Chapter 1: The Virtuous Life
1
The Virtuous Life
(ST I-II, qq. 55–70)
We all aspire to be morally good and upright people. If we were asked what being “morally good” means, we might respond that it means doing good things and avoiding bad things. It means treating people fairly and decently. As Christians in particular, we might include obeying the commandments—and, even more particularly as Catholics, we might add that being good includes following the church’s moral teaching. But if pressed to say more, we might begin to move from what morally good people do or don’t do, to the kinds of attitudes that they have: caring, generous, balanced, and honest. And it is precisely in moving in the direction of such attitudes that we move into the realm of virtues.
It is one thing to do good on one occasion or from time to time. It is quite another to do good reliably and consistently. Even wicked people can do good things occasionally. Being truly good—as distinct from being able to do the right thing every once in a while—involves being able to do good in a regular and dependable way. Virtues are precisely the abiding dispositions or tendencies that enable us to be reliable and consistent in right action.
In fact, a virtuous person can be relied on to guide us to the good even when the right response seems difficult to determine. Let’s say, for example, that we need some help in deciding on a specific course of action in a complex situation with a number of possible options. We say: “Let’s go talk to George. He’s always good at working these kinds of things out” (that is, he has the virtue of prudence). Or we might be asking one another, “What’s the fair thing to do here? Let’s go ask Mary because she is all about fairness and has a good sense for thinking through such things” (that is, Mary has the virtue of justice). “How much should we drink at the party tonight? Let’s watch to see what Marty does” (that is, he has the virtue of temperance). These examples suggest that the people mentioned above have an abiding and reliable tendency to act in good ways. It is part of who they are. And their virtue is a reliable tool in the moral life for themselves and for those around them.
What is Virtue (and What is Vice)?
Aquinas defines virtues as “habitual dispositions” that lead us reliably to do the good. A virtue, he says, is a habitus which suggests that a virtue is a kind of habit. But it is not the mindless kind of habit that we can fall into—habits like tapping your fingers on a table while you wait, whistling when you walk along, or endlessly clearing your throat. A virtue is certainly not a habit like smoking. For Aquinas, a habitus is a kind of alteration in our natural abilities. The virtues that guide our moral lives are a kind of modification in our will—that is, in our ability to choose to act for the good in certain areas of our life. For example, we acquire the virtue of chastity by resisting one temptation after another, by choosing to act in a chaste manner when we could have acted otherwise, and picking ourselves up when we fail and starting again. Gradually, these repeated decisions and actions modify our will itself—our power to decide—so that it becomes easier to be chaste reliably and consistently.
Virtues are similar to the kind of habitual skills that we learn with repetition. The tennis player or golfer practices the right swing, over and over again. At first, she must think through what she is doing: how she is holding the racket or golf club, the position of her feet and her elbows, etc. When she notices a mistake or when someone offers her a helpful observation, she makes adjustments and tries again. But she keeps repeating the action until it becomes second nature, and she can perform her skill well without thinking about it. Eventually, she no longer has to think about her swing at all—except how she can make it better and better. The same could said about habituated skills like typing, playing the piano, dancing, or cooking. The virtues that guide our moral life are like these learned and practiced skills, except that virtues are habits that guide our actions to seek what is truly good.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of virtues as “firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections . . . that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith” (CCC 1804; see the Catechism, paragraphs 1803–45, for an overview of the virtues). Virtues make us firm and strong in being directed to and in doing the good. In fact, Saint Thomas says that they bring us smoothness, ease (power), and promptitude in accomplishing the good. For example, if I possess the virtue of temperance in eating, when I am faced with a tempting but unhealthy snack, I can resist it without struggle, resolutely, and without vacillation in making the right choice. We all know from experience that it is quite possible to see very clearly what we ought to do, but find ourselves too morally weak to do it—or at least the right choice takes a lot of time and internal effort to accomplish. Virtues give us spontaneity and even a kind of joy in doing the good.
One of the principal characteristics of a virtue is that it is always directed to the good. The virtue of fortitude or courage enables us in a reliable way to overcome what stands in the way of attaining a good. The police officer, for example, shows courage in facing danger to protect lives. When, on the other hand, someone is able to face obstacles to accomplish evil, it may look like courage, but it is not. It is a firm resolve and fearlessness in pursuit of selfish or evil gain, but it is not courage. Thieves who are willing to face threat of arrest or the possibility of an armed homeowner in order to steal certainly possess an ability to face danger, but they do not possess the virtue of courage. In the same way, the virtue of prudence enables us to consistently choose well; but it is craftiness or shrewdness, not prudence, to know how to efficiently and effectively do evil.
The virtues aid us in doing good and help us to do so consistently. Once we have them, they endure within us unless we begin to act against them. It is possible, for example, to have the virtue of justice, but lose it by one unfair, unjust action after another. It is not usually just one act of failing to respect what is due to others that undoes the virtue of justice, but many such acts over time. In the end, virtues do not determine our action or prevent us from acting against them. They do, however, make it more unlikely and even difficult to do so.
Habitus is a vice, as well. It is the opposite of a virtue. A vice is a habitual disposition or an abiding tendency to do evil. Like moral virtues, we build them up, one decision at a time. Once we have them, they give us smoothness, ease, and promptitude in doing evil. The vice of dishonesty grows one decision after another, progressing from little white lies to more significant untruths, from occasionally to regularly. Eventually, telling lies can be like second nature. Like virtues, vices do not determine my action—I still have the possibility of choosing rightly—but it will be far more difficult to do so. This explains why we can sincerely repent, for instance, of a vice like backbiting. We go to confession and receive absolution and divine help to do better. But if we truly had a vice, it remains in us. It is true that God is helping us, but at a natural, human level, that modification in my will (the habitus) remains there. Sadly, I will struggle to avoid acting on that particular vice until, one temptation resisted after another, I have overcome it.
In his famous ST, Aquinas devotes most of the second part (that is, two whole volumes) to the virtues. He tells us there that the virtues and vices are “intrinsic principles of action.” When it comes time to decide and act, we carry within us (or sadly we lack) the inner power to decide and act in the area of that particular virtue. In addition to these interior empowerments to act, Aquinas says that there are three extrinsic forces (principles) at work in our deciding and acting: grace (exterior, in the sense that it comes from outside of ourselves—that is, from God), law (of various kinds), and the devil. Ideally, all of these principles of acting (except the vices and the devil, of course) function together in us so that we can be reliably guided and strengthened in doing the good.
Types of Virtue
Aquinas identifies a number of categories of virtues. One of the principal ways of distinguishing these broad types is the way in which the virtues come to us. The kinds of virtues that we have been thinking about so far are acquired by our own effort. Not surprisingly, then, we call them acquired or natural virtues. Among these virtues, there are some that guide and empower our intellects—that is, our understanding, our thinking, our reasoning—and these are called intellectual virtues. The virtues that shape and guide the will in order to choose and do the good are called moral virtues. Aquinas maintains that, although the intellectual virtues are essential, they are not really, strictly speaking, properly virtues in the same way as the moral virtues. This is because, by definition, all virtues are aimed at the good. But one could potentially use one’s ability to think or reason for an evil end.
Principal among the moral virtues are the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude/courage, and temperance). The word “cardinal” comes from a Greek word meaning “hinge.” For Aquinas and for the classical tradition, all of the other virtues are related to these four fundamental moral virtues. They will be the principal focus of the following chapters. In discussing these four, Aquinas does not neglect some of the other major virtues that are related to each cardinal virtue, and his teaching on these virtues is insightful and helpful (and, sadly, often neglected in discussions of the cardinal virtues).
Beyond the virtues that we can acquire on our own (always, of course, with the help of grace) are the virtues that God gives us directly. These are the infused or supernatural virtues, and the principal of these virtues are the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. These virtues cannot be acquired or built up on our own. The infused virtues are God’s gift to us in order to empower our natural virtues, but more particularly to help us attain more than a merely human fulfillment. God alone can give us faith to know God, hope to expect divine union, and charity to enter into a mutually self-giving friendship with the Trinity. Although they are gifts and come to us with grace, the infused virtues must be embraced and nurtured within us so that they can function more effectively in our daily lives.
Virtues and Becoming Fully Human
Saint Thomas maintains that every human being is naturally inclined to “happiness” (beatitude), but not to happiness understood in a superficial way. Rather, every human person is naturally disposed to find the true happiness that comes with being fully and truly human. Traditionally, this has been referred to as “perfection,” not in the sense of flawless and without failing, but in the sense of fully and authentically developed. To say this another way, we all naturally tend to true moral excellence—or really, the excellence of our humanity itself. We inherently tend to a kind of moral beauty which is the person fully and properly developed.
As Christians, we know that such human fulfillment can only be found ultimately in union with God. In Christian faith, we know the shape of such authentic human development through the teaching and example of Jesus who is both the perfect revelation of God and the perfect realization of authentic humanity. Implicitly, all people tend to this “perfection” in God; but even without this as an explicit orientation, every human person is directed to their own authentic development at least at a natural level. While this pursuit can never be complete without its transcendent orientation, it can be real enough at its own level and become the path to a true human goodness. We know, in fact, from experience that many people without Christian faith live higher moral ideals and manifest more virtuous lives than we who profess Christian faith.
We naturally tend to our own “perfection,” but we are sinners. We are sometimes blind to good and to the means to attain it. And we are sometimes too weak to choose goodness when we can see it. Our natural desires can pull us in different directions, blinding our ability to know the good to be done as well as our ability to accomplish it. We are sinners, and life and the many choices to be made can be complex and difficult. The virtues (aided by grace) help us to order and empower our ability to know and do the good, thus helping us to choose our own authentic development as persons. The virtues form us so that we can become our best selves as human beings.
In the ST, Aquinas first discusses the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. This makes perfect sense since it is these virtues that are given to us by God so that our lives, attitudes, and choices can be directed to our truest fulfillment in divine union. A discussion of the natural, acquired virtues follows at length. And while his teaching on these natural virtues can be studied on their own—as we will be doing here—it is clear that he means for them to be understood in the fundamentally theological context which he has already laid out.
The virtues help us both to do good and to become good ourselves. As “intrinsic principles” of human action, the moral virtues direct us to make the right choices and to perform good actions with ease, smoothness, and promptness. At the same time, the virtues together form our overall moral character—the kind of people we are. Acting consistently for the good builds our character as it draws us closer to what it authentically means to be a human person: someone who is able to decide well (prudence), treat others with the respect that is due them (justice), confront obstacles that stand in the way of doing the good (fortitude/courage), and maintain a true passion for goodness balanced with other well-ordered natural human appetites (temperance). The virtues help us to do good and to become good in the consistent doing.
The life of virtue is a way of living that pursues true human excellence, precisely as a human person rather than in a particular skill or external achievement. In this sense, the virtuous person seeks to live a life that is authentically worthy of the human person rather than a life that is controlled by selfish desires and intentions. The virtuous life is the pursuit of a true moral beauty—the human person at his or her human best, and thus as God has willed—and the true living out of our fundamental human dignity. We are most genuinely ourselves when we are people of virtue.
But the virtuous life of individuals exists in a broader, communal, and societal context. It is an essential part of the classical sense of virtue, inherited by Aquinas, that good persons make for good societies. Virtuous persons contribute to communities and to a society of virtue. Or, to say it in the reverse order, in order to have a truly good society of any kind—a society worthy of human persons—its members must be men and women in pursuit of virtue. One does not have to share the profoundly social and relational understanding of the human person held by Saint Thomas and classical authors in order to share their conclusion: we live together in a healthier and more human way if we can each decide well (with reference not only to our own good but to the good of others), if we are disposed always to give to people what it is due to them, if we can overcome what stands in the way of realizing the good for ourselves and others, and if we can bring our natural passions into a right balance with what is good for us and those around us.
The Interrelationship of the Virtues
In reality, we are all a “mixed bag” of virtues in the process of development and of vices that are hopefully in the process of being de-habituated or weakened. We have not yet arrived at a fully developed moral beauty or excellence. Our moral character is not yet as sterling as it could be and ought to be. This, then, is the task of the moral life for us as human persons and as Christians: with the help of grace, to become what we were meant to be. We must be continually at work in order to grow in virtues and overcome our vices.
For Aquinas, all of the virtues are interrelated and mutually dependent. Each of us, in the end, is one unit. In fact, the “unit” doesn’t always work together in harmony. Our appetites can pull in different directions. We can know the good to be done with a crystal-clear vision, but find ourselves unable to carry it out. We can seem to possess one virtue in its fullness while seeming deficient or even totally lacking in others. But more deeply and always, each of us is a single unit. Our intellect, our will, and our appetites all come together in a single, unique individual. For Aquinas, because of this fundamental unity of the capacities within ourselves, if we could fully possess one virtue, we would necessarily possess all of them. And, if we truly lacked one, we would lack them all.
Even though this interrelationship of virtues is not always clear as we continue along life’s moral path, there is a profound truth here. We might think of a public official caught in some public scandal concerning some personal transgression or interpersonal infidelity. Politicians—like ministers, teachers, and every other human being—are prone to fall. I raise this example only to say something about how our vices and virtues exist in an inseparable way within each of us. Some voters considering this scandal-ridden official’s possible re-election might want to separate his or her “private” life and personal virtues and vices from the person’s public responsibilities and capabilities. But each of us is a unit, and our virtues and vices are interconnected within us. If I am unfaithful or unjust in my personal life—unable to act in a just and temperate way—how could it be that this failure in virtue would not impact other aspects of my life, private and public? Of course, to some degree, we are all a collection of vices and virtues that can be distinguished but not easily and completely compartmentalized. Even though we might find it practically useful to focus our energy at a particular time on overcoming one vice (for example, gluttony) or growing a particular virtue (for example, temperance in eating), we can never rest content until we have overcome all of the vices and developed all of the virtues. Only then will we have arrived at a truly worthy, excellent, or beautiful human life.
In a particular way, Aquinas notes that there is something of the cardinal (“hinge”) virtues in all of the virtues. Every virtue involves the ability to know the proper means to realize the good (prudence). Every virtue requires the ability to keep the good of others in mind (justice). Every virtue depends on the ability to balance and order our desires in order to seek what is truly good (temperance). And no virtue can function unless the person has the ability to confront what stands in the way of the virtuous act (courage/fortitude) and the good to be realized.
With this brief introduction to the virtues in mind, we now turn to each of the cardinal virtues and to its related virtues (and vices). We do so in the order laid out by Saint Thomas in the ST.