François de La Rochefoucauld

1613-1680 · French · Moral Philosophy, Moral Psychology, Ethics, the Moralist Tradition

Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.

Topics François de La Rochefoucauld addresses

• amour-propre (self-love)
• self-interest as the hidden motive
• the maxim as a form of thought
• virtues as disguised vices
• the unmasking of moral pretension
• moral psychology
• the disabused view of human nature
• hypocrisy and self-deception
• the rarity of disinterested virtue
• friendship and its self-interest
• love and vanity
• pity as concealed self-regard
• generosity and the desire to be praised
• courage and the fear of shame
• humility and pride
• the passions and their disguises
• reason as the dupe of the passions
• fortune and chance in human affairs
• humeur (temperament) and the body
• the government of conduct by mood
• constancy and inconstancy
• the desire to appear rather than to be
• self-knowledge and its limits
• the social comedy of esteem

Converse with François de La Rochefoucauld on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in François de La Rochefoucauld's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.