Analyses of the theological virtue of hope tend to focus on its interior dispositional structure, shifting attention away from the social dimensions crucial to its formation and exercise. We argue that one can better appreciate the place of hope in Christian thought by attending to communal features that have been peripheral to or excluded from traditional analyses. To this end, we employ resources from the literature on the extended mind and group agency to develop an account of the (...) class='Hi'>theological virtue of hope as a socially extended virtue—that is, a virtue scaffolded by and enacted within a community whose practices are ordered toward a shared conception of human flourishing. (shrink)

This article discusses the nature of and challenges to the theological virtue of hope in the Ars moriendi or ‘art of dying’. It proposes a renewed ascesis of hope whose shared eschatological vision and set of practices help sustain from despair and prepare Christians for a hopeful and ‘good death’.

In this thesis, I show that the commitments of a theological tradition are a conceptual resource which allows new and more robust responses to criticisms of virtue ethics. Until now, theological virtue ethics has not provided a distinctive response to these criticisms and has had to rely on arguments made by secular virtue ethicists. These arguments do not always address theological concerns and do not take advantage of the unique assets of theological ethics. This thesis resolves (...) this problem by providing a chapter-by-chapter confrontation of criticisms of virtue ethics and offering a specifically theological response to each one. In so doing, it identifies the key theological commitments that enable these responses and constitute a particular strength of theological virtue ethics. I consider criticisms that attack the internal coherence or completeness of virtue ethics as well as those which associate virtue ethics with other problematic philosophical positions. In the former group, I address the claims that virtue ethics is not a complete moral theory, that it cannot explain right action, and that it relies on a flawed concept of character. In the latter, I deal with the arguments that virtue ethics must subscribe to moral particularism, moral relativism or egoism. The final part of the thesis returns to the previous chapters to draw out the concepts that are central to these responses. Theological work on the virtues has made important contributions to ethics but has so far been vulnerable to criticism. This thesis addresses this gap and highlights the advantages that theological commitments have to offer virtue ethics. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether there might be secular analogues of the theological virtues. Beginning with a Kierkegaardian account of the unity and structural underpinnings of Christian accounts of faith, hope and love as distinct from moral virtues more generally, it utilizes ideas from Stanley Cavell, John Stuart Mill and Jonathan Lear to develop a phenomenology of familiar moral experiences whose underlying logic points us in the direction of an essential role that might be served (...) by secular inflections of the theological virtues in living out a full awareness of our finitude. I argue that they help embody a perfectionist orientation to the world, one in which the experience of women is pivotal, and which places great emphasis on the moral value of a certain kind of vulnerability. (shrink)

Apocalypticism has been widely denounced as a framework that devalues the world and its history, funding moral dualism. While this is certainly true of many forms of apocalypticism, it is not an accurate understanding of ancient apocalyptic texts. This article establishes a framework of theological virtue ethics drawn particularly from Herbert McCabe, in which human rationality and Christian morality are understood as political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental. From within this framework, Anathea Portier-Young’s work is considered, relating early Jewish (...) apocalyptic to trauma theory and describing how these texts narrated socio-political catastrophe in order to open up possibilities of resistance and hope. These considerations point us towards a constructive understanding of apocalyptic imagination and praxis within a political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental framework. Contemporary employments of Afro-pessimism in Black theology, particularly in J. Kameron Carter, then interrogate the proposed apocalyptic imagination, asking whether Christian apocalyptic praxis can cultivate hope in the face of the catastrophe of modern racism. (shrink)

It is well-known that Kant defends a conception of God and the final end of our moral striving, called the highest good. In this article, I outline Kant's argument for why we ought to have faith in God and hope for the highest good, and argue that the Kantian argument can be extended in such a way as to show the unity of the theological virtues. This feature of the Kantian account can then have ramifications in further questions (...) regarding the relationship of faith and moral action. (shrink)

During the last two decades virtue ethics has become the focal point of renewed ethical and theological interest. To lead a good life, it proves useful to watch those who have mastered the art of living. The conviction that living is an art is at the heart of virtue ethics. Living a good life requires exercise, and is a question of acquiring a virtuous character rather than of complying with external ethical and legal rules. This renaissance partly builds on (...) Thomas Aquinas. He in turn recovered Aristotelian, Ciceronian and Augustinian thought on virtue ethics. The interpretation and development of virtues and vices form the core of his authorship, as the 'secunda pars' of his 'Summa Theologiae' readily displays. And yet, the most important virtues for him are not the moral ones, such as Justice, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude, but those virtues that are both infused by and aimed at God: Faith, Hope and Love. These are virtues that the philosophers of antiquity were not aware of. To account for them, Aquinas had to adapt the classical understanding of virtues. For Aquinas, the moral virtues come to full fruition only when they are embedded in a life before God, a life lived exercising the God given theological virtues. By ignoring Faith, Hope and Love, the present discussion of virtue ethics not only ignores those virtues that were for Aquinas of utmost importance, but also fails to arrive at a complete understanding of his view of the moral virtues. (shrink)

One of the most common contemporary approaches for developing an ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) involves elaborating guiding principles. This essay explores the limitations of this approach, using the history of bioethics as a comparative case. The examples of bioethics and recent AI ethics suggest that principles are difficult to implement in everyday practice, fail to direct individual action, and can frequently result in a pure proceduralism. The essay encourages an additional attention to virtue, which forms the dispositions of actors, (...) directs them to valued ends, and encourages right action in particular situation to complement principles. Practices and professions like medicine or warfighting that already have rich traditions of reflection on virtue ethics will be especially fruitful fields for developing an AI ethics of virtue. (shrink)

This edited collection is an ecumenical exploration of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love by eight distinguished theologians. It deepens the theological virtues for today by integrating them into the context of the urgency of justice while also discussing justice in the context of faith, hope, and love.

Hope is crucial human agency, but its fragility grounds a substantive challenge to Christian belief. It is not clear how a perfectly loving God could permit despairinducing experiences of divine silence. Drawing upon a distinctively Christian psychology of hope, this paper seeks to address this challenge. I contend that divine silence can act as a corrective to misplaced natural hopes. But there are risks in God’s choice to allow a person to lose all natural hope. Thus, if God is perfectly (...) loving, God ought to find a way to demonstrate goodness to those who are tempted by theological despair. I argue that the Church demonstrates God’s goodness through its merciful care and hope for the afflicted. The local community can act to sustain or recover a person’s capacity to remain open to the gift of hope even in the midst of divine silence. (shrink)

This article examines the account of the relationship between sin and suffering provided by J. L. A. Garcia in “Sin and Suffering in a Catholic Understanding of Medical Ethics,” in this issue. Garcia draws on the (Roman) Catholic tradition and particularly on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, who remains an important resource for Catholic theology. Nevertheless, his interpretation of Thomas is open to criticism, both in terms of omissions and in terms of positive claims. Garcia includes those elements of Thomas (...) that are purely philosophical, such as natural law and acquired virtue, but neglects the theological and infused virtues, the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, and the beatitudes. These omissions distort his account of the Christian life so that he underplays both the radical problem posed by sin (and suffering), and the radical character of the ultimate solution: redemption in Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

This paper considers the prospect of moral transhumanism from the perspective of theological virtue ethics. I argue that the pursuit of goodness inherent to moral transhumanism means that there is a compelling prima facie case for moral enhancement. However, I also show that the proposed enhancements would not by themselves allow us to achieve a life of virtue, as they appear unable to create or enhance prudence, the situational judgement essential for acting in accordance with virtue. I therefore argue (...) that moral enhancement technologies should take a limited or supporting role in moral development, which I call ‘moral supplementation’. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas Orta Çağın en üretken filozoflarından biridir ve onun felsefi görüşleri kendi döneminin yanı sıra birçok çağdaş düşünürü de etkilemiştir. Aquinas’ın düşünce erdemleri ve ahlak erdemleri konusundaki görüşlerinin Aristotelesçi temelleri sıklıkla tartışılmasına karşın ilahi erdemler sınıfında yer verdiği erdemlerin incelenmesi göz ardı edilmiştir. Çağdaş erdem tartışmalarında kural temelli erdem anlayışını savunanlar Aquinas’ı kaynak göstermezler. Oysa bu çalışmada göstereceğimiz gibi, kural temelli erdem yaklaşımının en açık, ayrıntılı ve tutarlı biçimini Aquinas’ta görmekteyiz. Çalışmada ilkin Aquinas’ta erdemin özü, tanımı ve nedenleri incelenerek (...) genel eylem kuramı çerçevesinde ahlaki eylem olarak erdemin ortaya çıkışı gösterilecektir. İkinci olarak, düşünce ve ahlak erdemleri ile ilahi erdemlerin kaynağı ortaya konacaktır. Bu inceleme ile Aquinas’ın erdem anlayışının Aristoteles’in anlayışından farkı ortaya konarak kural temelli erdem anlayışının temelleri gösterilecektir. (shrink)

This essay introduces this special issue on virtue ethics in relation to military AI. It describes the current situation of military AI ethics as following that of AI ethics in general, caught between consequentialism and deontology. Virtue ethics serves as an alternative that can address some of the weaknesses of these dominant forms of ethics. The essay describes how the articles in the issue exemplify the value of virtue-related approaches for these questions, before ending with thoughts for further research.

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

This essay examines the significance of John Wesley’s moral pneumatology in relation to virtue. Although recent scholars have identified this connection, the present work offers a more integrated exploration of righteousness, peace, joy, and love—gifts/virtues inseparable from the Holy Spirit’s work in the economy of salvation according to Wesley’s practical theology. We will see that, for Wesley, believers become participants in God’s nature as the conjoined τέλος of happiness and holiness shapes the soul with respect to outward moral expression. (...) Righteousness, peace and joy tempered by love are core spiritual fruits in Wesley’s pneumatology and collectively an elemental feature of his theological ethics. (shrink)

The virtues have long played a central role in Christian moral teaching. Not surprisingly, over the centuries theologians have produced a number of interesting versions of virtue ethics. In spite of the fact that they hearken back to and are profoundly shaped by a shared set of canonical texts, theological commitments, and ritual observances, many of these versions of virtue ethics differ quite markedly from one another. The perfectionism of Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfection is as (...) different from the agapism of Edwards’ The Nature of True Virtue as it is like it. And neither of them could easily be confused with the natural law theory that Thomas Aquinas develops in the Summa Theologica. Given the length, breadth, and sophistication of this tradition, Christian moral theology offers a wealth of resources for contemporary virtue ethicists, whether or not those ethicists are working within a Christian theological framework. This chapter will highlight four strands within recent theologically-informed work on virtue ethics, each of which is directly relevant to current controversies in both moral theology and moral philosophy. (shrink)

A prominent political historian has recently identified unwarranted optimism and unwarranted pessimism as democracy's “dual dangers.” While this historical analysis highlights the difficulties that accompany democratic hope, our prevailing conceptual vocabulary obscures the resources needed to address them. This essay attempts to recover these resources by excavating insights from Thomas Aquinas, who supplies one of the most systematic accounts of hope in the history of religious and political thought. By appropriating the conceptual structure of Thomas's theological virtue of hope, (...) this essay reconstructs a democratic virtue that perfects acts of hoping in fellow citizens to achieve democratic goods and thereby enables citizens to respond properly to difficulties that tempt presumption and despair. (shrink)

Virtue ethics enjoys a resurgence, yet the topic of virtue cultivation has been largely neglected. This volume remedies this gap, featuring mostly new essays, commissioned for this collection, by philosophers, theologians, and psychologists at the forefront of research into virtue.

Since virtue and the virtues have been important in Reformed theology for most of its history, this essay is devoted to the question of how this tradition may contribute to and interact with contemporary virtue ethics. Reformed concepts of sanctification as open to moral growth, covenant as a narrative context of divine commandments, and unio cum Christo as defining human teleology and virtuousness provide valuable contributions to the development of such an ethics. On the other hand, Reformed conceptions of (...) reform, natural law, common grace and christological eschatology offer theological arguments for overcoming Hauerwas’s problematic overemphasis on the distinctiveness of the church’s ethic. (shrink)

Robert Merrihew Adams has been a leader in renewing philosophical respect for the idea that moral obligation may be founded on the commands of God. This collection of Adams' essays, two of which are previously unpublished, draws from his extensive writings on philosophical theology that discuss metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical issues surrounding the concept of God--whether God exists or not, what God is or would be like, and how we ought to relate ourselves to such a being. Adams studies the (...) relation between religion and ethics, delving into an analysis of moral arguments for theistic belief. In several essays, he applies contemporary studies in the metaphysics of individuality, possibility and necessity, and counterfactual conditionals to issues surrounding the existence of God and problems of evil. (shrink)

Answering the call of the Second Vatican Council for moral theology to 'draw more fully on the teaching of Holy Scripture, ' the authors examine the virtues that both flow from Scripture and provide a lens by which to interpret Scripture.

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

In Narrative Theology and the Hermeneutical Virtues, Goodson offers a philosophical analysis of the arguments and tendencies of the narrative theologies of Hans Frei and Stanley Hauerwas. Goodson concludes that the movement of narrative theology needs the language and logic of the virtues in order for it to survive within the modern academy.

For much of the modern period, theologians and philosophers of religion have struggled with the problem of proving that it is rational to believe in God. Drawing on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, this book, a companion to Theological Philosophy, lays the foundation for an innovative effort to overturn the longstanding problem of proving faith's rationality, and to establish instead that rationality requires to be explained by appeals to faith. To this end, Schumacher advances the constructive argument that rationality (...) is not only an epistemological question concerning the soundness of human thoughts, which she defines in terms of ‘intellectual virtue’. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to develop the account of intellectual virtues offered by Aristotle and St. Thomas in a way which recognizes faith as a good intellectual habit. I go on to argue that, as a practical matter, this virtue is needed not only in theology, where it provides the basis of further intellectual work, but also in the natural sciences, where it is required given the complexity of the subject matter and the cooperative nature of the enterprise.

Over the past decade a quiet revolution has been gathering momentum in the fields of moral philosophy and Christian ethics. These disciplines are undergoing a decisive shift as duty, obligation, and decision yield their central role in the understanding of the moral life to the long neglected concepts of virtue, character, and action. Romanus Cessario presents here a general introduction to the study of Christian moral virtues that reflects the emergence of this new and compelling vision of the moral (...) life. The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics provides an account of the nature of the moral virtues by explaining how the virtues work in our everyday lives. (shrink)

The distance in conceptual space between the philosophical pragmatism of William James and the narrative theologies of Hans Frei and Stanley Hauerwas would appear at first glance to be significant. Hauerwas himself has measured that distance in public, when his extended critique of James supplied a good portion of the agenda for his Gifford Lectures, delivered in 2001 at St. Andrews and subsequently published as With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology. In this book, Jacob (...) Goodson dramatically closes the distance, appealing consistently to James's pragmatism as a resource not only for understanding the thought of contemporary narrative theologians but also for productively... (shrink)

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.

Eight story-reflections, each based on a different Beatitude, offer accounts of immigrant children who fled Central America on their own to escape violence and poverty. Artwork created by immigrant youth and meditations written by Jesuit Father Leo O'Donovan accompany the stories.

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas by Justin M. AndersonThomas V. BergVirtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas by Justin M. Anderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), xiii + 327 pp.To ignore Aquinas's theological backstory to his account of the virtues—namely, his account of grace in its relation to human action—is to distort his account of the virtues. This is (...) the very valid thesis explored by Justin Anderson in Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas. Anderson critiques the tendency among contemporary Anglophone virtue ethicists to quietly bracket his account of grace even as they admire his account the virtues. More pointedly, Anderson holds that Aquinas's account of virtue is inseparable from his account of sin, grace, "and God's presence in human life and action." He endeavors to evidence Aquinas's authentic account of virtue and its "inner reliance on the theological categories of grace, sin, and divine providence" (1).Anderson thus proposes a reading of Aquinas that is diachronic, analytical and systematic, and text-based, and which follows the logic inherent in Aquinas's own reasoning.And he delivers.After a brief overview of Aquinas's understanding of virtue in chapter 1, in chapter 2, Anderson explores the Thomistic distinction that will largely serve as a heuristic for most of the study: the distinction between virtue secundum quid (pagan virtue) and virtue simpliciter, virtue infused in us by God—virtue in the truest sense of the term.In chapter 3, Anderson traces the historical evolution in Aquinas's understanding of grace as this impacts his understanding of the conditions under which a person can possess or embody virtue. He bases this exploration in part on the work of both Henri Bouillard and Bernard Lonergan. First Anderson explores how that evolution came about in the context of the emergence of two powerful categories of thought: the Aristotelian concept of nature in the twelfth century and the category of the supernatural in the thirteenth. According to Bouillard, Aquinas's understanding of grace would [End Page 1421] have been further shaped by two sets of discoveries during his sojourn in Italy in the early 1260s, the first being two anti-Pelagian tracts of St. Augustine, and the second being the Liber de bona fortuna, a Latin compilation, possibly translated by William of Moerbeke, consisting of two chapters on good fortune, one taken from Aristotle's Magna Moralia, and the other from the Eudemian Ethics.Aquinas discovers in Augustine's anti-Pelagian works the contention that the beginning of faith is from God and not from the individual. As with the grace of final perseverance, both initiation and perdurance in faith are gratuitous gifts of God. In his encounter with the Liber (and particularly his consideration therein of the "problem of the first deliberation"), like other medievals, Aquinas "[was] presented Aristotelian investigations regarding the possibility of a divine movement, even unacknowledged by the agent, at the very roots of human action" (98). And, in Thomas's evolved understanding, this divine influence would constitute an inner movement within the human agent apart from those external circumstances ordained by providence.Anderson embraces the thesis that, in this context, and under these influences, Aquinas's understanding of grace underwent a "revolution," that a mature Aquinas—and this is the thesis of Lonergan—moves beyond a consideration of grace merely as habitus (gratia gratum faciens) to a notion of operative grace, of grace as a movement, utilizing "the unique idea of a 'moving grace', a movement of God in, and in some cases with, the human soul" (105).And—Anderson is emphatic—this revolution in thought quickly steers Aquinas clear of what centuries later will be termed semi-Pelagianism, and toward a firmly anti-Pelagian conception of the human capacity for virtue.Chapters 4–9 comprise the second and third parts of the book. It is here that Anderson masterfully and exhaustively engages in the heavy lifting of evincing just how, in fact, Aquinas's account of virtue is inseparable from his theology of grace. On the supposition that Aquinas's mature theology of grace understands the latter to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 755 preaching. The question posed by Richard Kieckhefer whether the mystical birth of the Word in the soul can be considered to be a conscious event (discussed briefly on p. 191) may not be capable of satisfactory resolution in terms of modern psychology, especially pop psychology. But there is ample evidence in Eckhart's own words (cf. Sermons DW 10 and DW 68) that awareness must accompany such (...) a breakthrough to be fully human, even if the awareness itself is not the source of bliss. The preceding misgivings notwithstanding, I consider Frank Tobin's book to be a major contribution by a serious scholar in the field, a necessary adjunct in the rapidly growing number of vcolumes in the field of Eckhart studies. As a primer of scholastic thought and language, it.fa an excellent introductory text, especially for readers unfamiliar with the area. And, despite Tobin's modest reservations, even medieval Germanists and Eckhart specialists will find much in it of value. It is a book that can be consulted thoughtfully 1and 1 even freqently with pl'ofit. Loyola University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois RICHARD WooDs, O.P. The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology. By ROBERT MERRIHEW ADAMS. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. 270. This impressive volume includes most of the material on the philosophy of religion that the author has published in the last fifteen years, together with some additional items. Philosophy of religion has close links with other areas of philosophy, for instance metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind; and several papers argue that theistic belief consorts well with otherwise acceptable positions in these areas. The author roundly contests the view that has recently been in vogue, that there is no matter of fact about the existence and nature of God, and that as a consequence human religious phenomena are the only religious subject matter available for such studies as are to claim academic respectability. He is vehemently 'realist' in this matter. Whatever our beliefs about the issue, he insists, God exists or does not exist, is omnipotent or is not omnipotent, and so forth. The author's realism is combined with what he sees as a moderate scepticism. It is liable to be objected that scepticism naturally and inevitably leads to subjectivism and anti-realism, but this, according to 756 BOOK REVIEWS the author, is a mistake. After all, the assumption, made by persons of common sense and by most philosophers, that physical objects exist and have the properties that they do have independently of our perceiving and thinking about them, implies that there is a gap between objects and our apprehensions of them, which is such that we can never he totally certain of their reality by way of any possible experience. 'This gap inevitably introduces a greater or smaller degree of unprovability into our beliefs about the objectively real. Realism thus goes naturally with some kind of scepticism, and with a need for faith.' This consorts well with the author's view that in matters of religion, as in most matters of concern to philosophers, conclusive proof is impossible, for all that beliefs on these topics may he more or less reasonable, and firm convictions may be appropriate. Thus, while there are no knock-down proofs for the existense of God, the traditional arguments have, and deserve to have, some persausive force, especially when considered cumulatively. Most of the papers here are meant to contribute at least indirectly to such a cumulative case for the existence of God, clearing away some objection, or putting some aspect of theistic belief in a more favorable light than that in which it often appears. The hook is divided into four sections, on faith, the problem of evil, God and ethics, and the metaphysics of theism. While all of the papers display admirable learning and philosophical skill, I was particularly intrigued by the last one, 'Flavors, Colors and God'. Here it is argued, following Descartes and Locke, that the best explanation of the manner in which phenomenal qualia are apparently related to physical properties is a theological one. Elsewhere, Anselm's arguments are formalized with dazzling... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics. By RoMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. x +204. $24.95. What we learn from Holy Scripture about the kind of life which God commands us to lead depends in key part upon our prior natural and rational understanding of many of the key expressions used in Scripture. So it is with those expressions (...) which name and characterize the virtues. We are commanded not only to do certain types of action and to refrain from others, but also to become a certain type of person, one whose qualities of character are such that our actions spring from and give expression to those qualities. We are required not only to do what is just and courageous and temperate, but to do it because we ourselves have become just, courageous, and temperate, injunctions that we could not adequately understand, let alone obey, were it not for a prior knowledge of what these virtues are and what it is that makes them virtues. Moreover we also learn from Scripture about how we fail and about how we are called to account for our failures in the virtues. So we need also to know what it is to develop the virtues and what it is to fail or to be frustrated in that development. Few Christians are or can be theorists of the virtues; but every Christian by her or his actions presupposes the truth of some kind of theory of the virtues and of their development, a theory which, even when not explicitly articulated, enables her or him to find application for the Scriptures in the actions and transactions of everyday life. And every pastor and preacher has to draw upon the resources of some such theory. No theory of this kind can be adequate unless it satisfies two standards: that of fidelity to Scripture and that of conformity to the best understanding which philosophy and the human sciences afford of how human beings are constituted by appetites, passions, will, and reason. What would the content and structure of such a theory, satisfying these two standards, have to be? This is the question posed and answered by Romanus Cessario in his unusually important, stimulating, and incisive book. The content and structure of the theory which he presents are essentially Thomistic, but his theory is only incidentally and in part a historical exposition of St. Thomas's account. It is Thomistic rather in that it uses resources drawn from that account in order to address issues in contemporary moral theology, resources which enable him to identify and to formulate crucial but sometimes neglected 339 340 BOOK REVIEWS questions, as well as to propose answers to them. And in so doing, as we shall see, he presses inquiry to a point such that he needs to go he· yond what St. Thomas provides. Cessario's claim throughout is that the teaching of Scripture can become adequately intelligible to us only in the light afforded by a systematic understanding of the virtues, moral, intellectual, and theological. The only plausible alternatives to the type of theory which he proposes do not include some type of atheoretical reliance on scripture. Plausible alternative standpoints always involve open or covert appeal to some other rival type of moral theory. And Cessario from time to time provides acute and telling criticisms of some of the alternatives more influential at present. But he is careful to avoid :more than a bare minimum of such polemic, sometimes even too careful. In his first chapter, for example, Cessario recognizes that what he has to say about the radical nature of the transformation of character required by the Christian life and of the distinctive qualities of that life puts him at odds with certain theses of Karl Rahner. He notes almost in passing that it is his allegiance to metaphysical realism (with its claims about the teleological ordering of human nature) which gen· erates this conflict with Rahner's positions-positions which of course depend heavily on Heideggerian borrowings. But he never pursues the philosophical issues which divide Thomistic metaphysics from Rahner's blending of Heidegger with a theology aptly... (shrink)

More particularly, the book evaluates the concept of moral exemplarity and its significance in philosophical and theological ethics as well as for ongoing research programs in the cognitive sciences.

The purpose of this essay is to challenge the Modern assertion that economics is a theologically neutral science founded in the pure rationality of number, yet also connected to morality, particularly in regards to the ancient virtue of justice—“to render to each one their due”. Such an understanding has come at great philosophical, moral, and economic cost, as the Great World Recession of 2008–2013 is demonstrating. Instead, I argue that today's current economic crises are due precisely to a loss of (...) orthodox Christian theological understanding of economics and virtue. I make this argument by examining St. Thomas Aquinas’ theological understanding of the virtues and his consequent understanding of political economy in the Summa Theologica. To evaluate the viability of applying Aquinas’ thought in addressing today's severe economic and ethical crises, I also consider Alasdair MacIntyre's call for a revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics along with his advocacy of Thomisic rationalism to combat the West's ethical decline. However, with John Milbank, I maintain that the integral deprivation of Western moral philosophy and political economy requires a distinctly theological solution that supersedes MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelianism and neo-Thomism. This is to be found in a orthodox reading of Aquinas’ Summa. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 19-37 [Access article in PDF] Eudaimonism and Theology in Stoic Accounts of Virtue Michael Gass The Stoics were unique among the major schools in the ancient world for maintaining that both virtue and happiness consist solely of "living in agreement with nature" (homologoumenos tei phusei zen). We know from a variety of texts that both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, if not also (...) Zeno, characterized such conduct both in essentialist terms, as a matter of living purposively in a manner natural for the human species, and in cosmological terms, as a matter of living in agreement with the purposes of nature as a whole, this being regarded as identical to Zeus. This is not to suggest, however, that cosmo-theological speculation figured prominently in the ethical systems of the early Stoics. Judging from extant summaries and discussions of Stoic ethical doctrines, those doctrines were justified in a dialectical fashion, not by appeal to facts about the purposive order of nature but simply from an analysis of ethical concepts patterned after similar analyses by earlier philosophers (most notably, Aristotle). It is this kind of learning that Chrysippus apparently had in mind when he maintained that ethics should be studied prior to undertaking a systematic investigation of nature: [T]here are three kinds of philosopher's theorems, logical, ethical and physical.... [W]hat should be ranked first of these are the logical, next the ethical, third the physical; and what should come last in the physical theorems is theology. 1On the other hand, as we learn from the testimony of Plutarch (and also from other indirect textual evidence examined recently by Jacques Brunschwig), 2 [End Page 19] Chrysippus also believed that physics in general and theology in particular yield a quite distinct, demonstrative knowledge of the matters first studied in ethics. A. A. Long and others have suggested that such knowledge was regarded by the Stoics as encompassing not just information about the ways in which virtuous living is encouraged by, and fits into, the wider aims of nature at large but also a deeper understanding of the very essence of virtue. 3 Specifically, virtue is revealed to consist in a conscious and deliberate harmonization of one's actions with the purposes of the divine architect. Thus, under this interpretation of their ethical intentions, the Stoics thought of the initial, analytical approach to ethics as necessarily incomplete even in its treatment of strictly ethical topics; the systematic study of nature was thought to impart additional wisdom regarding ethical matters.In her recent study of ancient ethical theories, Julia Annas seeks to counter this view of the place of cosmo-theological speculation in early Stoicism by arguing that such a religious characterization of virtue is incompatible with the eudaimonism to which all schools of ancient philosophy, including Stoicism, were committed. 4 She concedes that first Cleanthes and then much later the Roman Stoics did regard virtue in religious terms, but in her assessment this represents a radical departure from mainstream Stoic thinking on this subject (which is identified mostly with the views of Chrysippus and his disciples, all of whom were clearly and consistently committed to the eudaimonistic model of ethical inquiry). Annas argues that whereas the Stoic sage was traditionally depicted as a person whose commitment to morally appropriate conduct stems from his own rational reflection on his own needs and interests, a person who identified completely with the aims of the divine architect in his purposive activity would be someone who surrendered his right to decide for himself what his needs and interests are, and who therefore could even be required to act in violation of what he might judge by himself to be crucial to his happiness.In what follows I demonstrate that this argument, often advanced in the literature as a reductio ad absurdum of divine command theories of morality, falls wide of the mark in the present case due to the fact that those Stoics who characterized virtue in religious terms did so apparently because they regarded a complete identification with... (shrink)