Cardinal Virtues Research Articles

As I Boil Ramyŏn

As I Boil Ramyŏn Kim Hoon (bio) Translated by J. Y. Lee (bio) I'm a devoted eater of ramyŏn, kimbap, and tchajangmyŏn. They are cheap and easy street bites, ideal for solo eaters, just like knife noodle, spicy beef soup, tchamppong, and udon. For army stew, spicy braised chicken, and meat and lettuce wraps, you need at least two people. All these flavors are etched deep down my existence. Shabby holes-in-the-wall are my kind of restaurants. A glance at the exterior sign or the interior ambience yields a sense of the tastes offered. A tacky name written on a rundown signboard hanging over an entrance reeking of food indicates taste. I can't prove this rule scientifically, but that's usually how it goes. In unfamiliar villages, I eat based on the restaurants' signs. A haphazard menu listing countless dishes pasted on a glass window is an invitation to mediocrity. Bustling restaurants center their menu with a couple of specialty dishes they excel in, and accompany them with an assortment of side dishes. Despite the variety in the genealogies of ramyŏn and kimbap, a haphazard menu spells out tasteless food. Koreans have invented an integrative eating method called a mouthful. We grill pork belly, wrap it in lettuce, place a slice of garlic dipped in soybean paste, and stuff the wrap into our mouth until our jaws stretch wide. We also eat slivers of raw fish this way, with a wrap of perilla leaf. In a single punch, this mouthful feeds [End Page 123] us everything—rice, meat, vegetables, sauce, and spices. Picnic parties for employees and last suppers for families sending away their conscripted sons tend to feature grilled pork belly with a few shots of soju. In a blink of an eye, these packages of tastes wrest and quench our desires. Rather than swallowing these packages, I prefer chewing disparate ingredients of food. On sultry summer days, when my mind and body are muddled from fatigue, I eat spoonfuls of plump salted sakura shrimp with rice in water. These lunches soothe my sodden mind and stomach. When I eat watered rice with well-ripened and crisp pickled cucumber dipped in pepper paste, or when I eat minced and brined kimchi floating on cold water with sprinkled vinegar and powdered pepper, I feel refreshed. With these foods, I physiologically expel greasy and cloying elements. Cool rice soaked in soup infused with radish kimchi are my favorites. It tastes simple and clear. Its taste is of a dawn that predates the genesis of taste. It's the most primordial taste with which nature has endowed men. While Master Toegye of the sixteenth-century Chosŏn dynasty devoted himself to scholarship at Dosan, he only had three side dishes during meals. When his student Kim Sung-il visited, the only side dishes served with rice were radish, eggplant, and seaweed. Though his pupils could barely veil their discontent, the master ate heartily with a blissful countenance. The three side dishes were probably either pickled, wild, or raw. As for Toegye's text, my mind and my body remain separate no matter how much I delve into the tomes of the sages. I have no hope of retracing their steps. Nevertheless, I find solace that at least in my palate, I resemble the sages. If my palate touches their periphery, then perhaps I can gaze from afar on their cardinal virtues even though I can't emulate them. These days, fusion kimbaps fattened with cheese, salad, bulgogi, crabmeat, and sausages are the rage. I detest them. My kind of kimbaps are lined with a single row of pickled radish, spinach, or [End Page 124] burdock. I also like kimbaps stuffed only with vegetables, such as salted radish, green onion, perilla leaf, and sweet potato bud. These kimbaps are refreshing when I chew. Japanese-style kimbaps rolled with sesame leaf or vinegar-soused plum are also neat. A kimbap needs embellishing tastes surrounding a main pillar of taste, and a kimbap with a weak center or a center jumbled with the periphery is unsound. It must be smallish enough to pop inside the mouth without...

Thornton Wilder as Thaumaturge

AbstractInfluenced by his religious upbringing and classical education, Thornton Wilder wrote about the universal and the particular simultaneously, which contrasts with most modernist writers admired by academia and resulted in the scholarly neglect of his works. But Wilder's program of secularizing the three cardinal virtues (hope, faith, and love/charity) in both his plays and his novels asks audiences and readers to consider the fundamental questions of what it means to be human and how we should live. An examination of Wilder's four full-length plays—Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker, and The Alcestiad—along with his seven novels—The Cabala, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Woman of Andros, Heaven's My Destination, The Ides of March, The Eighth Day, and Theophilus North—demonstrates that Wilder was above all a humanist who had hope, faith, and love for his fellow human beings.

The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective by William C. Mattison III

Reviewed by: The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective by William C. Mattison III Charles Nathan Ridlehoover william c. mattison iii, The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Pp. xiii + 279. $100. In modern literature on the Sermon on the Mount, there is no shortage of historical-critical, literary, and, more recently, postcolonial and feminist studies. This reservoir of scholarship provides ample resources for those inquiring about the origins, structure, and background of individual passages in the Sermon. Yet, amid this body of literature, very little has been written on the convergence of virtue-centered ethics and the Sermon. William Mattison, who is associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, has written the present volume to fill this perceived void. His overarching purpose is that this text will not only further studies of the Sermon and virtue-centered ethics but will also contribute to the ongoing study of their intersection. To accomplish this task, M. begins with an explanation of the book's need, structure, and methodology. M. unabashedly admits his preference for a Thomistic ressourcement (meaning in continuity with patristics) virtue approach to morality (emphasis his). The section on the book's structure is especially helpful. The book's chapter order follows from M.'s rendering of the Sermon's structure. The book ends with the Lord's Prayer, which M. argues is the center of both the Sermon and foundational for the life of the church (with which I wholeheartedly agree). In terms of the individual chapters, M. addresses exegetical questions relevant to the biblical text but always as a segue to broader questions within a virtue-centered approach to morality. The first chapter begins with an analysis of the beatitudes (Matt 5:1-16). In many ways, this chapter sets the tone for M.'s reading of the Sermon. His initial argument is that the Sermon is primarily concerned with happiness. Happiness, of course, is the topic of numerous classical treatments of ethics and, therefore, as the Sermon's argued theme justifies the present study. M. continues with an analysis of each beatitude and its relation to qualifying conditions and subsequent rewards. The second chapter details the theme of "fulfillment" in Matt 5:17-48. Included in this chapter is an examination of the differences in Jesus's relationship to both the moral and the ceremonial laws of Judaism. M. argues that there is more continuity than is generally acknowledged between the old laws and Jesus's "new law." The highlight of this chapter is M.'s attention to the questions, (1) why are there six laws, and (2) why these six laws? In chap. 3, M. examines Matt 6:1-18, arguing that this section of the Sermon is a textbook lesson for intentionality and Thomistic action theory. Thomistic action theory explains the nature of certain acts with regard to their ends—in the case of Matthew 6, the concept of rewards. M. desires to correct the misunderstanding that [End Page 328] virtue theory is focused only on interiority. In chap. 4, he details the most structurally difficult section of the Sermon, 6:19–7:12, tracing the theme of single-mindedness throughout these verses. The first section, 6:19-34, examines one's view of temporal goods, and the second section, 7:1-11, examines one's relationships with brothers/sisters, outsiders, and God. This chapter is M.'s strongest exegetical chapter, particularly in regard to 6:25-34. The conclusion of the Sermon (7:13-29) is detailed in chap. 5. Given the eschatological (future) aspect of these verses, M. explains the Sermon conclusion in light of the virtue/vice of hope and presumption. The final chapter examines the Lord's Prayer and its relation to the theological (petitions 1–3) and cardinal virtues (petitions 1–4). In reading this volume, one will immediately be impressed with the organization and writing. Each chapter's introduction clearly states the author's thesis, and the explanations of difficult concepts are stellar. As M. states in his acknowledgments, the concerns of this book are for the ongoing work of Catholic...

Toward a Holistic Contemplative Vision:

Ignatian spirituality is characterized by an emphasis on contemplation as a means of discernment, an approach that highlights the unity of the interior and ethical dimensions of the Christian life. Yet Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises are also defined by the modus operandi of the contemplative method outlined therein, one that highlights the imagination’s role in a receptive and interactive engagement with the person of Christ as depicted in the Gospels. Though 20th century German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper is most commonly associated with his popular works on Aquinas and the cardinal virtues, there is a contemplative undercurrent throughout his writing that corresponds with the thought of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Pieper defines contemplation as “a visual perception prompted by loving acceptance,” stressing both the receptive posture of the individual but also the intrinsic pairing of contemplation and ethics in an active response of embracing existence. Much as Ignatius believes the imagination, the inner capacity that links creativity and memory in an individual, to be pertinent to spiritual development, so Pieper asserts that an imaginative representation of Being through the creation of art and participation in communal worship proceeds from love and cultivates the individual’s capacity to perceive lovingly.

Kardinální ctnosti po smrti člověka:Argument o přetrvání ctností optikou Augustina, Petra Lombardského a Tomáše Akvinského

In the realm of virtue ethics, the question of whether virtues remain after this life is a minor one. The basic text on this issue, written by St Augustine, is followed by Peter Lombard and Beda Venerabilis. These sources deal from the theological perspective with the basic question positively; however, they admit a change in the operations of virtues. Thomas Aquinas elaborates this perspective in philosophical argumentation. This article analyses the importance of the question from Aquinas’s perspective for virtue ethics. Itthen argues for the key role of this topic for the classical concept of virtue since it underlines the key role of infused cardinal virtues that connect the immanent and transcendent dimension of virtue ethics.

Statues of Lady Justice in Hungary: Representation of Justitia in town halls, courthouses, and other public spaces

Statues of Lady Justice in Hungary: Representation of Justitia in town halls, courthouses, and other public spaces

Redeeming Capitalism

Redeeming Capitalism is an excellent primer of the practical, philosophical, and theological movement from historical to current times, reviewing the thinking that forms our contemporary view and practice of capitalism. In 13 succinct chapters, Barnes argues that capitalism should not be abandoned for another flawed economic theory but rather redeemed. Carefully integrating Scripture, case studies, and personal experience and drawing substantively on St. Thomas Aquinas’ cardinal virtues et al, Barnes shows how the practice of capitalism has been corrupted into its current, self-focused form. Well footnoted with a seven-page bibliography, Barnes’ book draws upon both historic and contemporary sources to support his argument.

Aquinas's ‘Integral Parts of Prudence’ as a Resource for Human Formation

AbstractAquinas's articulation of the eight ‘integral parts’ of prudence can serve as a manageable, practical focus for ongoing human development. Although Aquinas holds that there is an infused Prudence, this does not render acquired prudence redundant, because (1) God moves things in ways that befit their natures, and it is our nature to have dominion over our actions; (2) human beings have free will, characteristically exercised in electio, choice of means; (3) grace perfects nature; (4) some scholars have defended the complementarity of the acquired and infused virtues, and there is widespread agreement that the psychological structures needed by acquired virtue persist in the life of graced virtue.The ‘integral parts’ of a Cardinal Virtue must concur for its perfect acts. Aquinas examines them in detail, and offers methods of building ‘memory’ through human effort; he leaves to our diligence the discernment of how to build other parts of prudence. He explains how the parts are deployed in the acts of deliberation, judgment and command.Aquinas's consideration of the vices opposed to prudence and its parts enables him to warn us about what impedes prudence, and to help us distinguish false from legitimate concerns for bodily goods, superfluous from proportionate solicitude, etc.

Evagrius of Pontus on Exodus and the Virtues

Abstract In On Prayer 1-4, Evagrius of Pontus reads the incense described in Exodus 30:34-37 as an allegorical type of the four cardinal virtues. This essay explains the logic of Evagrius’s interpretation, situating his argument in a longstanding philosophical debate about the interrelationship of the virtues. By reading the incense as virtue, Evagrius joins both Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa in interpreting Exodus as a source for virtue theory, as well as several ancient philosophers who explained the virtues and their interrelation by comparing them to physical substances combined in a mixture. Central to Evagrius’s argument is the compound ancient philosophers called a “juxtaposition” (σύνθεσις), the use of which term shows Evagrius’s knowledge of a well-attested hexaplaric variant in Exod 30:35. In sum, authorized by his text of Exodus, Evagrius suggests the virtues relate to each other in the same fashion that the ingredients of a σύνθεσις relate to each other.

KONSEP KEADILAN (IUSTITIA) PERSPEKTIF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS DAN RELEVANSINYA BAGI PEMAKNAAN SILA V PANCASILA

In principle justice touches the human nature as social animal. The discourse of justice has become an important theme in social and political philosophy all the times. St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the philosophers who pays much attention on this theme. In Summa Theologiae, he spent a lot of pages to explain justice as one of the cardinal virtues. Inspired by Aristotle, he defined justice as “a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will.” This essay wants to explain the discourse of justice according to St. Thomas Aquinas and to compare it with the concept of justice in fifth principle of Pancasila. The writter uses the relevancy study to get the convergency idea between two different ideas of justice. This essay will explore both concept of justice by St. Thomas Aquinas and Pancasila perspective. There are at least some convergency ideas between those two. But the pressure point is the concept of bonum commune. Pancasila as the Philosophische Grondslag of Indonesia as like as St. Thomas Aquinas’ idea of justice emphasizes the common good (bonum commune) as the very end of Indonesia nation. Reflecting on these convergency ideas, we can find some relevant discourses concerning justice in socio-political life of Indonesian people, i.e: law, politic, and religion. In the end of this essay, the writer gives a critical thought to the tendency of the liberalism pathology in social life

Prosperity over time and across generations: the role of values and virtues in family businesses

PurposeDespite the great importance attributed to values in the family business, few studies have focused on their importance and on how such values influence the way family businesses behave over time. Using Aristotelian virtues as our main framework, the purpose of this paper is to understand what motivates both family members and business families to perform virtuous acts, therefore, observing the underlying beliefs at both levels of analysis that make individuals and families repeatedly behave in a way that reflects the pursuit of excellence of character.Design/methodology/approachThe authors rely on a qualitative methodology, following an interpretive approach. Based on the narratives of family members from two Spanish family businesses, the authors abductively analyze how values and virtues in family businesses allow them to cope with changes that occur across generations.FindingsFindings suggest that family businesses that have survived heavy crises have been able to overcome these critical moments in part due to their strong virtues – both at the individual and at the family level – where the so-called four cardinal virtues have been evident, for example, through the achievement of collective goals and adherence to a stated mission, as well as through behaviors that have been aimed at improving and benefiting the community.Practical implicationsValues are the basis for all businesses and their behaviors. Understanding the type of values, as well as the underlying virtues, that allow for prosperity across generations is important for business families to perpetuate those that allow the family business to thrive.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the family business field by exploring a key understudied dimension that determines family business prosperity over time and across generations. It brings to the forefront values and virtues that are rarely studied in this setting despite their great importance, using narratives as a key element for value transmission as well as a research method that allows for deeper insights about specific processes.

Christian identity, the racialized migrant and the development of virtue: extending Robert Heimburger’s account of neighbours and borders

Heimburger’s account of Christianity claiming for its own the identity of God’s chosen people benefits from attention to the concurrent racialization and displacement of others from desirable land. Faithful discernments about Christian identity and national borders require the communal development and mutual accountability of the cardinal virtues as a penitential response to neighbours in need.

Truth Matters: Living in Dangerous Times - Aquinas on the Virtue of Truth-Telling

Abstract Current political and social climate seems to have as a presupposition the view that truth-telling has a merely instrumental value. This paper will explore Thomas Aquinas’ writing on truth and truth-telling, arguing that truth-telling is an intrinsic good, a human virtue and a component of human flourishing. In Aquinas’ view the virtue of truth-telling is a satellite virtue within the cardinal virtue of justice, and as such imperative for the flourishing of human society.

Etika Profesi Penerbangan Berbasis Virtue Ethics di Indonesia

The purpose of the study is to analyze factors to prioritize the development of aviation professional ethics based on virtue ethics in Indonesia and to decide which best suitable strategy to accomplish the purpose. The data was taken from 8 (eight) aviation and ethics expertise and practitioners. The method of data analysis used Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Super Decisions software was employed to process the data.The result shows that the best and most effective strategy in developing aviation professional ethics based on virtue ethics in Indonesia is by applying the Virtous Leadership. The Virtue Ethics Approach is bound much with moral examples. It means, to ensure the professional and ethical employees in an organization, first thing to do is to assure that the leaders and managers of the organization can give examples and do the obligation with high commitment based on virtues values such as courageous character, honesty, and other cardinal virtues.

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics by J. Budziszewski

Reviewed by: Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics by J. Budziszewski Raymond Hain Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics by J. Budziszewski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), xxvii + 295 pp. J. Budziszewski's Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics follows his similarly structured 2014 Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law. But while the earlier commentary, over 500 pages long, works straight through all of questions 90–97 of the prima secundae and is supplemented by an additional 250-page online commentary, this commentary is shorter, highly selective, and lacks a supplemental online commentary. And since the first half considers selected articles on the virtues in general, while the second half considers selected articles on justice, the Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics itself feels like a supplement to the earlier law commentary. After describing its overall content and structure, I will comment on how useful it might be for its intended audience: "scholars," "students" and "even . . . serious general readers" (xxi). The Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics includes the text of, and commentary on, eighteen articles from the Summa theologiae. Ten articles focus on the virtues in general: I-II, q. 55, a. 4 (Whether virtue is suitably defined?) I-II, q. 58, a. 4 (Whether there can be moral without intellectual virtue?) I-II, q. 58, a. 5 (Whether there can be intellectual without moral virtue?) [End Page 583] I-II, q. 61, a. 2 (Whether there are four cardinal virtues?) I-II, q. 61, a. 3 (Whether any other virtues should be called principal rather than these?) I-II, q. 62, a. 1 (Whether there are any theological virtues?) I-II, q. 63, a. 1 (Whether virtue is in us by nature?) I-II, q. 63, a. 2 (Whether any virtue is caused in us by habituation?) I-II, q. 65, a. 1 (Whether the moral virtues are connected with one another) I-II, q. 84, a. 4 (Whether the seven capital vices are suitably reckoned?) And the remaining eight articles focus on the virtue of justice: II-II, q. 30, a. 3 (Whether mercy is a virtue) II-II, q. 58, a. 1 (Whether justice is i described as being the perpetual and constant will to render to each one his right?) II-II, q. 60, a. 1 (Whether judgment is an act of justice?) II-II, q. 60, a. 2 (Whether it is lawful to judge?) II-II, q. 60, a. 5 (Whether we should always judge according to the written law?) II-II, q. 60, a. 6 (Whether judgment is rendered perverse by being usurped?) II-II, q. 80, a. 1 (Whether the virtues annexed to justice are suitably enumerated?) II-II, q. 122, a. 1 (Whether the precepts of the Decalogue are precepts of justice?) The text of each article is presented twice—once in the 1920 Blackfriars translation (now in the public domain and widely available) and once in a paraphrase by Budziszewski. Line-by-line commentary follows each portion of the text and is keyed to the sentences in the Blackfriars translation. Besides the text of the commentary itself, an eleven-page general introduction and an index are included as supporting material. Budziszewski is most interested in understanding the plain meaning of the text, and in working through Aquinas's sources, and there are almost no comments that engage contemporary scholars or critics of Aquinas. As he says, "Some may think I do not spend enough time quarreling with critics of St. Thomas. My conviction is that before we enter these quarrels, we had better make sure we understand him. If we do understand him, many of the criticisms fall away like dead leaves" (xxii). Serious general readers will find this commentary very helpful, especially [End Page 584] if they are coming to Aquinas for the first time. Consider this representative passage from ST I-II, q. 55, a. 4 that discusses the "matter" of virtues and Budziszewski's paraphrase (10–11): Text: [5] Now virtue has no matter "out of which" it is formed, as neither has any other accident; but it has matter "about which" it is concerned, and matter "in which...

The Virtue of Care

There have been many attempts to define care in terms of the virtues, but meta‐analyses of these attempts are conspicuously absent from the literature. No taxonomies have been offered to situate them within the broader care ethical and virtue theoretical discourses, nor have any substantial discussions of each option's merits and shortcomings. I attempt to fill this lacuna by presenting an analysis of the claim that care is a virtue (what I call the “virtue thesis” about care). I begin by distinguishing weaker and stronger versions of the virtue thesis, arguing that the weaker version is an orthodox view among care ethicists. I then go on to develop a taxonomy of approaches available to care ethicists seeking to flesh out the virtue thesis. The three I identify are analogical approaches, according to which care is analogous to some existing virtue; supplementalist approaches, according to which care is a novel virtue; and cardinalist approaches, according to which care is a cardinal virtue. Following this, I defend the virtue thesis from some foreseeable objections and argue that its most promising version is analogical.

Mixed Messages: The Religions of Modernism

Mixed Messages:The Religions of Modernism Allen Dunn (bio) Craig Bradshaw Woelfel, Varieties of Aesthetic Experience: Literary Modernism and the Dissociation of Belief, Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2018. 228 pp. Modernity is generally believed to be the age of secularism, the time when age-old structures of religious belief give way to a new scientific view of the world that leaves little room for the articles of religious faith. It is not surprising, then, that many assume that those artists, musicians, poets, and novelists who today are known as modernists must be the inheritors of this secularism and that modernism produces a godless art for a godless age. In Varieties of Aesthetic Experience: Literary Modernism and the Dissociation of Belief, Craig Bradshaw Woelfel argues that scholars have misunderstood the role of religion in literary modernism because they have been misled by the conventional "subtraction" narrative of the emergence of secular modernity wherein religion simply fades away as it is replaced by a modern secular scientific view of the world. However, in modernism as in modern culture more generally, religion does not fade away, Woelfel argues, but remains one of the several irreconcilable elements that generate a world of perpetual conflict. Woelfel quotes Charles Taylor, the most famous and influential advocate of this point of view, who observes that "modernization is not a narrative of unbelief replacing belief; …actually, the change is more drastic. It is more like cacophony replacing meaning as such" (13). As Taylor views it, modernity creates a "pluralist world, in which many forms of belief and unbelief jostle, and hence fragilize each other" (2007, 531). Woelfel's project, then, is to apply Taylor's argument to two exemplary modernist writers, T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster, in order to demonstrate that it is a mistake to classify either writer as either secular or religious. Rather, he insists, we should understand the modernist text as "a liminal site of cross-pressured religious engagement, a space used to critique, simultaneously, traditional or orthodox religious belief and, simultaneously, entirely immanent or rational accounts of life, knowledge, and experience" (2018, 13). As Woelfel demonstrates in a series of close readings, the various cultural cross-pressures that Taylor finds in modernity are readily apparent [End Page 375] in the work of Forster, a self-proclaimed agnostic whose skeptical pluralism entertains mutually contradictory truth claims without prompting him to endorse or refute any of them. In the opening lines of his essay "What I Believe," Forester famously announces that he does not "believe in belief." In Woelfel's account, this means that Forester does not believe that there is a way to reconcile "the emotional reality of [his] religious experience" with the secular scientific world-view that he also feels compelled to affirm. In a trope of Eliot's famous phrase, Woelfel calls this "the dissociation of belief" and finds evidence of it in Forester's correspondence, interviews, criticism, and novels, most notably in the Miramar Caves episode of A Passage to India. He finds that a similar dissociation is implicit in Forester's aesthetics which are predicated on the belief that a rigorous and systematic criticism of art must always fall short of its mark. For Forster, such systematic criticism must necessarily fail because it cannot convey literature's power to unite the experiences of writer and reader in a moment of transcendence, a transcendence that by definition cannot be captured in the critic's intellectual system. Given the inevitable failure of literary criticism, the critic's primary virtue must then be humility, and given his skepticism about human claims to any absolute knowledge, humility emerges as Forster's cardinal virtue. Eliot's case is less straightforward. After his much publicized conversion to Christianity in 1927, his life has usually been framed as a conversion narrative that culminates in his profession of Christian faith. Woelfel, of course, is mindful of this but asserts that Eliot's thought remains thoroughly modern because it incorporates the kinds of conflicting beliefs that Taylor describes. This is true, he insists, both before and after his conversion. As Woelfel summarizes his account of Eliot's attitude toward belief: "I argue that it seems unclear...

Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective by Jean Porter

Reviewed by: Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective by Jean Porter Jason Heron Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective by Jean Porter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), xiii + 286 pp. Students of Thomistic moral philosophy will be grateful to Jean Porter for her contribution to conversations regarding justice's place in both the virtue ethics tradition and modern liberal thought. It is gross understatement to say that justice is complex. But the complexity is amplified in our context, where justice is imagined as fairness in the organization of institutions and distributed goods. Add to this the effort one must spend when we attempt to speak in Aristotelian terms of the mean or when we try to describe justice as a personal perfection of the will, and one discerns Porter's motivations in offering us a Thomistic account of justice. Porter exposits Aquinas's account of justice as a virtue perfecting the will and rightly ordering our social relations. The upshot of this analysis is a rich treatment of justice as both an external moral ideal and the relationship of that ideal to the perfection of the person's will. Porter's objective in chapter 1 is twofold. First, to demonstrate the coherence and relevance of Aquinas's account of the virtues. And second, to set up the problem animating her inquiry: the fact that justice as a virtue stands apart from the other cardinal virtues, especially as an ideal. We typically conceive of virtues as habitual dispositions, internal to the agent and judged praiseworthy or blameworthy according to a "rational mean" that, while potentially functioning normatively, is also internal to the agent and her circumstances. Thus, the courageous or temperate person acts courageously or temperately according to very specific—maybe even unrepeatable—contingencies that require prudence, practice, and knowledge of what other courageous or temperate persons have done in similar situations. But when it comes to justice, we judge agents and their acts according to the "real mean" of the right (jus), which is necessarily external to the agent, her circumstances, her knowledge, and so on. In other words, the tension between justice's relationship to a "real mean" and the other virtues' relationship to a "rational mean" seems to throw us into unhelpful binaries: law/virtue, rules/ideals, universals/particulars, and the right / the good. But as Porter demonstrates, the tension between these binaries lessens when we recognize that the tension is not between two different ways of evaluating action. Rather, the divisions characterizing these binaries "track the fundamental division between the virtues of the passions, which observe a rational mean only, and justice, which observes a real mean" (41). The concept of a rational mean guiding our evaluation of courage and temperance is relatively straightforward (as a concept!), and is squarely at home in a conventional account of virtue. But the concept of a [End Page 608] real mean guiding our evaluation of justice is decidedly more complex and requires careful attention to the faculty perfected by the virtue. Thus, chapter 2 exposits the Thomistic doctrine of the will as the causal principle of voluntary action. The hope here is that if we adequately represent the faculty of the will, then we will have some insight into the virtue that is supposed to perfect it, even if that virtue seems oddly out of place among the rest of the perfective habits. Aquinas's account provides valuable insight into the rational agent's participation in the appetitive orientation of all natures toward their perfection. But in humans, we see this appetite exercised in a distinct way that makes action susceptible to personal and social reflection and evaluation. Human actions are susceptible to such evaluation because they are voluntary—the result of complex processes of deliberation and choice among myriad goods proposed to the rational appetite. At this point, Porter considers whether the will is completely subject to the dictatorial intellect. Her treatment of the issue unsurprisingly defends the liberty of the will. But in attempting to make this case without recourse to theology, one may wonder about the significance of her contribution to the infinite regress inherent within the question. Porter then asks: why must the...

Towards Computer Simulations of Virtue Ethics

Abstract This article presents two approaches for computer simulations of virtue ethics in the context of agent-based modeling, a simple way and a complex way. The simple way represents virtues as numeric variables that are invoked in specific events or situations. This way can easily be implemented and included in social simulations. On the other hand, the complex way requires a PECS framework: physical, cognitive, emotional, and social components need to be implemented in agents. Virtue is the result of the interaction of these internal components rather than a single variable. I argue that the complex way using the PECS framework is more suitable for simulating virtue ethics theory because it can capture the internal struggle and conflict sometimes involved in the practice of virtue. To show how the complex way could function, I present a sample computer simulation for the cardinal virtue of temperance, the virtue that moderates physical desires such as food, drink, and sex. This computer simulation is programmed in Python and builds upon the well-known Sugarscape simulation.1

Humility in Teaching

In order to extend our understanding of the relationship between humility and teaching, Leonard Waks investigates both humility and teaching as philosophical concepts and considers their conceptual connections. In doing so, he shows how humility is related conceptually to teaching in unexpected ways. He begins by offering some reflections on the term “humility” and its origins, and next moves to an analysis of the concept of humility. His analysis, first, distinguishes between negative and positive humility and then differentiates two types of positive humility: (1) analytic or self‐critical humility, and (2) immersive or transpersonal humility. After expanding on the meanings of these terms, Waks relates both types of positive humility to the three most developed contemporary philosophical conceptions of teaching: the analytic, feminist, and critical pedagogy conceptions. He relies exclusively on the classic, canonical, or paradigmatic formulations of these conceptions, showing that humility is at the heart of all three of these philosophical “paradigms.” Waks concludes that, while his analysis does not demonstrate that humility is a cardinal virtue of teaching, it does justify the hypothetical assertion that humility is a cardinal virtue if any of the three well‐developed conceptions, or any synthesis of them, is accepted.