Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought (review) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Religious Ethics, 1999
Aquinas is often presented as following Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics when treating moral virtue. Less often do philosophers consider that Aquinas's conception of the highest good and its relation to the functional character of human activity led him to break with Aristotle by replicating each of the acquired moral virtues on an infused level. The author suggests that we can discern reasons for this move by examining Aquinas's commentary on the Sententiae of Peter the Lombard and the Summa theologiae within their historical context. The author's thesis is that Dominican pastoral and intellectual concerns led Aquinas to argue that moral virtue must necessarily be ordered toward the highest good. Understanding this purpose helps to explain his presentation of moral virtue and its implications for standard philosophical interpretations of his work.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is the text which had the single greatest influence on Aquinas's ethical writings, and the historical and philosophical value of Aquinas's appropriation of this text provokes lively debate. In this volume of new essays, thirteen distinguished scholars explore how Aquinas receives, expands on, and transforms Aristotle's insights about the attainability of happiness, the scope of moral virtue, the foundation of morality, and the nature of pleasure. They examine Aquinas's commentary on the Ethics and his theological writings, above all the Summa theologiae. Their essays show Aquinas to be a highly perceptive interpreter, but one who also who also brings certain presuppositions to the Ethics and alters key Aristotelian notions for his own purposes. The result is a rich and nuanced picture of Aquinas's relation to Aristotle that will be of interest to readers in moral philosophy, Aquinas studies, the history of theology, and the history of philosophy.
The Multifarious Moral Object of Thomas Aquinas
Thomist, 2003
C ONTEMPORARYETHICS tends to simplify the moral universe by recognizing relatively few factors as determinants of morality. A person is virtuous if he is respectful of others, reliable, industrious, tolerant of differences. Or he is immoral if he acts uncharitably, lacks compassion, or is disrespectful of the rights of others. Even if, for instance, a violation of the rights of another is brought about by means of particular type of action-by, for instance, failing to respect a contract previously agreed to-the determining factor is not the lack of correspondence between what is done and what was promised but rather the attitude that leads to acts of that type, which attitude could just as well be understood as a lack of compassion or of fellow-feeling. The moral universe that Thomas Aquinas depicts in his ethical writings is a much more complicated affair. 1 Of course, the more general virtues are important in his theory: faith, hope, and 1 See Thomas's De Malo, q. 2, a. 9, where he argues against the Stoics who saw all sins as one: going against reason. He argues that such an approach finishes in a sort of legalism. Since there are no real distinctions among sins, sin comes to be associated with crossing lines: that is, the various boundaries between reason and unreason. "And they say similarly that, given that someone in erring goes beyond rightness of reason, it makes no difference in what manner and for what reason he does this: as if to err were nothing other than to cross certain preset lines" ("Et similiter dicebant, quod non refert dummodo aliquis peccando rectitudinem rationis praetereat, qualitercumque vel ex quacumque causa hoc faciat, ac si peccare nihil esset aliud quam quasdam positas lineas transire").
The Non-Aristotelian Character of Aquinas's Ethics: Aquinas on the Passions
Coakley/Faith, Rationality, and the Passions, 2012
Scholars discussing Aquinas's ethics typically understand it as largely Aristotelian, though with some differences accounted for by the differences in worldview between Aristotle and Aquinas. In this paper, I argue against this view. I show that although Aquinas recognizes the Aristotelian virtues, he thinks they are not real virtues. Instead, for Aquinas, the passions-or the suitably formulated intellectual and volitional analogues to the passions-are not only the foundation of any real ethical life but also the flowering of what is best in it. Passions are constituents of a virtue in so far as they are subject to reason and moved by reason. 5 Adopting a similar view, Peter King says, Aquinas holds contra Hume, that reason is and ought to be the ruler of the passions; since the passions can be controlled by reason they should be controlled by reason. 6
The Relationship between Vice and Malice According to Thomas Aquinas
This project aims to examine the relationship between vice and malice according to Thomas Aquinas. The first chapter begins with a consideration of the categories before moving on to disposition and habitus. Habitus, it is argued, is a disposition that resides in certain powers of the soul that is difficult to change; they make action prompt, easy, and pleasurable, and their objects connatural to their subjects. The second chapter takes up unsuitable habitus: vices. The features of habitus are applied to vice, and the relationship of vice to virtue and to the mean, the connection of the vices, and the generation, strengthening, weakening, and corruption of vices are examined. The third chapter focuses upon that to which vicious habitus are directed: sinful actions. Here, sin is examined as a philosophical concept as well as as an act. The fourth chapter considers malice, which is an interior cause of sinful actions, consisting as they do in a disordered will that loves some temporal good more than a spiritual good, and which, when the temporal and spiritual good are perceived to be incompatible with each other, result in an agent who knowingly chooses a spiritual evil so that the temporal good may be obtained. Malice is contrasted with the exterior causes of sinful action, as well as with the other interior causes of sinful action: ignorance and passion. Special emphasis is placed upon the roles of intention and choice in the malicious action, as well as upon the role of evil in the choice that characterizes malice. The groundwork being laid, the fifth and final chapter considers the relationship between vice and malice, which consists in large part of an examination of Thomas's two claims that, first, all sins arising from one's vicious habitus are malicious, and, second, that not all malicious sins are from a vicious habitus. In the former case, this is in part because a vicious habitus makes its object connatural to the sinning agent. In the latter case, this is because malicious sins need not be committed in the manner which vicious sins are: promptly, easily, and pleasurably. Thus, for Thomas, the relationship between vice and malice is characterized differently whether one approaches malice from the side of vice, or vice from the side of malice. I argue that the result is a progression of vice and malice in the sinning agent, according as one's appetites are more or less inclined to their respective objects.
2013
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is the text which had the single greatest influence on Aquinas's ethical writings, and the historical and philosophical value of Aquinas's appropriation of this text provokes lively debate. In this volume of new essays, thirteen distinguished scholars explore how Aquinas receives, expands on, and transforms Aristotle's insights about the attainability of happiness, the scope of moral virtue, the foundation of morality, and the nature of pleasure. They examine Aquinas's commentary on the Ethics and his theological writings, above all the Summa theologiae. Their essays show Aquinas to be a highly perceptive interpreter, but one who also who also brings certain presuppositions to the Ethics and alters key Aristotelian notions for his own purposes. The result is a rich and nuanced picture of Aquinas's relation to Aristotle that will be of interest to readers in moral philosophy, Aquinas studies, the history of theology, and the history of philosophy.
The Difficulties of Mercy: Reading Thomas Aquinas on Misericordia
Studies in Christian Ethics, 2015
In the Questions on charity in the ST (2a2ae, qq. 23-46), Aquinas considers at length the vices opposed to charity, omitting altogether any Question on a vice opposed to mercy. What does the omission reveal about mercy and its difficulties? First, I reject ready-to-hand explanations of the omission. Second, I consider the relation between mercy and compassion, showing that for Thomas the primary impediments to compassion are less vices than psychological forces irreducible to any single vice. Third, I turn to a different set of obstacles to mercy – acts that can arise from compassion, but do not help (and often harm) the person in need. Given these difficulties, how can Thomas take the practice of virtuous mercy to be generally possible? I conclude with a discussion of suffering and the gift of wisdom. In the Questions on charity that appear in 2a2ae of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas considers at length the vices that are opposed to charity and its effects. He treats one vice opposed to love (Question 34 on hatred), two vices opposed to joy (Questions 35-36 on acedia and envy), six vices opposed to peace (Questions 37-42 on discord, contention, schism, war, quarreling, and sedition), and one vice opposed to beneficence (Question 43 on scandal). Somewhat strangely, no Question appears on the vice that is opposed to mercy.