"virtue signal" in French

In French, as I just discovered, virtue signaling (gerund phrase) is vertu ostentatoire (vertu is grammatically feminine: la vertu), or ostensive virtue. There's a whole French Wikipedia page on the concept:

...un terme péjoratif décrivant un ensemble de comportements sociaux utilisés pour se décrire publiquement, au moins implicitement, comme une personne ou une organisation « vertueuse ». Ces comportements, facilités de nos jours par les réseaux sociaux, peuvent être ainsi qualifiés pour discréditer des personnes ou des organisations qui ne les adopteraient que dans le but de se mettre en avant de façon hypocrite et ostentatoire.

Connu aujourd'hui dans le monde anglo-saxon sous le terme de « virtue signalling », dont la paternité est généralement attribuée au journaliste britannique James Bartholomew (en), le concept existe en français depuis longtemps sous le nom de « vertu ostentatoire », variante moderne du « pharisaïsme ».

Translation:

...a pejorative term describing an ensemble of social behaviors that are used to make oneself out to be, publicly or at least implicitly, a "virtuous" person or organization. These behaviors, facilitated these days by social networks, can thus be used to discredit people or organizations who don't adopt them except as a way to put themselves forward hypocritically or ostensively.

Known today in the Anglo-Saxon world by the term virtue signaling, an expression whose origin is generally attributed to the British journalist James Bartholomew, the concept has existed for a long time in French under the name of vertu ostentatoire, a modern variant of pharisaism.

The French term pharisaïsme goes at least as far back as the first century, with the Pharisees being one of several legalistic sects of Jews who, at least according to the Bible, hounded Jesus for his transgressive reading of the scriptures. A whole chunk of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is a huge injunction against virtue signaling:

1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

[ the Lord's Prayer, plus verses on forgiveness ]

16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. [Matt. 6: 1-8, 16-18]

Of course, we violate this injunction all the time... or at least I do. Every time I blog that "I did 33 kilometers from Yangpyeong to Yeoju," I'm virtue signaling. Every time I separate myself politically from people I find to be idiots, I'm virtue signaling. Come to think of it, I wouldn't have a blog if I didn't virtue signal in some form or other. Suffice it to say that this injunction is, in the Christian idiom, a heavy cross to bear. There are so many ways and opportunities to virtue signal, so many ways and opportunities to let slip a bit of ego.

Anyway, I found the French expression interesting, which is why I'm sharing it with you.

And maybe the announcement of sharing is itself a virtue signal. Perhaps the best conduct, then, is simply to retreat into silence... although, even there, the trap is that one's very silence can be a kind of virtue signal!*

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*This is worthy of deeper discussion. Jesus ties virtue signaling to others' knowing what you're doing. More than that: you're performing your "virtuous" actions with the goal of garnering praise from others, which is why Jesus says, in the King James version, "They have their reward." And it's a hollow reward indeed, the praise of others. Jesus is saying that your orientation should be Godward, not peopleward. By this line of reasoning, if you retreat into silence, and others are aware of what you're doing, but you didn't retreat into silence so as to be praised by others, then it's not virtue signaling. The elder Buddhist monk who goes off to the hermitage, then, is safe from the accusation that he's retreating out of ego. In the Buddhist way of thinking, what needs to be dropped is attachment to others' praise, which does nothing more than stroke the ego. It's the attachment to others' praise that prompts people to grandstand in front of cameras, being louder than they would otherwise be while making their inflated points to applause.