Thomas’s Categorizations of Virtue: Historical Background and Contemporary Significance

The Thomist 74 (2010): 189-235 THOMAS'S CATEGORIZATIONS OF VIRTUE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE WILLIAM C. MATIISON III The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. THOMAS AQUINAS IDENTIFIES groups of virtues according to a variety of distinctions.1 Three are examined here, namely, those concerning efficient cause, ultimate end, and object of virtue. Thomas distinguishes acquired virtues from infused virtues based upon how they are obtained (efficient cause). He distinguishes natural from supernatural virtues based upon the type of happiness toward which they direct a person (ultimate end). And he distinguishes theological from cardinal virtues based upon a difference between what he calls the "objects" of these different groups of virtues.2 Each of these distinctions engenders two different categories of virtue, or what is called here a single categorization of virtue. Each categorization of virtue (e.g., acquired vs. infused virtue), therefore, includes a pair of categories of virtues (e.g., acquired virtues and infused virtues), which are distinguished on some basis or rationale (e.g., efficient cause) that Thomas explicitly supplies. Though each of these distinctions and categories is well known, there is a certain amount of confusion as to how different 1 The author would like to express his gratitude to several people who read and offered comments on earlier drafts of this essay: Angela McKay, Joseph Capizzi, Michael Gorman, David Cloutier, and R.E. Houser. Thanks also to Benjamin Safranski, who provided valuable research and editing assistance. 2 At times Thomas distinguishes theological virtue from "moral and intellectual virtue," and the relation of this latter to "cardinal virtue" is explained below. 189 190 WILLIAM C. MATTISON III categorizations relate to one another. For instance, in a recent publication, a renowned Thomist remarks, in passing, while discussing synderesis, that "discerning and judging action in light of the natural law need to be perfected and stabilized by the cardinal virtues (acquired habits) and infused virtues (faith, hope and charity)."3 This remark implies that all cardinal virtues are acquired virtues and suggests that the bases for the categorizations "acquired vs. infused" and "cardinal vs. theological" are one and the same. Neither of these is the case. As will be seen below, certain categorizations, though made on different bases, do indeed graft onto each other. However others (including those in this quotation) do not. Examples of such confusion are not infrequent, as will be seen more fully in the final section of this essay.4 The confusion is particularly evident in historical and contemporary discussions of the relationship between grace and virtue (and the related classic question of pagan virtue), since scholars have commonly approached these questions by offering different categorizations of virtue. In such discussions, precision is especially important, given the nuance required in describing the relationship between nature and grace. The purpose of this essay is to help dispel such common confusion by explaining how Thomas's different categorizations 3 See Russsell Hittinger's review (of Douglas Kries' The Problem ofNatural Law) entitled "Examination of Conscience" in First Things 189 Oanuary 2009): 59-61 (at 60). So careful a reader of Thomas as Hittinger knows of course that not all cardinal virtues are not acquired, and that the terms "cardinal" and "infused" refer to different bases of categorization. Yet the quotation, in itself, obscures these facts. 4 For another example by a renowned Thomist, see Herbert McCabe, O.P., The Good Life (London: Continuum, 2005), where he says "Aquinas sets this within the context of what he calls the end of man, blessedness (beatitudo), and he seeks to show that the political virtues, the cardinal virtues, take their place in the deepest meaning of human life, which is our vocation to the heavenly polis, the divine life" (52; emphasis in original). While actually trying to make a point consonant with a main concern of this essay, namely, that cardinal virtues can be directed to one's supernatural happiness, McCabe along the way equates the categories "political" and "cardinal." While cardinal virtues may often be political virtues in Thomas' categorizations of virtue, these two terms do not rely on the same basis of categorization and thus should not be identified with one another. THOMAS'S CATEGORIZATIONS...