Determination

Determination is the ability to be resolute and firm in one’s goals. Determination is an important trait for achieving success because it allows you to stay focused on your goals and overcome any obstacles or roadblocks that may arise. Determination is also a key component to success in the workplace and in your personal life.

The Nurturing Games are a set of board games for adults and children ages three years and older designed to help people learn about the importance of self-awareness, appropriate use of personal power and healthy communication skills. Participants learn to respect themselves and others, communicate their feelings and praise each other, practice gentle touch and more.

The nature versus nurture debate centers around the contributions of genetics and environmental factors to human development. For example, if a person has a high level of intelligence, is their achievement due to their genes or their enriched environment?

Empathy

There are many ways to show compassion, including volunteering, donating food to homeless people, and spending time with your family. Compassionate empathy also includes treating animals with kindness, and avoiding harming other species.

The contemporary theory of mind debate has seen some voices grow louder that argue that empathy theorists are misconceiving the nature of social cognition when they conceive understanding other agents as being based on empathy alone. Such an approach to the nature of understanding echoes with a tradition in hermeneutic philosophy concerned with explicating methods of grasping significance (Verstehen).

These hermeneutic philosophers insist that facts of significance cannot depend solely on what is found within an agent?s mind. Rather, the hermeneutic philosophy of hermeneutics maintains that understanding an event is a culturally mediated activity. Thus, it cannot be conceived as a method distinct from the methods of the natural sciences.

Honesty

Honesty is the virtue that encompasses both telling the truth and avoiding deception by omission or misdirection. It is a foundational character strength that leads to trusting relationships and contributing to civil society.

Honesty also includes a person’s motive in behaving honestly. It is not enough to simply tell the truth; one must be motivated by a desire for moral improvement or a need to avoid punishment. Honest people can also feel remorse when they behave dishonestly, and they are more likely to act with integrity in the future.

Children can learn about integrity by watching the adults in their lives. Encourage families to talk about the importance of honesty and to use the wonderful quotes included in this set to ignite meaningful discussions. For example, have your child build a tower of blocks and ask them to give examples of when they have been honest—they cleaned their room without being asked or they returned a toy that they had borrowed from a friend.

Loyalty

Loyalty is a virtue that is often seen as central to close friendship. It is also important in other relationships and associations: families expect it, organizations demand it, countries cultivate loyalty by evoking national anthems, reviewing the armed forces, and reviving memories of their heroes. But whether loyalty is a virtue and, if so, what sort of limits ought to be placed on it are open questions.

Loyalty may involve considerable sacrifice. For example, A may be loyal to B by getting up at 2.00am to fetch him even though it will involve great inconvenience to himself; a soldier may be loyal to his unit by refusing to leave when ordered to do so by higher headquarters; and patriotic loyalty may imply the willingness to die for one’s country. But such examples are not sufficient to justify treating all loyalty as unlimited in its demands.

Respect

The vast majority of discussions of respect are concerned with the notion that all persons deserve respect (or are owed respect) simply because they are persons. This respect is often expressed in terms of rights. Some philosophers have argued that respect is a form of love or care, and that it requires a complex emotional repertoire. Others have developed accounts that are rooted in Kantian ideas about dignity and self-respect.

Most philosophical work on respect focuses on how it is similar to or different from other attitudes, actions, valuings, and virtues such as esteem, admiration, reverence, appreciation, honor, recognition, toleration, and good manners. It also focuses on its relationship to such moral concepts as autonomy, agency, equality, resentment, aversion, and contempt. Some of this work also explores how to distinguish between respectful and non-respectful treatment. A considerable amount of attention is also paid to determining what kinds of objects warrant respect and whether their value can be earned or forfeited.

Responsibility

Responsibility is the virtue which concerns ourselves with our own moral responsibilities. It is often a condition of holding legal or even moral responsibilities that we must also be capable judges of our own actions and omissions (as Kant would argue, we should each impose an objective morality upon ourselves).

Moreover, prospective responsibility requires us to take our future responsibilities seriously. For example, we would expect someone with a strong sense of responsibility to approach new job opportunities with care, and to make decisions that are genuinely in their own best interests.

In the last two centuries, philosophers have given considerable attention to the question of what constitutes responsible agency. They have discussed whether or not a person is responsible for her choices and character, or if the truth of determinism excludes such responsibility. They have also considered strategies that might be used to shuffle off real moral responsibility, such as resentment or a desire to get away with something.