Today there is much talk of training in values. Undoubtedly, Ethics must help to grasp and be interested in the values of reality, that is to say, those goods that attract us in our yearning for happiness. But neither Ethics nor Education can be realized on the basis of values alone. They need to look at virtues, and also at norms. The virtues are fundamental in Ethics and in Education, although they are not sufficient by themselves.

Necessity of the virtues on the path to freedom. In the perspective of an ethics open to transcendence, it is well understood that it is not enough to grasp a value or desire something that is presented to me as good. This is prior to freedom. The person manifests and perfects himself as such when he exercises his freedom by choosing the good, making it his own. When he manages to do this habitually in some field of his actions, we speak of his having a virtue (order, truthfulness, self-control, justice, solidarity, etc.). Virtues pave the way to freedom. They help the person in what is most important and decisive for his constitution and self-realization: his capacity to respond to the love that constitutes him and that comes from the Love of God who has brought him into existence and endowed him with the goods he possesses.(1)

Virtue is the "habit" of good, just as vice is a bad habit. If we choose to do evil, to say no to good, we become bad people and that translates into vices. If we choose to do good over and over again, we become good people, and that translates into virtues. Hence the centrality of virtues in self-realization staff. That virtues are "habits" does not mean that they are routine. The authentically virtuous person is always attentive to contemplate the truth and that his action is truly good(2).

Hence, the most appropriate thing for freedom is not to say "no" to good, but to say "yes" to it. And this is so because doing evil does not fulfill me as a person, but is a betrayal of myself, since doing good - that good that awaits me and will not be done without me - is the way to respond to the love that constitutes me as a person. 

Such is the experience of freedom, or rather, of authentic freedom. Doing good makes us happy because it makes us better. Doing evil, and it is also an experience, saddens us, because, although it is a sign that we have freedom, it is a mistaken exercise of freedom, a false freedom. Doing "the good that must be done" is what makes us ourselves, what perfects us as persons. And this is what the virtues facilitate, which are also like "vaccines" against possible self-deception and imprudence in the management of emotions and passions. Virtues are fundamental to Ethics and Education. As seen in movies like "K 19: The widowmaker" (K. Bigelow, 2002) or "Professor Lazhar" (Ph. Falardeau, 2011).

2. Insufficiency of an ethics or an Education of virtues alone. Now, virtues alone are not enough for a successful life. We must continue to heed the call to do "justice to reality" (Spaemann)(3), to continue to choose the good at every moment, from agreement with what our conscience tells us. At the same time we have to form our conscience with the financial aid of reason open to others. And in this sense, moral norms are also necessary, which illuminate, direct and protect human action.

What would happen if Ethics, or Education, were reduced to the virtues? An ethics of virtues alone is insufficient(4). This can be seen, first of all, in the ethics of the Stoics(5). The Stoic considers man as part of a suffocating universe, from which he cannot free himself, he can only protect himself. He is one of those who would say: "No misfortune has happened to me yet, but it will happen to me at any moment"; or "The state of health does not promise anything good".

For the Stoic(6) what matters is what preserves or increases rationality, while the rest (pleasure, health, wealth, etc., and also their opposites) is indifferent. That is why he wishes to make a virtue of indifference, and reduces ethics to that virtue, resulting in an incomplete or impoverished ethics. Its ideal is apathy or impassivity. But then he considers compassion and mercy to be those of the fool. He does not love emotion, nor life, nor does he know enthusiasm. His ethics is directed to self-mastery. Not to improve his outward acts, but to take refuge inwardly, to resist in the face of adversity. He considers it shameful to complain, like one who goes to the doctor for a head wound, and the latter asks him: "Does it hurt you a lot?" And he answers: "Where?

Certainly, observes Leonardo Polo, Stoic indifference is an impoverished ethical ideal. But it is certainly better than the solution of modernity, which consists in seeking some technical procedure to psychically control the pains of existence.

A second example of reductionism of ethics to virtue is that of Machiavellianism. In his work "The Prince" (1513, published in 1532), Machiavelli considers that virtue is the force with which man can compete with fortune (in the sense of destiny, against which nothing can be done, as in the Stoic cosmos). In the face of the unpredictable forces of fate, rules are of no use, but rather the calculation of human tendencies. That is why he proposes as a central virtue political astuteness (skill to deceive, which is actually a deformation of the virtue of prudence, i.e., a vice).

As we have seen, what is common to those who disqualify the ethics of norms and the ethics of goods, rejecting that there is a perfect good or that the moral rule is possible, is the anthropological budget of fatalism or determinism. This entails pessimism, because it ignores that virtue is a greater training of the person for the good. Whether proposing Stoic indifference or Machiavellian cunning, they only rely on the scarce aptitudes of man seen as a being inferior to the cosmos. And so virtue becomes rigid and turns out to be a refuge rather than a liberation.

Ethics in "3D". In final, the complete ethics is the one that takes into account goods, norms and virtues in mutual reinforcement, three-dimensional. If one looks for goods for their own sake, the person can remain in material goods. If one only attends to norms, they can become dehumanized. If they are closed in on themselves, the virtues can become rigid, isolated from the path of truth and goodness, which is that of man, the pilgrim of the infinite.

Values and goods, norms and virtues make up the ethical proposal for a successful life. For a believer, life is a vocation that involves a mission statement in relation to God, others and the world. For a Christian, seeking happiness, exercising freedom and seeking the good are the same, they are also identified with procuring the "glory of God"; that is, collaborating so that God may be known and loved, through our good works (cf. Mt 15:16). And so doing "justice to reality" is what we Christians call charity, love of God and neighbor, which is the foundation of moral norms, the guarantee for attaining good things and the principal virtue.