Thomas Aquinas

John Inglis, John Inglis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351965118
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

This volume contains the seminal articles that define the influence of Aquinas within legal philosophical thought. A comprehensive reference for those new to the field, it covers such topics as the relation of virtue to law, the common good, natural law, natural rights and property rights; together with social and political issues like abortion, feminism, homosexuality, environment, civil disobedience and just war. Attention is devoted to the new natural law theory and its limitations, as well as the place of historical context in the recovery of social thought.

Part I
Virtue

[1]
Aquinas’s Replication of the Acquired Moral Virtues

Rethinking the Standard Philosophical Interpretation of Moral Virtue in Aquinas

John Inglis

Abstract

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.

KEY WORDS: Aquinas, Dominican, fortitude, infused, martyrdom, virtue, William Peraldus

AS INTEREST IN THE VIRTUE ETHICS OF THE MEDDLE AGES continues to grow, Thomas Aquinas is often presented as following Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (NE) in his treatment of moral virtue (Casey 1990, ix, 51, 104; McInerny 1993; 202–5; MacIntyre 1984, 178–80; Stump and Kretzmann 1991, 119). For example, his viewing moral virtue in relation to particular human functions as the acquisition of the human good is, according to Ralph McInerny, derived from Aristotle (1993, 202–5; 1992, 34–35). In fact, Aristotle had presented an influential account of the role that repeated human activity plays in the acquisition of moral virtue. Unlike a rock that cannot be trained to go against its nature, even if tossed up in the air ten thousand times, human beings become perfected through habituation because by nature they are able to acquire virtue (NE 1103al8–25). This view of virtue acquisition was important for Aquinas, yet examination of his treatment of moral virtue within the modern disciplinary boundaries of philosophy often results in a one-sided approach. While philosophers see the commonalities between Aquinas and Aristotle, they less often consider the fact 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, a level that both parallels and extends the work of the acquired virtues.¹ I do not wish to imply that philosophers make no mention of the theological context of this discussion. McInerny, for example, notes that Aquinas's theology presupposes his knowledge of philosophy (1993, 214; 1992, 42–43; 1982, 122–23). Yet he does not state what implications Aquinas's theology had for his account of the moral virtues. The reader is left with the impression that Aquinas offered a philosophical theory of virtue ethics for the Christian that could stand apart from theology.

Recently, Christian ethicists have made great strides in retrieving a more balanced view of Aquinas's account of moral virtue. For example, Jean Porter asks provocatively, "... how much is really left of an Aristotelian account of the virtues when Aquinas's overall theory is in place?" (1992, 33). She argues persuasively that we need to pay attention to the manner in which Aquinas used, and ultimately subverted, Aristotle's account of moral virtue within his treatment of infused moral virtue. In a similar vein, Pamela Hall explains that, for Aquinas, this type of virtue transforms the attachments a person has to material objects so that he or she is not hindered from loving God (1994, 80). These discussions often concentrate on Aquinas's distinction between acquired and infused virtue.²

What has not been discussed at any length in this recent literature is how the reception of infused moral virtue relates to acquired moral virtue already possessed. For example, after introducing Aquinas's view of infused virtue in Moral Action and Christian Ethics, Porter turns her attention to the acquired virtues without unpacking the relations between the two (1995, 146–50, 170–200). Hall notes that acquired virtue has a restricted sphere of activity for one who lives the life of infused virtue, but as this is not her project, she does not develop this point (1994, 85). However, this is, in my judgment, an important and illuminating issue that deserves careful attention: If acquired virtue does not disappear after the reception of infused virtue, then what implications does the latter have for the exercise of the former? While the difference between acquired and infused moral virtue has been considered in relation to Aquinas's treatment of the virtues in general in the first part of the second part of the Summa theologiae, I will examine his treatments of the particular virtues in the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum and in the second part of the second part of the Summa theologiae. By situating Aquinas's arguments in his own interpretive context—the Dominican context—I will develop the argument that by replicating the acquired moral virtues by way of infusion from the highest good, Aquinas, counter to Aristotle, placed the acquired virtues within a tightly circumscribed field.

What follows is neither a proposal of influences nor an interpretation according to philosophical categories of the late twentieth century; it is, rather, an attempt to read Aquinas on the limits placed on acquired virtue within his own intellectual environment. While not attempting to be exhaustive, I hope to shed light on his account of moral virtue in a way that discloses its implications for contemporary virtue theory.

1. The Dominican Context

As a member of the Dominican order, Aquinas had reason to be interested in moral virtue for the preparation of preachers and confessors. For instance, Humbert of Romans, who was elected Master of the Order in 1254, indicated the need for moral education in his De eruditione praedicatorum by claiming that townspeople and villagers would not know how to live moral lives without a type of preaching that would provide illumination (Humbertus 1888–89, 2:437). In fact, as Leonard Boyle has pointed out, the first literary works of the order were commissioned as reference works to serve these purposes.³ Raymond of Peñafort, Master of the Order from 1238 to 1240, wrote and revised one of these, his Summa de casibus poenitentiae, between 1224 and 1235 (Mulchahey 1998, 534–39). This text, structured according to different types of moral problems, supplied what Dominicans needed to know in order to hear confessions and give moral advice. Boyle has established that Aquinas used this work in writing accounts of virtue and vice in his Summa theologiae, even to the point of reproducing specific texts (Boyle 1982, 5–7). Since writers in that period possessed a more communal notion of authorship than we have today, it was not uncommon for authors to incorporate others' work into their texts (Destrez 1933, 87–105). While Raymond's text was useful for Aquinas, it did not supply him with the framework for his mature treatment of moral virtue.

1.1 The education of Dominicans

The work that Aquinas did find useful for constructing the second part of his Summa theologiae was the Summa de vitiis et virtutibus (SVV) of William Peraldus, which was completed in two parts around 1250, shortly before Aquinas began to lecture on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard.⁴ Peraldus was an important Dominican preacher and writer who is on record for preaching in Vienne around 1249 and holding the post of Dominican prior at Lyons in 1261 (Dondaine 1948, 163). His Summa was an authoritative text within the order, one of the significant reference works to be read at each Dominican house, as may be seen in the admonishment of the Spanish provincial chapter of 1250 that priors at each house in its domain were to make available and use Peraldus's Summa (Friars 1893-, 3:415). It was to be read and commented on by a trained lector at each community.

Only a small minority of members were sent to a university or studium generale for the type of higher education enjoyed by Aquinas and Albert the Great. The vast majority of Dominicans were educated by lectors within their own religious houses. They did not receive advanced education, but they were expected to attend scheduled conferences throughout the liturgical year. For this reason, Humbert of Romans stated (in his Liber de instructione officialium, written after his resignation as Master in 1263) that a copy of Peraldus's Summa should be provided in each religious house for general use throughout the order (Humbertus 1888–89, 2:265; Boyle 1982, 15; on dating the Liber, see Tugwell 1982, 34). Multiple copies of the work appear on the late thirteenth-century list of books in the collection of the library of Saint Catherine's, the Dominican convent at Barcelona, and this provides further evidence of its use in education (Denifle 1886, 2:202, 242–48). These multiple copies were left to the library by individual members of the convent who had acquired copies of Peraldus's text for study over many years; it therefore represents their actual reading and teaching. Thus, it seems clear that study of Peraldus's Summa—together with Raymond's Summa de casibus poenitentiae—was necessary in order for lectors to prepare and deliver the moral conferences that took place every week or two (Boyle 1982, 21; Mulchahey 1998, 541).

In the generation before the appearance of Aquinas's Summa theologiae, no treatise on moral virtue was as frequently used in Dominican circles as Peraldus's Summa. While Raymond had discussed different types of moral cases like simony, lying, and murder, Peraldus offered an intellectual exposition of moral virtue and vice in general, together with a treatment of the individual virtues and vices. He wrote a speculative account of the moral life that complemented Raymond's more practical description –which was why members regarded Peraldus as the major reference on moral questions having to do with virtue and vice (Boyle 1982, 21; Mulchahey 1998, 541). As I will argue, Aquinas then used this work as the model for his treatment of virtue in his commentary on the Sentences and in the second part of his Summa. The point I wish to make is that understanding the limits that Peraldus placed on the acquisition of moral virtue helps to clarify the position of Aquinas within his Dominican context.

1.2 Peraldus’s “Summa”

Peraldus divided his Summa de vitiis et virtutibus (SVV) into two parts, one devoted to vice and the other to virtue. The treatment of virtue was divided into two sections, the first on virtue in general and the second on the individual virtues.⁵ In the first section, Peraldus drew a contrast between a philosophical view of virtue and a more comprehensive one that had implications for his conception of the relation between the acquired virtues and the highest good. He recognized that in the philosophical view, virtue is habitual activity that is directed to the human good (SVV 2.1.2; 1:2). The focus here is on what one accomplishes with his or her own activity. The more comprehensive view conceives virtue to be a type of action that tends to the highest good based on assistance freely given by God. Peraldus devoted the majority of his remarks in this section to this more comprehensive conception of virtue.

He criticized the philosopher's view of virtue as an incomplete account. In fact, he came close to reducing acquired virtue to theological virtue with the claim that what philosophers call virtue in moral doctrine, sacred Scripture frequently calls grace (SVV 2.1.2; 1:2). While Peraldus discussed the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, he placed them in a strikingly theological context. To prepare for this view, he cited the Confessions of Augustine (Confessions 4.16.30) in order to make the point that philosophers who talk about virtue only in the philosophical sense have turned their faces toward the things of this world. By not facing the divine, they fail to gain illumi...