Medieval Philosophy – Prof. Dr. Robert C. Koons

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/phl349/syllabus.htm

Lecture # 18: Aquinas on the Virtues and the Law

I. The Seven Cardinal Virtues

To reach our telos or natural end, human beings require certain capacities. With respect to our moral
natures, that is, with respect to our making and carrying out choices, we require moral virtues. Since we can
distinguish between our natural end (earthly or imperfect happiness) and our supernatural end (the beatific
vision), there are, correspondingly, two sets of virtues: the ordinary moral virtues, and the theological
virtues.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discussed a variety of virtues, including liberality and magnanimity (or
having a “large soul”), but he never set out a definite list of the fundamental or “cardinal” virtues. By
Aquinas’s time, it was generally accepted that four of the virtues discussed by Aristotle deserved this special
status: courage, temperance, prudence (or practical wisdom), and justice. To these, medieval authors added
the three “theological” virtues mentioned by the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 13: faith, hope and love
(charity or agape). Thus, for Aquinas there are a total of seven cardinal virtues.

Each virtue is a “habit”, in the sense of a stable, enduring disposition to choose and act in certain ways. They
are aspects or traits of what we nowadays call a person’s “character”. Here are rough definitions of the seven
cardinal virtues:

Courage: the ability to choose and carry out the right course of action, even when it involves grave danger.
The capacity to overmaster one’s fear, when required.

Temperance: the ability to avoid excessive indulgence of one’s sensual appetites, including the appetite for
food, sex, ease and comfort.

Prudence: the ability to make wise choices, employing the best principles in the best way, despite
uncertainty and partial information.

Justice: the disposition to demand one is due to oneself, and no more, and to afford to others what is due to
them.

Faith: the disposition to believe the Scriptures, even when they speak on matters beyond our natural powers
of comprehension.

Hope: the disposition to choose those means of grace that are prescribed by the Scriptures, confident that by
so doing we can in fact attain to the eternal good that is promised therein.

Love: the disposition to delight in God and his will, and to make only those choices that are most pleasing to
him.

In addition to the four cardinal moral virtues, there is at least one more natural virtue: the purely intellectual
virtue of philosophical wisdom. This virtue consists in the capacity of a human mind to reach and grasp the
conclusions of sound philosophy and science. The word ‘virtue’ in Latin (and the corresponding word in
Greek, ‘arete’) was not limited in its application to matters of morality, as the modern English word tends to
be.

The natural virtues (moral and intellectual) and the “theological” virtues are attained in two quite different
ways. In the case of the moral virtues, we acquire them through a combination of good training and
discipline, and many years of diligent practice. If we are well brought-up, our preferences are shaped in
such a way that we find the pleasures associated with vice (such as sensual indulgence or cowardice) to be
distasteful, and, instead, we learn to take pleasure fully and without qualification only in the kind of life that
conforms to sound moral principles. In addition, we have to be taught, both verbally and by example, the

correct principles that enable human beings to attain earthly happiness. Finally, the virtues are strengthened
in us as we repeatedly put them into practice, overcoming temptations to the contrary.

The intellectual virtue of philosophical wisdom is likewise attained by a combination of good education with
the competency that comes with experience by trial and error.

The source of the theological virtues is entirely different. These are directly “infused” in us by God himself.
The means God has chosen to use are his Word (the Scriptures) and the sacraments, especially baptism and
the eucharist. The theological virtues are gifts of “grace”, in the sense that the individual does not and
cannot earn them. God freely dispenses these gifts to men, without reference to any pre-existing merit.
However, Aquinas believed that the grace that God distributes takes shape in the form of these three
theological virtues, that come, more and more, to be intrinsic characteristics of the individual human soul or
mind. It is by virtue of the internalization of these virtues that one is enabled to merit the eternal good of
seeing and enjoying God forever. And, although the initial infusion of grace cannot be earned, it is necessary
for the believer to cooperate with God’s grace in order to continue to grow in these virtues and to avoid
those very grave sins (mortal sins, like murder, adultery or idolatry) that are incompatible with the
continued presence of God’s grace in one’s life.

II. Aquinas on the “Natural Law”

Each virtue corresponds, in effect, to a rule of action. When one’s action expresses an underlying virtue, it
will conform to the corresponding rule. A courageous person will conform to a rule that prescribes when
one should, and when one should not, disregard personal danger. Both a coward and a foolhardy person fail
to act courageously, because their behavior cannot be counted on to conform to the correct rule.

The set of fundamental moral rules corresponding to the moral virtues are called the “natural law” or the
“eternal law” by Aquinas. Since human beings share the same nature and the same natural end, the natural
law is the same for all men, at all times and in all societies. However, following Aristotle, Aquinas recognizes
that any moral rule that we can formulate will have some exceptions. If we try to formulate a rule that
captures exactly how a courageous or just person would act, we have to formulate that rule by imagining
ordinary, run-of-the-mill circumstances. Is it courageous or foolhardy to rush into a burning building? Is it
cowardly or prudent to withdraw from the battlefield in the face of overwhelming forces, leaving the bodies
of your comrades behind? If we try to answer these questions one way or the other, we will always be able
to imagine circumstances in which the opposite answer is correct. And, no matter how explicitly we try to
build into our rules every exception and every exception to an exception, the potentially infinite complexity
of real life ensures that we can never fully succeed.

For this reason, a moral person uses the principles of the natural law as a guide but is always sensitive to the
need to take into account special circumstances. This isn’t exactly the same thing, I think, as an
“existentialist” ethic or “situational” ethics, since, as I understand them, these ethical theories recommend
that we dispense with general rules altogether. According to Aquinas, we don’t face each situation with a
moral blank slate. The ordinary principles of natural law are going to apply in ordinary circumstances and,
that means, in almost all circumstances.

Although the rules of natural law are universal, applying to all places and times, they are not universally
known. Here, we have to distinguish between the axioms or first principles of morality, like the good should
be sought or equals should be treated equally, and theorems or derivative rules, like one shouldn’t copy the artistic
creations of others without their permission or one shouldn’t use contraceptives. The former are known by all men
without exception, but the latter are only known by the wise. In some cases, a whole culture might be
lacking knowledge about some derived principle of the natural law. In some cases, whole cultures have
tolerated infanticide, for example.

III. Aquinas on the Human or Positive Law

There are essentially three theories about the nature of law: natural law theory, positivism, and legal realism.
Aquinas’s position, along with Aristotle’s, is of the first kind. All three theories recognize that there is a
difference between moral principles and legal rules (i.e., the rules of human or positive law). According to
natural law theory, the positive law derives its authority from the principles of morality, the so-called

“natural law”. Legal positivism holds that there are positive legal rules that derive their authority entirely
from the conventions of society, especially the conventions that result in the enforcement of the law.
According to so-called “legal realism”, the very idea that there is such a thing as legal rules is a kind of
fiction or myth. Judges, prosecutors, police and other authorities will do in each case whatever they think is
best and will merely use “the law” to rationalize what they would have done in any case.

Natural law theorists argue that legal positivism cannot explain why, in most cases, we feel that we have a
moral obligation to obey the law. In addition, positivists have difficulty explaining what is the essential
difference between a system of genuine laws and the kind of rules and conventions that govern crime
syndicates, gangs, and absolute tyrannies, like the Hitler or Stalin regimes.

Both natural law thinkers and positivists agree that there really exists, in each orderly society, a set of
general rules that deserve the title of ‘law’. Legal realists seem to ignore the role that law plays in guiding the
actions of judges, law officers, and even ordinary citizens. There’s nothing “realistic” about pretending that
respect for widely accepted general rules plays a large role in shaping decisions and actions.

Although natural law theorists like Aquinas believe that the positive human law draws its authority from
the natural law, they recognize that some things are forbidden by the natural law but not by human law, and
other things are forbidden by human law and not by the natural law. Some examples of the former:
committing adultery, being disloyal to your friends or ungrateful to your benefactors. Some examples of the
latter: driving on the left side of the road, driving faster than the posted speed limit, failing to pay the
government the amount in taxes specified in the IRS code.

Given the pervasiveness and depth of human wickedness, the human legislator has to practice a kind of
moral triage, analogous to the hard choices that an overtaxed supervisor of an emergency room or a mobile
army hospital must make. Human law focuses only on the worst violations of the natural law, especially
those that strike at the very possibility of a civil society (e.g., murder, lawless violence, theft, broken
contracts).

At the same time, the human legislator must pass laws that are easy to enforce in a uniform and impartial
way. This means that he cannot leave it up to a jury or judge to decide whether a given action was really
wrong or not, by reference only to the natural law. Instead, he must, to some extent, replace the relatively
indeterminate commands of the natural law with more exact and specific commands, even if this involves
introducing a certain amount of arbitrariness. The natural law commands that we drive dangerous vehicles
in a responsible manner: the human legislator introduces a number of specific rules, like speed limits and
rights of way, to provide a simple and uniform standard. Similarly, the natural law would require that we
balance the right of the free exchange of information with the right of the creator of a work of literature or
music. The positive law chooses a specific way of striking this balance, through the laws of copyright.

If the natural and human laws fail to coincide, in what sense is the human law grounded in the natural law?
Aquinas lists two ways in which a human law can be “derived” from the natural law in ST, I-II, Q95, A2: by
being derived logically, as a conclusion from a premise, or by being the result of filling in blanks in an
indeterminate rule. When a human law is derived logically from the principles of natural law, then it is itself
part of the natural law (i.e., one of the theorems of the natural law). In some cases, the human law is simply a
restatement of a principle of the natural law, such as you shall not murder or you shall not steal.

When a human law goes beyond the natural law, it does so by filling in blanks or indeterminate features of
the natural law. For example, the natural law would dictate that we should all drive safely on the highway,
and that we should all respect the same traffic rules. However, the natural law does not specify that the
speed limit should be 55, 65, or 75 mph. Human legislators must fix, more or less arbitrarily, on a specific
number that lies within the range dictated by reason (i.e., by the natural law).