Aquinas on Virtue

Aquinas on Virtue
Author: Nicholas Austin
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1626164738

Aquinas on Virtue is an original interpretation of one of the most compelling accounts of virtue in the Western tradition, that of the great theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas. This book offers a systematic analysis of Aquinas on the nature, genesis, and role of virtue in human life.

Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues

Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues
Author: Angela McKay Knobel
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0268201080

This study locates Aquinas’s theory of infused and acquired virtue in his foundational understanding of nature and grace. Aquinas holds that all the virtues are bestowed on humans by God along with the gift of sanctifying grace. Since he also holds, with Aristotle, that we can create virtuous dispositions in ourselves through our own repeated good acts, a question arises: How are we to understand the relationship between the virtues God infuses at the moment of grace and virtues that are gradually acquired over time? In this important book, Angela McKay Knobel provides a detailed examination of Aquinas’s theory of infused moral virtue, with special attention to the question of how the infused and acquired moral virtues are related. Part 1 examines Aquinas’s own explicit remarks about the infused and acquired virtues and considers whether and to what extent a coherent “theory” of the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues can be found in Aquinas. Knobel argues that while Aquinas says almost nothing about how the infused and acquired virtues are related, he clearly does believe that the “structure” of the infused virtues mirrors that of the acquired in important ways. Part 2 uses that structure to evaluate existing interpretations of Aquinas and argues that no existing account adequately captures Aquinas’s most fundamental commitments. Knobel ultimately argues that the correct account lies somewhere between the two most commonly advocated theories. Written primarily for students and scholars of moral philosophy and theology, the book will also appeal to readers interested in understanding Aquinas’s theory of virtue.

The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics

The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics
Author: Andrew Pinsent
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1136479147

Thomas Aquinas devoted a substantial proportion of his greatest works to the virtues. Yet, despite the availability of these texts (and centuries of commentary), Aquinas’s virtue ethics remains mysterious, leaving readers with many unanswered questions. In this book, Pinsent argues that the key to understanding Aquinas’s approach is to be found in an association between: a) attributes he appends to the virtues, and b) interpersonal capacities investigated by the science of social cognition, especially in the context of autistic spectrum disorder. The book uses this research to argue that Aquinas’s approach to the virtues is radically non-Aristotelian and founded on the concept of second-person relatedness. To demonstrate the explanatory power of this principle, Pinsent shows how the second-person perspective gives interpretation to Aquinas’s descriptions of the virtues and offers a key to long-standing problems, such as the reconciliation of magnanimity and humility. The principle of second-person relatedness also interprets acts that Aquinas describes as the fruition of the virtues. Pinsent concludes by considering how this approach may shape future developments in virtue ethics.

Treatise on the Virtues

Treatise on the Virtues
Author: St. Thomas Aquinas
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0268158037

In his Treatise on the Virtues, Aquinas discusses the character and function of habit; the essence, subject, cause, and meaning of virtue; and the separate intellectual, moral, cardinal, and theological virtues. His work constitutes one of the most thorough and incisive accounts of virtue in the history of Christian philosophy. John Oesterle's accurate and elegant translation makes this enduring work readily accessible to the modern reader.

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics
Author: J. Budziszewski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2017-05-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107165784

This guide to St Thomas Aquinas' virtue ethics provides commentary on essential texts, rendering them accessible to all readers.

Thomas Aquinas on Virtue and Human Flourishing

Thomas Aquinas on Virtue and Human Flourishing
Author: Stephen Theron
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2018-04-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1527510298

Thomas Aquinas offers teleological systematisation of the habits needed for human flourishing. His metaphysical jurisprudence remodels ethics upon this, rather than on a moral precept. “Eternal law” governing the world determines “natural law”, reflected in human legislation (a variety of the “anthropic principle”). Finally, law, unwritten, is infused spirit as self-consciousness, “universal of universals”. Acquired virtues elicit this, become effusion, represented in religion as gifts or graces. But mind’s or spirit’s omnipresence, necessarily “closer to me than I am to myself”, supersedes the abstractions of heteronomy versus autonomy. The habitual well-being brought by prudence, justice, courage and temperance prompts this picture of gifts and graces. The “theological virtues”, faith (explicit or implicit) and hope fulfilled in love, “crown” our natural rationality, set toward as being the universal. “Become what you are”. Heteronomous law is thus “defused” at root by grounding it entirely upon immovable spiritual (mental) inclination towards universal fulfilment as naturally desired, reflection shows. Virtue, finally, is best assessed as a capacity for the individually beautiful yet habit-based action, Aristotle’s to kalon. Aquinas puts this picture as summed up in the beatitudes of the “Sermon on the Mount”.

Ethics as a Work of Charity

Ethics as a Work of Charity
Author: David Decosimo
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781503600607

Most of us wonder how to make sense of the apparent moral excellences or virtues of those who have different visions of the good life or different religious commitments than our own. Rather than flattening or ignoring the deep difference between various visions of the good life, as is so often done, this book turns to the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas to find a better way. Thomas, it argues, shows us how to welcome the outsider and her virtue as an expression rather than a betrayal of one's own distinctive vision. It shows how Thomas, driven by a Christian commitment to charity and especially informed by Augustine, synthesized Augustinian and Aristotelian elements to construct an ethics that does justice—in love—to insiders and outsiders alike. Decosimo offers the first analysis of Thomas on pagan virtue and a reinterpretation of Thomas's ethics while providing a model for our own efforts to articulate a truthful hospitality and do ethics in our pluralist, globalized world.

Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas

Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas
Author: Justin M. Anderson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2020-07-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108485189

Explores how Aquinas's understanding of virtue developed as his consideration of sin, grace, and God's action in human life deepened.

Mencius and Aquinas

Mencius and Aquinas
Author: Lee H. Yearley
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1990-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791404317

Offers a detailed comparative analysis of two thinkers from different traditions.