HOLOVICEOSIS AND THE SYSTEMATIC INVERSION OF VIRTUE: A New Conceptual Framework in Political Philosophy, Critical Theory, and Moral Psychology

ABSTRACT This paper introduces and analyses Holoviceosis (Holoviceose), an original philosophical concept developed. Holoviceosis designates the condition of the death and subjugation of a people through the systematic substitution of virtues by vices, sustained as a structural — not incidental — feature of the power system, in a process of contradictory coexistence in which good and evil function as co-dependent instruments of the same mechanism. The paper presents the concept's full architecture, including its constitutive cluster of three related concepts: Reverse Ethics (Ética Reversa), the Process of Devirtualisation (Processo de Desvirtualização), and the Freedophobic Man (Homem Liberdofóbico). It situates Holoviceosis within the existing traditions of critical theory (Gramsci, Marcuse, Foucault, Žižek), political philosophy (Arendt, Berlin, Fromm), structural violence theory (Galtung), and moral psychology (Haidt), demonstrating its genuine conceptual contribution to each domain while identifying its irreducible originality: the specific diagnosis of contradictory coexistence — the claim that the system requires both virtue and vice simultaneously and instrumentalises them both — as the defining mechanism of political subjugation. The paper further analyses the three co-dependent sub-concepts, assesses the concept's philosophical rigor, identifies research directions for empirical substantiation, and argues for its inclusion in the canon of critical political philosophy as a productive analytical framework for diagnosing contemporary social pathologies.