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This text looks at Aristotle's claims, particularly the much-maligned doctrine of the mean.
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.
Howard J. Curzer presents a fresh new reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which brings each of the virtues alive. He argues that justice and friendship are symbiotic in Aristotle's view; reveals how virtue ethics is not only about being good, but about becoming good; and describes Aristotle's ultimate quest to determine happiness.
Many of us are so busy that we might be tempted to think we don’t have time to be patient. However, that idea involves a serious underestimation of what patience is and why it matters. In On Patience, Matthew Pianalto revives a richer understanding of what patience is and why it is centrally important in both virtue theory and everyday life. Drawing from a wide range of philosophical and religious sources, Pianalto shows that our contemporary tendency to equate patience with waiting fails to do justice to other aspects of patience such as tolerance, perseverance, and the opposition of patience to anger. With this broader understanding of patience, Pianalto further shows how patience supports the development of other moral strengths, such as courage, justice, love, and hope. In these ways, On Patience sheds light on Franz Kafka’s remark that, “Patience is the master key to every situation,” and Gregory the Great’s perhaps surprising claim that, “Patience is the root and guardian of all the virtues.” This first book-length contemporary philosophical examination of patience will be of interest to students and scholars not just of virtue ethics, but also of moral philosophy more broadly.
This guide to St Thomas Aquinas' virtue ethics provides commentary on essential texts, rendering them accessible to all readers.
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 predominant view of moral virtue can be traced back to Aristotle. He believed that moral virtue must involve intellectual excellence. To have moral virtue one must have practical wisdom - the ability to deliberate well and to see what is morally relevant in a given context. Julia Driver challenges this classical theory of virtue, arguing that it fails to take into account virtues which do seem to involve ignorance or epistemic defect. Some 'virtues of ignorance' are counterexamples to accounts of virtue which hold that moral virtue must involve practical wisdom. Modesty, for example, is generally considered to be a virtue even though the modest person may be making an inaccurate assessment of his or her accomplishments. Driver argues that we should abandon the highly intellectualist view of virtue and instead adopt a consequentialist perspective which holds that virtue is simply a character trait which systematically produces good consequences.
Lisa Tessman's Burdened Virtues is a deeply original and provocative work that engages questions central to feminist theory and practice, from the perspective of Aristotelian ethics. Focused primarily on selves who endure and resist oppression, she addresses the ways in which devastating conditions confronted by these selves both limit and burden their moral goodness, and affect their possibilities of flourishing. She describes two different forms of "moral trouble" prevalent under oppression. The first is that the oppressed self may be morally damaged, prevented from developing or exercising some of the virtues; the second is that the very conditions of oppression require the oppressed to develop a set of virtues that carry a moral cost to those who practice them--traits that Tessman refers to as "burdened virtues." These virtues have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer's own well being. Tessman's work focuses on issues that have been missed by many feminist moral theories, and her use of the virtue ethics framework brings feminist concerns more closely into contact with mainstream ethical theory. This book will appeal to feminist theorists in philosophy and women's studies, but also more broadly, ethicists and social theorists.
Ethicists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the development of virtue in recent years, approaching the topic from the perspectives of virtue ethics and developmental psychology respectively. Such interest in virtue development has spread beyond academia, as teachers and parents have increasingly striven to cultivate virtue as part of education and child-rearing. Looking at these parallel trends in the study and practice of virtue development, the essays in this volume explore such questions as: How can philosophical work on virtue development inform psychological work on it, and vice versa? How should we understand virtue as a dimension of human personality? What is the developmental foundation of virtue? What are the evolutionary aspects of virtue and its development? How is virtue fostered? How is virtue exemplified in behavior and action? How is our conception of virtue influenced by context and by developmental and social experiences? What are the tensions, impediments and prospects for an integrative field of virtue study? Rather than centering on each discipline, the essays in this volume are organized around themes and engage each other in a broader dialogue. The volume begins with an introductory essay from the editors that explains the full range of philosophical and empirical issues that have surrounded the notion of virtue in recent years.