Conscience and Other Virtues: From Bonaventure to MacIntyre

2. Bonaventure's View of Conscience and Synderesis

t w o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BONAVENTURE’S VIEW OF CONSCIENCE and SYNDERESIS Medieval Background to Bonaventure’s Views In their treatment of the virtues and conscience, the medieval schoolmen drew on the works of both Plato and Aristotle; but they were heavily influenced by Augustine’s modification of the classical tradition. While acknowledging his debt to Plato and Aristotle, Augustine (d. 430) constantly criticized their views for failing to take into account the critical role of God in any human activity. In fact, Augustine went so far as to claim that what the Greeks consider virtues Christians should view as vices: “No, the virtues on which the mind preens itself as giving control over the body and its urges, and which aim at any other purpose or possession than God, are in point of fact vices rather than virtues” (City of God, Book XIX, chapter 25). Augustine says this principally because he adds a new component to the Greek view of 22 . . . . . . . Historical Background virtue. In addition to claiming (in agreement with Aristotle in Book II, chapter 4, of the Nicomachean Ethics) that a virtue is developed by a person who knows what he is doing, chooses to perform the relevant acts, chooses these acts for their own sakes, and performs his actions from a firm and unchangeable character, Augustine claims that a virtue has to be developed “for the love of God.”1 In fact, Augustine, in Book I, chapter 15, of On the Morals of the Catholic Church, defines the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude , and temperance as differing expressions of love of God. If a person lacks love of God and fails to develop the virtues with the explicit intention of developing them for the love of God, the person cannot develop the virtues according to Augustine. The addition of this intentional element in the development of the virtues has a tremendous impact on later discussions of the virtues in the medieval period and the Reformation. Moreover, the linking of the virtues to love of God also bears on the issue of the unity of the virtues.2 Because the virtues are identified with “the love of God” for Augustine, if one has love of God, one has all the virtues. Likewise one can possess a virtue only if one has love of God, and with this love one possesses them all. Yet, Augustine allows that there are degrees of the possession of love of God and, consequently, degrees of possession of the virtues. In fact, until one perfects the love of God, one can possess certain virtues while displaying the vices of other virtues.3 Apparently, it is only in a life “found in no one as long as he lives the life of man” that there is perfect love of God and a complete unity of the virtues. Augustine’s notion that possession of the virtues comes in degrees that culminate in a perfect possession of all of the virtues also receives great attention among the late scholastics. Although Augustine was not familiar with the seventh book of the Nicomachean Ethics and its discussion of weakness of will, his views on why evil is done also deeply influence subsequent discussion of the problem.4 Risto Saarinen has recently argued that Augustine should be viewed as subscribing to the following model of choice: In the first model (3a.), choice is connected with the traditional Greek view of man as a rational being who always aims at acting 1. G. Scott Davis makes this point in his “The Structure and Functions of the Virtues,” in Acta Congressa Augustiana, 1986 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1987), 9–18. 2. John P. Langan treats the unity of the virtues in Augustine’s thought in his “Augustine on the Unity and Interconnection of the Virtues,” Harvard Theological Review 72 (1979). 3. Ibid., 91–93. 4. Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Medieval Thought, 87. Bonaventure’s View of Conscience . . . . . . . 23 virtuously. If the agent is free, he tries to make optimal decisions. Freedom, accordingly, is always connected with the virtues: blameworthy actions indicate that the agent is either ignorant of the true virtue or prevented from doing what he considers best. Under this understanding of freedom, the free will always tries to choose the optimal alternative, although it can in principle choose something else. (18–19) Saarinen labels this view “indirect voluntarism” and summarizes this as meaning “that human agents...