The Four Cardinal Virtues

Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge

Josef Pieper

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 1990
• ISBN:
  9780268089894
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Filosofia delle religioni

In The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper delivers a stimulating quartet of essays on the four cardinal virtues. He demonstrates the unsound overvaluation of moderation that has made contemporary morality a hollow convention and points out the true significance of the Christian virtues.

Notes

The quotations from the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas [quotations from the Aquinas translation are taken from the edition published by Burns, Oates & Washbourne Ltd., to whom grateful acknowledgment is made] are indicated in the following notes only by numerals. (For example, “II, II, 47, 5 ad 3” means: Second Part of the Second Part, quaestio 47, articulus 5, reply to Objection 3.) The same code is used for references to the commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (for example, “3, d. 33, 2, 5” means: Book Three, distinctio 33, quaestio 2, articulus 5). The titles of the other works of St. Thomas cited in the text are abbreviated as follows:

Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (Ver.)

Quaestio disputata de virtutibus in communi (Virt. comm.)

Quaestio disputata de virtutibus cardinalibus (Virt. card.)

Quaestio disputata de anima (An.)

Quaestiones quodlibetales (Quol.)

Summa contra Gentes (C.G.)

De regimine principum (Reg. princ.)

Commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle (In Eth.)

Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle (In Pol.)

Commentary on Dionysius the Aeropagite, On the Divine Names (In Div. Nom.)

Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (In Matth.)

Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (In Ephes.)

Commentary on Aristotle’s “On the Soul” (In An.)

Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (In II Cor.)

Commentary on the Epistles to the Romans (In Rom.)

Expositio in Evangelium B. Joannis (In John)

Quaestiones disputatae de malo (Mal.)

PRUDENCE

1. THE FIRST OF THE CARDINAL VIRTUES

1. Prudentia dicitur genitrix virtutum. 3, d. 33, 2, 5.

2. Cf. II, II, 47, 5 ad 3.

3. II, II, 50, 1 ad 1.

4. Virt. comm. 12 ad 23.

5. “Du Caractère métaphysique de la théologie morale de Saint Thomas.” Revue thomiste, Vol. 8 (1925), p. 345.

6. Cf. for example Merkelbach, Summa Theologiae Moralis (Paris, 1930ff.), vol. I, p. 7. It is strange to see that the Spaniard Francisco de Vitoria, who, in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, revived the study of St. Thomas, allows disproportionately little space in his great commentary on the Secunda secundae of the Summa Theologica for discusison of prudence; and that a hundred years later his fellow countryman Johannes a Sancto Thoma, one of the foremost exegetes of Thomas, in his famous Cursus theologicus does not even bother to treat expressly the virtue of prudence. Concerning contemporary moral theology, Garrigou-Lagrange says, “Il est véritablement étonnant . . . que la principale des vertus cardinales tienne si peu de place dans la science morale d’aujourd’hui.” “Du caractère métaphysique de la théologie morale de Saint Thomas.” Revue thomiste, vol. 8 (1925), p. 345.

7. Virt. comm. 6; II, II, 51, 2; Ver. 14, 6. Ambrose in his book on the duties actually says that justice is useless if a man be without prudence (De officiis I, 27). He justifies this statement by a sentence in Scripture (Prov. 17, 16?) which, however, may have been contained only in an ancient translation. In the same chapter of De officiis we find the sentence: “Primus igitur officii fons prudentia est”—The prime fount of duty is prudence.

8. II, II, 4, 5; Ver. 14, 6; Quol. 12, 22.

9. “Prudentia est completiva omnium virtutum moralium.” II, II, 166, 2 ad 1. “Ab ipsa (prudentia) est . . . complementum bonitatis in omni...