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Author: Stephen Theron
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527510298
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 123
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Book Description
Thomas Aquinas offers teleological systematisation of the habits needed for human flourishing. His metaphysical jurisprudence remodels ethics upon this, rather than on a moral precept. “Eternal law” governing the world determines “natural law”, reflected in human legislation (a variety of the “anthropic principle”). Finally, law, unwritten, is infused spirit as self-consciousness, “universal of universals”. Acquired virtues elicit this, become effusion, represented in religion as gifts or graces. But mind’s or spirit’s omnipresence, necessarily “closer to me than I am to myself”, supersedes the abstractions of heteronomy versus autonomy. The habitual well-being brought by prudence, justice, courage and temperance prompts this picture of gifts and graces. The “theological virtues”, faith (explicit or implicit) and hope fulfilled in love, “crown” our natural rationality, set toward as being the universal. “Become what you are”. Heteronomous law is thus “defused” at root by grounding it entirely upon immovable spiritual (mental) inclination towards universal fulfilment as naturally desired, reflection shows. Virtue, finally, is best assessed as a capacity for the individually beautiful yet habit-based action, Aristotle’s to kalon. Aquinas puts this picture as summed up in the beatitudes of the “Sermon on the Mount”.
Author: Stephen Theron
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527510298
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 123
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Book Description
Thomas Aquinas offers teleological systematisation of the habits needed for human flourishing. His metaphysical jurisprudence remodels ethics upon this, rather than on a moral precept. “Eternal law” governing the world determines “natural law”, reflected in human legislation (a variety of the “anthropic principle”). Finally, law, unwritten, is infused spirit as self-consciousness, “universal of universals”. Acquired virtues elicit this, become effusion, represented in religion as gifts or graces. But mind’s or spirit’s omnipresence, necessarily “closer to me than I am to myself”, supersedes the abstractions of heteronomy versus autonomy. The habitual well-being brought by prudence, justice, courage and temperance prompts this picture of gifts and graces. The “theological virtues”, faith (explicit or implicit) and hope fulfilled in love, “crown” our natural rationality, set toward as being the universal. “Become what you are”. Heteronomous law is thus “defused” at root by grounding it entirely upon immovable spiritual (mental) inclination towards universal fulfilment as naturally desired, reflection shows. Virtue, finally, is best assessed as a capacity for the individually beautiful yet habit-based action, Aristotle’s to kalon. Aquinas puts this picture as summed up in the beatitudes of the “Sermon on the Mount”.
Author: Angela McKay Knobel
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268201080
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
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.
Author: Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
This work places Thomas Aquinas's moral theory in its full philosophical and theological context in a way that makes Aquinas accessible to students and interested general readers.
Author: Andrew Pinsent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136479147
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
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.
Author: Matthew Levering
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268106355
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
In Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, Matthew Levering argues that Catholic ethics make sense only in light of the biblical worldview that Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom of God by pouring out his spirit. Jesus has made it possible for us to know and obey God’s law for human flourishing as individuals and communities. He has reoriented our lives toward the goal of beatific communion with him in charity, which affects the exercise of the moral virtues that pertain to human flourishing. Without the context of the inaugurated kingdom, Catholic ethics as traditionally conceived will seem like an effort to find a middle ground between legalistic rigorism and relativistic laxism, which is especially the case with the virtue of temperance, the focus of Levering’s book. After an opening chapter on the eschatological/biblical character of Catholic ethics, the ensuing chapters engage Aquinas’s theology of temperance in the Summa theologiae, which identifies and examines a number of virtues associated with temperance. Levering demonstrates that the theology of temperance is profoundly biblical, and that Aquinas’s theology of temperance relies for its intelligibility upon Christ’s inauguration of the kingdom of God as the graced fulfillment of our created nature. The book develops new vistas for scholars and students interested in moral theology.
Author: Joseph Earl Bender
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 116
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Book Description
Author: Stephen Theron
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640152514
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 119
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Book Description
Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Ethics, grade: No specific grade, Stockholm (Sankt Sigfrids Prästseminarium), course: Given as a course in ethics for seimarians, 1994, language: English, abstract: The crisis of ethics in our time calls for a synoptic view capable of kindling confident teleological motivation, in persons and societies. It is futile to search for the "clear and distinct idea" in a field of such universal importance as ethics, for which the ordinary discourse of humanity is well suited. Rather, our notions must be open, open to the analogies in things and situations, and open too to the real human situation in all its depth and breadth, such things as the desires of the human heart, the burdens of finitude, misfortune and death, the polarization of the sexes, the insights and traditions of religion, the exigences of politics, the compelling witness of the arts and of literature. The reason for this universal importance, such that a field of discourse considered especially intractable or even, recently, "queer" (J.L. Mackie), cannot be isolated as if somehow less scientific and hence inherently problematical or "emotive", was clearly stated by Aristotle when founding this science, this theoria of praxis. It is that ethics is concerned with the nature and end of man, with man, that is, in view of his characteristic action or praxis. That is to say, to take the short way for the present, it is the science of human happiness, of how to be happy. But this is the object of all human endeavour without exception. Hence, if its content be ever identified, e.g. as the vision of God, then it will follow that this content is the ultimate aim of all our civil and social arrangements, a conclusion that St. Thomas unhesitatingly draws.1 1 Summa contra gentiles III 37.
Author: Thomas Aquinas
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603844449
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 426
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Book Description
The third volume of The Hackett Aquinas, a series of central philosophical treatises of Aquinas in new, state-of-the-art translations accompanied by a thorough commentary on the text.
Author: J. Budziszewski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107165784
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
This guide to St Thomas Aquinas' virtue ethics provides commentary on essential texts, rendering them accessible to all readers.
Author: John Michael Rziha
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813216729
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
During the last few centuries, a practical dichotomy between God and humans has developed within moral theory. As a result, moral theory tends to focus only on humans where human autonomy is foundational or only on God where divine commands capriciously rule. However, the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas overcomes this dichotomy. For Thomas, humans reach their perfection by participating in God's wisdom and love. Perfecting Human Actions explores the ways humans participate in eternal law--God's wisdom that guides and moves all things to their proper action. The book begins with a thoughtful examination of the philosophic recovery of the notion of participation in Thomistic metaphysics. It then explains Thomas's theological understanding of the notion of participation to show how humans are related to God. It is discovered that when performing human actions, humans participate in the eternal law in two ways: as moved and governed by it, and cognitively. In reference to participation as moved and governed, humans are directed by God to their proper end of eternal happiness. This mode of participation can be increased by perfecting the natural inclinations through virtue, grace, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In reference to cognitive participation, humans as rational creatures can know their proper end and how to attain it. Through this knowledge of moral truths, the intellect participates in the eternal law. Cognitive participation is perfected by the intellectual virtues (especially faith) and the gifts of the Holy Spirit (especially wisdom). The book concludes by showing how the notion of human participation in the eternal law is a much better foundation for moral theory than the contemporary notion of autonomy. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Rziha is associate professor of theology at Benedictine College. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: " A] competent and indeed masterful study. . . . Rziha's book is to be welcomed as not just an important, but indeed an overdue contribution to the contemporary recovery of Aquinas's moral theory. More importantly, this study is of surpassing importance in advancing the correct understanding of the relationship between human freedom and natural law. . . . Rziha's lucidly written and well-documented study displays all the characteristics of a competent and learned interpretation of the thought of the doctor communis according to the highest standards of current Aquinas scholarship."--Reinhard Hutter, Thomist "Rziha explores at length the two modes by which human participate in God's eternal law: as moved and governed by it and as having knowledge of it. . . . T]his book proves to be something of a comprehensive course in Thomistic thought. This project is supported by extensive and meticulous footnote reverences to texts of Aquinas." --Janine Marie Idziak, Speculum
