Philo's treatise reading the Mosaic law as a training program in courage, humanity (philanthropia), repentance, and nobility of soul.
On the Virtues is one of the treatises in Philo of Alexandria's exposition of the Law of Moses, continuing directly from his discussion of justice. Having covered that virtue elsewhere, Philo turns to courage, then to "humanity" (philanthropia, love of mankind), and finally to repentance and true nobility of birth. Throughout, his method is the same: he takes specific commandments from the Pentateuch and argues that each one is really a piece of moral education aimed at producing a particular virtue in the soul.
Under courage, Philo redefines the term against the popular idea of battle-fury, arguing that real courage is a form of wisdom that lets a person face poverty, disrepute, illness, and the loss of the senses without being broken. He reads laws about military exemptions and about not wearing the clothing of the opposite sex as the lawgiver's way of drilling manliness and self-command into the nation. Under humanity, he works through an extended catalogue of social legislation — the ban on lending at interest to a fellow countryman, same-day payment of a hired laborer's wages, leaving gleanings in the field and vineyard for the poor, the sabbatical and jubilee years, restoring a stray animal to its owner, and even restraint from destroying an enemy's fruit trees in wartime — presenting each as evidence that Moses' laws extend kindness outward from human beings to animals and even to plants.
The treatise closes with sections on repentance, in which Philo praises those who turn from polytheism and idol-worship to acknowledge the one God, and on true nobility, where he argues that virtue, not ancestry, is what makes a person noble. He gives Abraham as the model convert-philosopher who left his home and kindred to seek the one uncreated cause, and cites Tamar and other biblical women and household slaves as further examples of virtue overriding a lowly birth. The whole treatise is characteristic of Philo's project: showing an educated Greco-Roman audience that the Jewish law, properly understood, teaches exactly the virtues that philosophy prizes.
“the true knowledge of it”
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“For God is in need of nothing, wanting for nothing, but is himself utterly self-sufficient”
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“Who indeed would not admire his ordinance concerning reapers and grape-gatherers?”
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“he does not even allow the land of enemies to be cut down, but commands restraint from felling trees and from ravaging”
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“he was also the first to hold an unshaken and firm conviction that there is one supreme cause, and that it exercises providence over the cosmos”
— On the Virtues · read this chapter →
It is a treatise arguing that specific laws of Moses were designed to instill particular virtues — chiefly courage, humanity (kindness to others), and repentance leading to true nobility. Philo works through many individual commandments and explains the moral purpose behind each.
Philo rejects the common idea that courage means fury in battle, calling that a counterfeit. True courage, he says, is a form of wisdom that lets a person endure poverty, disrepute, illness, and the loss of the senses without breaking down.
He treats laws such as the ban on interest among kinsmen, gleaning rights for the poor, and restraint from destroying an enemy's orchards as concrete expressions of philanthropia, arguing that Mosaic legislation embodies the same virtues that Greek philosophy prized.
Philo presents Abraham as the model convert and philosopher-believer: a man who left his homeland and kin to seek the one uncreated cause of the universe, becoming, in Philo's words, the first to believe firmly in one God who governs the cosmos by providence.
No — he argues virtue alone confers true nobility, citing Abraham, Tamar, and even foreign-born household slaves and their children as examples of people who attained nobility through conduct rather than ancestry.
Allegorical Interpretation I · Allegorical Interpretation II · Allegorical Interpretation III · Every Good Man is Free · Flaccus · On Abraham · On Dreams · On Drunkenness · On Flight and Finding · On Husbandry · On Joseph · On Mating / Preliminary Studies