Vice

Vice (from Latin: vitium "defect, offense, blemish, imperfection," in both physical and moral senses, in Medieval Latin also vicium; German: Laster, from {{OHG|lastar]] "disgrace, blame, fault") is a permanent bad habit, which as such has its primary seat in the etheric body of man. Vice is contrasted with virtue, which is also rooted in the etheric body, as a positive counter-image. By indulging in vice, one not only falls prey to a momentary temptation, as in the case of sin, which has its cause in the astral body, but loads a much deeper guilt upon oneself, which also damages the social community in a much more lasting way. Vices are not sins in the narrower sense, but they form the root from which the most diverse sins repeatedly spring.

„Spiritual science has always termed as “guilt” (German, “Schuld”) those sins that are against the community, and that originate in a faulty etheric body. The more common English word “debts” (“Schulden”) has in German an origin similar to the word “guilt,” with its more moral connotation in English, signifying what one man owes another in a moral sense. Debt, or guilt, derives from defective qualities in the etheric body, whereas a defective element in the astral body leads to what spiritual science associates with the word “temptation.” The man yielding to temptation takes upon himself a personal fault, or failure.“ (Lit.:GA 96, p. 214f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Ursprungsimpulse der Geisteswissenschaft, GA 96 (1989) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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