Thomas Aquinas on virtue and human flourishing / by Stephen Theron.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Theron, Stephen, 1939- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274--Ethics.

Thomas.

Virtue.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (117 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.

Summary:

Thomas Aquinas offers teleological systematisation of the habits needed for human flourishing. His metaphysical jurisprudence remodels ethics upon this, rather than on a moral precept. "Eternal law" governing the world determines "natural law", reflected in human legislation (a variety of the "anthropic principle"). Finally, law, unwritten, is infused spirit as self-consciousness, "universal of universals". Acquired virtues elicit this, become effusion, represented in religion as gifts or graces. But mind's or spirit's omnipresence, necessarily "closer to me than I am to myself", supersedes the abstractions of heteronomy versus autonomy. The habitual well-being brought by prudence, justice, courage and temperance prompts this picture of gifts and graces. The "theological virtues", faith (explicit or implicit) and hope fulfilled in love, "crown" our natural rationality, set toward as being the universal. "Become what you are". Heteronomous law is thus "defused" at root by grounding it entirely upon immovable spiritual (mental) inclination towards universal fulfilment as naturally desired, reflection shows. Virtue, finally, is best assessed as a capacity for the individually beautiful yet habit-based action, Aristotle's to kalon. Aquinas puts this picture as summed up in the beatitudes of the "Sermon on the Mount".

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Introduction: Inclinations and Beatitude

1. Ethics

2. Human Acts

3. Finis ultimus

4. Teleology

5. The Virtues

6. Duty, Obligation, Law

7. Morals and Metaphysics: Fact and Value

8. What is Law?

9. Natural Law in St. Thomas's Thought

10. Natural Law: Other Views

11. Does Morality Require a Divine Law-Giver?

12. Conscience

13. The Intellectual Virtues

14. The Moral Virtues

15. The Cardinal Virtues

16. The Theological Virtues

17. Natural Law and the Acts of the Virtues

18. Prudence: The Unity of the Virtues

19. A Fourfold Scheme

20. Justice: Legal and Moral Debt Compared

21. Fortitude: The Example of Audacity

22. Temperance and the bonum honestum

23. Natural Inclinations and their Order.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781527510296

1527510298

OCLC:

1031847750