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.

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.

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.

This Element provides an account of Thomas Aquinas's moral philosophy that emphasizes the intrinsic connection between happiness and the human good, human virtue, and the precepts of practical reason. Human beings by nature have an end to which they are directed and concerning which they do not deliberate, namely happiness. Humans achieve this end by performing good human acts, which are produced by the intellect and the will, and perfected by the relevant virtues. These virtuous acts require that the agent grasps the relevant moral principles and uses them in particular cases.

Throughout his writings, Thomas Aquinas exhibited a remarkable stability of thought. However, in some areas such as his theology of grace, his thought underwent titanic developments. In this book, Justin M. Anderson traces both those developments in grace and their causes. After introducing the various meanings of virtue Aquinas utilized, including 'virtue in its fullest sense' and various forms of 'qualified virtue', he explores the historical context that conditioned that account. Through a close analysis of his writings, Anderson unearths Aquinas's own discoveries and analyses that would propel his understanding of human experience, divine action, and supernatural grace in new directions. In the end, we discover an account of virtue that is inextricably linked to his developed understanding of sin, grace and divine action in human life. As such, Anderson challenges the received understanding of Aquinas's account of virtue, as well as his relationship to contemporary virtue ethics.

Is Aquinas's Sententia libri Ethicorum an interpretation of Aristotle based on `principles of Christian ethics'? Or do we have in that work a presentation of the foundation of Aquinas's moral philosophy? Professor Doig answers these questions through an examination of the historical context within which the Sententia was composed. In Chapters 1-2, the work's role as a corrective of earlier commentaries is established. Chapter 3, by examining philosophy at Paris between 1215 and 1283, reveals that the proposal by Aquinas of a moral philosophy would have been unexceptional. Chapter 4's investigation of the principles underlying the moral theory of the Sententia makes apparent that they were regarded by Aquinas as both philosophical and Aristotelian. The date to be assigned the composition of the Sententia is studied in Chapter 5, and the conclusion is drawn, that with some probability, the Sententia is its author's final proposal of moral doctrines. The closing Chapter offers a summary of that moral philosophy against the historical background brought out earlier.

"Aquinas," says Jean Porter, "gets justice right." In this book she shows that Aquinas offers us a cogent and illuminating account of justice as a personal virtue rather than a virtue of social institutions. For Aquinas, justice is more about interpersonal morality than civic or social obligations, and Porter masterfully draws out the contemporary significance of Aquinas's perspective. - back of book.