Порок и добродетель: этимология, проявления и борьба с пороками.

Immoral or depraved behavior or habit

A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhealthy habit. Vices are usually associated with a fault in a person's character or temperament rather than their morality. Synonyms for vice include fault, sin, depravity, iniquity, wickedness, and corruption. The antonym of vice is virtue.

The modern English term that best captures its original meaning is the word vicious, which means "full of vice". In this sense, the word vice comes from the Latin word vitium, meaning "failing or defect".

Depending on the country or jurisdiction, vice crimes may or may not be treated as a separate category in the criminal codes. Even in jurisdictions where vice is not explicitly delineated in the legal code, the term vice is often used in law enforcement and judicial systems as an umbrella for crimes involving activities that are considered inherently immoral, regardless of the legality or objective harm involved. In the United Kingdom, the term vice is commonly used in law and law enforcement to refer to criminal offences related to prostitution and pornography. In the United States, the term is also used to refer to crimes related to drugs, alcohol, and gambling.

A vice squad, also called a vice unit or a morality squad, is generally, though not always, a police division, whose focus is to restrain or suppress moral crimes. Though what is considered or accepted as a moral crime by society often varies considerably according to local laws or customs between nations, countries, or states, it often includes activities such as gambling, narcotics, pornography, and illegal sales of alcoholic beverages. Vice squads do not concentrate on more serious crimes like fraud and murder.

Religious police, for example Islamic religious police units or sharia police in certain Muslim countries, are morality squads that also monitor, for example, dress codes, observance of store closures during prayer time, consumption of unlawful beverages or foods, unrelated males and females socializing, and homosexual behavior.

In the Sarvastivadin tradition of Buddhism, there are 108 defilements, or vices, which are prohibited. These are subdivided into 10 bonds and 98 proclivities. The 10 bonds are the following: On the other hand, even after a person's sins have been forgiven, the underlying habit (the vice) may remain. Just as vice was created in the first place by repeatedly yielding to the temptation to sin, so vice may be removed only by repeatedly resisting temptation and performing virtuous acts; the more entrenched the vice, the more time and effort needed to remove it. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that following rehabilitation and the acquisition of virtues, the vice does not persist as a habit, but rather as a mere disposition, and one that is in the process of being eliminated. Medieval illuminated manuscripts circulated with colorful schemas for developing proper attitudes, with scriptural allusions modelled on nature: the tree of virtues as blossoming flowers or vices bearing sterile fruit, The Renaissance writer Pietro Bembo is credited with reaffirming and promoting the Christian perfection of classical humanism. Deriving all from love (or the lack thereof) his schemas were added as supplements in the newly invented technology of printing by Aldus Manutius in his editions of Dante's Divine Comedy dating from early in the 16th century.

Although not strictly a religion but a Hellenistic philosophy, Epicurean ethics prescribes a therapeutic approach to the vices with the goal of attaining a life of pleasure with the aid of the virtues. Most of the techniques used in Epicureanism involve challenging false beliefs and attaining beliefs that are aligned with nature. In this, Epicureanism posits an entirely naturalistic, non religious theory of virtue and vice based on the rational pursuit of pleasure.