Aquinas on Virtue A Causal Reading
“Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading” by Nicholas Austin, published by Georgetown University Press in 2017, presents an original interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s account of virtue. This unabridged edition, comprising 233 pages, explores Aquinas’s definition of virtue through its causes, offering a systematic analysis of its nature, genesis, and role in human life.
Readers will find a thorough examination of Aquinas’s virtue theory, including a detailed discussion of the cardinal virtue of temperance and a critique of modern psychological accounts of habit. The book also reconsiders the relationship between grace and virtue, making connections between Aquinas’s ideas and contemporary discussions in philosophy and ethics. This study serves both as a bold interpretation for specialists and a systematic introduction for students, featuring suggested readings from Aquinas’s works, including the “Summa Theologiae” and “On the Virtues.”
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Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading is an original interpretation of one of the most compelling accounts of virtue in the Western tradition, that of the great theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). Taking as its starting point Aquinas’s neglected definition of virtue in terms of its “causes,” this book offers a systematic analysis of Aquinas on the nature, genesis, and role of virtue in human life.
Drawing on connections and contrasts between Aquinas and contemporary treatments of virtue, Austin argues that Aquinas’s causal virtue theory retains its normative power today. As well as providing a synoptic account of Aquinas on virtue, the book includes an extended treatment of the cardinal virtue of temperance, an argument for the superiority of Aquinas’s concept of “habit” over modern psychological accounts, and a rethinking of the relation between grace and virtue. With an approach that is distinctively theological yet strongly conversant with philosophy, this study will offer specialists a bold new interpretation of Aquinas’s virtue theory while giving students a systematic introduction with suggested readings from his Summa Theologiae and On the Virtues.
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