Aristotle held that virtue is the foundation of happiness.
Tips
mistakes
Same characters as the colloquial 德性, which mocks how someone looks or behaves. This reading keeps a full fourth tone on the second syllable and means moral character. The mocking one is far more common in speech, so the tone carries real weight.
usage
Formal and written. It belongs to ethics and classical philosophy, where it names a person's settled moral quality, as in 德性伦理学, virtue ethics. The everyday words for the same idea are 品德 and 美德.
