Preface
Preface The translation, Translator's note on the text, and Glossary are the work of Margaret Atkins. The Introduction and Further reading are the work of Thomas Williams. Both editors contributed to the annotations, and each of us read and commented extensively on the work of the other.
Margaret Atkins would like to thank her colleagues at Trinity and All Saints, and above all Geoffrey Turner, for making possible the year's leave in which this translation was largely completed, and Alison and Bob
Samuels for their unfailingly warm welcome on visits to Oxford. The hospitality of the President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, and of the Rector and Professors of the Pontifical University of St Thomas,
Rome, made this an extremely pleasant and fruitful year. She would also like to thank many friends and colleagues for advice and help with Thomisticquestions,andinparticularKevinFlannery,SJ,forguidancein matters Aristotelian, especially with reference to On the Cardinal Virtues, article .
Thomas Williams is grateful for the superbly capable help of his research assistant, Brett Gaul, in tracking down references, indexing, and preparing the typescript for publication. viii
Introduction The basic procedure was simple. The topic would be announced in advance so that everyone could prepare an arsenal of clever arguments.
When the faculty and students had gathered, the professor would offer a brief introduction and state his thesis. All morning long an appointed graduate student would take objections from the audience and defend the professor's thesis against those objections. (And if the graduate student began to flounder, the professor was allowed to help him out.) A secretary would take shorthand notes. The next day the group would reassemble.
This time it would be the professor's job to summarise the arguments on both sides and give his own response to the question at issue. The whole thing would be written up, either in a rough-and-tumble version deriving from the secretary's notes or in a more carefully crafted and edited version prepared by the professor himself. Records of such academic exercises have come down to us under the title 'disputed questions'.
The present text offers translations of some disputed questions on ethical topics presided over by Thomas Aquinas (/–), probably during the period of –, when he was for the second time the Dominican Regent Master in theology at the University of Paris. They examine the nature of virtues in general; the fundamental or 'cardinal' virtues of practical wisdom, justice, courage, and temperateness; the divinely bestowed virtues of hope and charity; and the practical question of how, when, and why one should rebuke a 'brother' for wrongdoing. Whether these were formal public disputations of the sort I have described, or a more low-key version adapted for use in Aquinas's own classroom, is not altogether clear. What is certainly undeniable is that they show Aquinas using the disputed-question format with characteristic brilliance, as we ix
Introduction can see by contrasting the Disputed Questions on the Virtues with discussions of the same topics in the second part of the Summa theologiae, which dates from roughly the same period of Aquinas's career. The articles of the Summa theologiae follow a truncated disputed-question format, suited perhaps to the 'beginners' for whom he intended that great work.
They typically include three opposing arguments for each thesis, and Aquinas's 'determinations' (the 'My reply' or 'I answer that' sections) are ordinarily a couple of paragraphs. In the Disputed Questions on the Virtues the determinations run much longer, and there are (on average) fifteen or sixteen opposing arguments. This more expansive treatment, though initially somewhat challenging for the present-day reader, allows
Aquinas to offer more supporting examples, tease out more nuances, draw more helpful distinctions, and guard against a wider variety of possible misunderstandings than in the Summa.
TheseDisputedQuestionsfocusonvirtue.ButisacloselookatAquinas's account of virtue really the best way into his ethics? Many historians of philosophy see Aquinas principally as a defender of natural law theory.
Others regard his account of happiness, his analysis of human action, or his theory of practical reasoning as the cornerstone of his ethics. One need only look at some recent titles of books on Aquinas's ethics to see the differing emphases: The Recovery of Virtue, Aquinas's Theory of Natural
Law,AquinasontheTwofoldHumanGood,AquinasonHumanAction,Right PracticalReason.Somescholarsarguethattheirfavoureddiscussionhasat least expository priority: in other words, that in laying out Aquinas's ethics one must talk about that area first, and only then can one understand other areas properly. Some go still further and argue for something stronger, which we might call logical priority: that their favoured area is the real heart of Aquinas's ethics, and other areas are at best mere appendages and at worst regrettable excrescences. There has been a particular rivalry between interpreters who focus on natural law theory and those who focus on the doctrine of virtue.
Inanintroductiontoasetofquestionsonvirtueonemightexpecttofind a defence of the centrality of virtue in Aquinas's ethical thought. But in fact I think it is a mistake to describe his theory of virtue as any more or less centralthanhisaccountsofhappiness,thenaturallaw,practicalreasoning, and responsible action. Aquinas's ethics is so thoroughly systematic that one cannot adequately understand any of these accounts without drawing x