Aristippus, an unnamed Spartan, Aristophanes, Herodotus (on the Scythians), and the Athenian general Iphicrates in his exchange with Chabrias's man Callias, using their sayings and anecdotes to support the claim that virtue is teachable.
It comes from a different collection, the Moralia, which gathers Plutarch's essays on ethics, religion, and rhetoric rather than his biographical Lives. The essay's claim that virtue can be taught reflects the same moral-philosophical interests that shape his portraits of statesmen in the Lives.
Plutarch draws on the Socratic and Platonic idea that virtue is a form of knowledge and therefore teachable, a position debated since Plato's dialogues (echoed here in a reference to Plato on the foot and the lyre) and central to ancient Greek ethical theory.
Moralia: Ad Principem Ineruditum · Moralia: Adversus Colotem · Moralia: Amatoriae Narrationes · Moralia: Amatorius · Moralia: An Recte Dictum Sit Latenter Esse Vivendum · Moralia: An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit · Moralia: An Vitiositas Ad Infelicitatem Sufficia · Moralia: Animine An Corporis Affectiones Sint Piores · Moralia: Apophthegmata Laconica · Moralia: Aquane An Ignis Sit Utilior · Moralia: Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti · Moralia: Comparationis Aristophanes Et Menandri Compendium