The "common danger", requiring "hope" and, more pointedly, "virtue" in order to "meet [and to repulse] it", is surely as much the spectre of a dictatorial administration, emboldened by Dick Cheney's theory of the "unitary executive", and its dangerous freedom to abuse the rights of man, as it is the present economic crisis.
The idea is to perfect the learning virtues in order to become, ultimately, a sage, which is equally a moral and intellectual state.
Those who have passions need the virtues in order to control the passions (In Metaph. 2, 1-10).
He allows for the Aristotelian insight that the particulars of the situation always outstrip one's rules, so that one will always need the moral and intellectual virtues in order to act well (Commentary on NE, II, 2, 259).
The best way to understand him is to take him to be assuming that one will need the ethical virtues in order to live the life of a philosopher, even though exercising those virtues is not the philosopher's ultimate end.
One needs to go through an initial stage of mastering these basic virtues in order to 1) reinforce one's altruistic impulses and curtail the egoistic ones, 2) be inclined to seek principled rapport and harmony in interpersonal affairs, and 3) be moved by a sense of oneness with others and all things.
Individuals may have sought to exaggerate their virtues in order to impress other participants.
According to the virtue tradition, in order to perform a virtuous action, one must have the right dictates associated with the relevant virtue.
(Some were keen to stress that virtue must pay in order to give God a role).
Civil concord, a central issue for Lipsius, requires everyone to submit to the will of the prince, who himself must have both virtue and prudence in order to achieve this concord.
When Seneca discusses how we must hold on to the insight that only virtue is good, in order to improve ourselves, it may sometimes seem as if he blamed the world (competition, superficial lifestyles, etc).
