Virtue & Power is a long-term editorial project. It is not a personal blog, an algorithmic content site, or a vehicle for modern slogans dressed in ancient names. The policy below is what makes that claim verifiable; everything else on the platform is written against it.
1. Editorial standards
Every entry on this site is written and reviewed by a human editor. We use software for layout, typography, navigation and search — never for the substantive claims of the text. An entry is treated as authoritative only after a named editor has read the relevant primary text and the surrounding scholarship and judged the entry accurate, fair and appropriately cautious.
2. Historical accuracy
We work from the historical record and from the primary texts as they have come down to us, with attention to the conditions of their transmission. Where a fact is contested, we say so. Where a date or attribution is uncertain (which, for the ancient world, is often), we mark it as approximate or attributed rather than presenting it as settled.
We do not modernise the texts to fit current preoccupations, and we do not flatten them to make them more palatable. The point of the project is to read what is there.
3. Primary sources
Editorial entries on a thinker, work or theme are grounded in the primary text itself: the dialogue, the treatise, the historical narrative, the scripture. Standard critical editions and the open-access archives that mirror them are listed on the Sources page, which is the canonical place to look up which editions we work from.
Secondary scholarship is consulted, cited where it changes the reading, and never substituted for the text. We do not treat a recent monograph as if it were the work it discusses.
4. Summary, interpretation and commentary
We try to make the difference between three modes explicit:
- Factual summary — what the text says, the structure of an argument, the historical setting, the transmission of the work. These claims should be uncontested or marked as approximate.
- Interpretation — what the argument means and how it hangs together. These claims should be defensible from the text; where serious scholars disagree, we note it.
- Editorial commentary — what we think the text is doing or how it bears on later thought. These claims are clearly the editor speaking, not the source.
5. Citation discipline
Every quotation carries the citation conventions appropriate to the work. For Plato we cite by Stephanus pages (e.g. Republic 514a). For Aristotle we cite by Bekker numbers (e.g. Nicomachean Ethics 1103a). For historians, scriptures and other classical works we cite by book, chapter and section as their tradition uses them. The translator and the edition cited are named where it matters.
We do not paraphrase a passage and then present the paraphrase in quotation marks. We do not attribute lines to figures who did not write them. If a passage is widely quoted but its actual source is uncertain or apocryphal, we either omit it or say plainly that the attribution is uncertain.
6. No invented quotations
This is the rule the whole site is built around: no fabricated quotations, no fabricated citations, no smooth modern restatement passed off as an ancient line. If a passage cannot be located in a primary text or established critical edition, it does not appear on this site as a quotation.
Many of the most widely shared “classical” quotations on the modern web fail this test. We will publish a smaller library for that reason.
7. How stub content is treated
Entries are published in two states: stub and published. A stub is a clearly-marked placeholder for an entry that has been scoped but not yet written or reviewed in full. Stub pages are visible inside the site so the structure is legible, but they are excluded from the search index, the sitemap and the RSS feed; they also carry a standing notice that no specific claims have been added yet.
A stub becomes a published entry only after a human editor has written the substantive content, checked the sources, and signed off. There is no automated path from stub to published.
8. Review and corrections
Editorial mistakes happen. When they do, we correct the entry and note that it has been corrected. We do not silently rewrite a published entry to obscure the earlier version’s errors. If you find a mistake on this site — a misattribution, a misleading paraphrase, an inaccurate date — we want to hear about it.
9. Conflicts of interest
Virtue & Power is not affiliated with any political party, religious institution, school of contemporary philosophy, or commercial publisher. We will disclose any future relationships that could reasonably be thought to affect the editorial line.
This policy is itself a living document. It will be amended as the project matures. Material changes will be noted with the date of revision.