Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

THE RELATIONSHIP OF VIRTUES AND NORMS IN THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE

THE RELATIONSHIP OF VIRTUES AND NORMS IN THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE The Prologue to the Secunda secundae provides important insight into Aquinas's ethical vision. Therein he lists the essential categories within moral theology. The list includes virtue, vice, gifts, and precepts. Of these four, precepts receive the thinnest treatment. Taking the example of the precept forbidding adultery, he notes that to treat this precept adequately he would need to ‘inquire about adultery which is a sin. The knowledge about which depends on his knowledge of the opposite virtue’. This is inefficient, so instead of treating each concept (virtue, vice, gifts and precepts) in isolation, he proposes to treat them using a ‘shorter and quicker method’. This shorter method begins with each virtue, and under the aegis of virtue, includes a treatment of its corresponding vices, together with the gifts related to the virtue, and finally the affirmative and negative precepts of the virtue. There are two important insights to glean from this passage. First, precepts are an essential, if overlooked, aspect of Thomas's ethics. Second, precepts are to be understood in relationship to virtues. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how secondary moral precepts, or moral norms, relate to acquired virtues. Three questions drive this study. First, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Heythrop Journal Wiley

THE RELATIONSHIP OF VIRTUES AND NORMS IN THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE

DALY, DANIEL
The Heythrop Journal , Volume 51 (2) – Jan 1, 2010
Download PDF
16 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/the-relationship-of-virtues-and-norms-in-the-summa-theologiae-Hwt91ZSd1B

References (0)

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Wiley Subscription Services
ISSN
0018-1196
eISSN
1468-2265
DOI
10.1111/j.1468-2265.2009.00561.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The Prologue to the Secunda secundae provides important insight into Aquinas's ethical vision. Therein he lists the essential categories within moral theology. The list includes virtue, vice, gifts, and precepts. Of these four, precepts receive the thinnest treatment. Taking the example of the precept forbidding adultery, he notes that to treat this precept adequately he would need to ‘inquire about adultery which is a sin. The knowledge about which depends on his knowledge of the opposite virtue’. This is inefficient, so instead of treating each concept (virtue, vice, gifts and precepts) in isolation, he proposes to treat them using a ‘shorter and quicker method’. This shorter method begins with each virtue, and under the aegis of virtue, includes a treatment of its corresponding vices, together with the gifts related to the virtue, and finally the affirmative and negative precepts of the virtue. There are two important insights to glean from this passage. First, precepts are an essential, if overlooked, aspect of Thomas's ethics. Second, precepts are to be understood in relationship to virtues. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how secondary moral precepts, or moral norms, relate to acquired virtues. Three questions drive this study. First,

Journal

The Heythrop Journal – Wiley

Published: Jan 1, 2010

There are no references for this article.