Maximum Potential
Virtue derives from the Latin word virtus. In classical Latin it meant “worth, merit, the particular excellence of character or ability, moral excellence, goodness.”[1] It can also be translated in English as “strength or power.”[2] For instance, the maximum potential output from an engine is measured and given as mechanical horsepower, a comparison to the work that horses could do.[3] When the machine achieves its maximum potential, the machine has reached the fullest and highest expression of its capacity. St. Thomas Aquinas defined virtue for human beings in a similar way, as an ultimum potentiæ, or the “furthest point to which a power can reach.”[4] The German philosopher, Josef Pieper, interpreted this to mean “the utmost best a person can be.” [5] Claiming an ultimate implies a penultimate and a first, and all gradations in between. Such gradation sets up a view of the human person as someone becoming, rather than as a static being. It is to view personhood as unfolding in a dynamic reality, just as the universe is unfolding in a dynamic reality, constantly moving toward its end.
Thus, virtue implies a perfection of a power. According to Aquinas, power can be in reference to being and in reference to act. [6] Power in reference to being applies to matter. The power of a machine or a horse, for instance, or even a human body, refers to the physical ability to do work, and such power can be comparable between machines, animals, and humans. In fact, the mechanical power of a machine or a horse might even exceed that of a human. However, power in reference to act refers to willful intent, to spiritual ability, and as such applies to the soul. Humans have a rational soul, which instills them with the power to act rationally. Whereas an inanimate machine or a horse with a sensitive soul could have comparable powers to a human in reference to physical capability, humans have a higher power in reference to their souls and ability to make choices about how to act. The human person has the spiritual powers of intellect and will. Hence, virtue in reference to “works of reason” is most proper to man—excellence of character or ability, moral excellence, goodness, the perfection of spiritual power.
Love, the Mother and Root of All Virtues
This excellence and goodness means that authentic virtue is rooted in the highest spiritual power of charity, caritas, the highest form of love; Aquinas calls this love the “mother and the root of all the virtues.”[7] Simply stated, there can be no authentic virtue at all without love. Love is necessary for virtue, and since the pursuit of virtue is how the human person becomes more perfected, love is necessary for the human person, absolutely. The pursuit of this excellence is also the pursuit of ultimate happiness.[8] Love is a “theological” virtue, along with hope and faith. It is true that a person can attain some happiness by means of natural principles and reason alone, but such happiness has a limit that only goes to the end of one’s life.[9] There is also a happiness—a blessedness—beyond nature and reason directed toward God, the first beginning and last end of all things.[10] This supernatural happiness requires grace, Divine assistance, which is why this supernatural, highest love is a theological virtue. “All you that fear the Lord . . . trust him . . . hope in him . . . and love him; your hearts shall be enlightened.”[11]
In the order of perfection, love precedes faith and hope because goodness and happiness cannot be believed in if it is not hoped for, and such joy cannot be hoped for unless goodness and happiness are first desired and loved.[12] St. Augustine more succinctly defined Christian virtue as “nothing else than perfect love of God,” the “chief good, the highest wisdom, the perfect harmony.”[13] This is consistent with St. Paul the Apostle’s encomium on love.[14] “I may have utter faith, so that I can move mountains; yet if I lack charity (caritas), I count for nothing.”[15]
Authentic Virtue
Authentic virtue, then, presupposes two anthropological realities: 1) that the human person has a rational soul, and 2) that the most perfect act of a person is to love. Both of these presuppositions follow from the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity and the doctrine of Imago Dei, that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Both of these revealed truths explain why the human person has intellect and free will, and why humans are made to be individuals in communion, in personal relationship, with other beings.
In trying to understand the revelation of the Holy Trinity, theologians defined the word “person” more precisely. Historically, the Latin word persona after the corresponding use of the Hellenistic Greek πρόσωπον (prosopon), meant a mask on a character in a play or a juridical entity.[16] Christian theology clarified the meaning of personhood as early as the third century writings of Tertullian and the sixth century writings of Boethius who defined “person” as “an individual substance of a rational nature.”[17] The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share fully in the one Divine Nature united in perfect eternal communion as One God, yet each is an individual, and as such, Persons, each an individual substance with a rational nature.
Scripture reveals two internal processions of the Three Persons of the Trinity. “From God I proceeded . . .”[18] This ordering has significance for the understanding of human persons. The Father is the source, the originator, the first principle of all things.[19] The Son is the second divine Person, the Word, the begotten of the Father.[20] The Son proceeds from the Father as an act of divine intellect, analogous in human experience to the procession or generation of a thought, the mind expressing itself in a concept.[21] The Holy Spirit completes the Trinity, sent by the Father through the Son as the second procession of the divine will, analogous in human experience to the love that proceeds from the mind and its thought.[22] It is love that completes the Holy Trinity, an eternal, perfect communion of God, the Being that is Life, Truth, and Love Personified.
Scripture reveals that this divine image is present in human persons, Imago Dei. “Let us make man, wearing our own image and likeness.”[23] Therefore, the human person is an individual substance of a rational nature, creature not equal to the Creator, not omniscient or almighty, not perfect in thought or will. “The divine image is present in every man. It shines forth in the communion of persons, in the likeness of the unity of the divine persons among themselves.”[24]
Because humans bear this likeness, they bear the spiritual power of intellect, the power to reason, and the spiritual power to will, the power to love. This is why human persons innately possess the reciprocal desire to love and be loved, to know and be known, to learn and make choices, to seek goodness and happiness and to abhor evil and misery.[25] Human persons consequently desire to belong to families, communities, and the entire race—many persons united as one entity. This is the basis of the Natural Law, and all humans are obliged to follow it, a law which is heard in conscience and fulfilled in the love of God and of neighbor. [26]
Advancing in virtue throughout life is therefore fitting to the dignity of the person. By reason he is capable of understanding the order established by the Creator, and by his free will he is capable of directing himself toward perfection, seeking and loving what is true and good.[27] Because the human person has free will, he can reject the reality of these divine truths, but as Pope Paul VI wrote in his 1965 pastoral constitution, Gaudium et Spes, to a modern world entrenched in doubt, “when [a human person] recognizes in himself a spiritual and immortal soul, he is not being mocked by a fantasy born only of physical or social influences, but is rather laying hold of the proper truth of the matter.”[28]
The Cardinal Virtues
These realities—that the human person has a rational soul, and that the most perfect act of a person is to love—guide the understanding of the natural, the cardinal, virtues. Just as there is an order to the theological virtues, there is an order to the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
Josef Pieper called prudence the “mother of all cardinal virtues” because all the other cardinal virtues depend on the ability to deliberate reality, judge accordingly, make decisions, and carry through to actions.[29] Aquinas summed up the doctrine of prudence by saying that for the apprehensions of truth “reason is perfected by understanding.”[30] By “reason” Aquinas meant the regard for and openness to reality, the acceptance of reality. By “truth” he meant the unveiling and revelation of reality, be it natural or supernatural. There is an order, a plan, to practicing prudence. Aquinas described four steps: 1) the ability to silently contemplate reality (memoria), 2) the willingness to be open-minded to receive instruction (docilitas), 3) the ability to act swiftly with clear-sighted vision (solertia), and 4) the ability to fix the attention on what has not yet happened (providencia).[31]
Knowledge of the past is the intellectual virtue of “memory;” knowledge of the present is the intellectual virtue of “understanding.”[32] Docilitas (docility) refers to understanding. Docility does not merely mean to be pliant, but to have an open-mindedness to recognize a variety of things, to not cage the intellect with presumption. Solertia is the ability to confront sudden events decisively, to keep the mental eyes open and to think swiftly when swift thinking is needed, to not take blind action.[33] Providentia is the ability to realize uncertainty about future events and to not expect certainty where it cannot exist.[34] Prudence is the practice of holding interiorly the humility of silence and unbiased perception so that knowledge of reality can be transformed into a realization of the good.[35] To state prudence in the Augustinian terms of love, prudence is “love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it,” directed towards God.[36]
Justice is realized in the external acts, the human person in relation with himself and with others. Like the other virtues, it can only be consider within the sevenfold (three theological, four cardinal) image of man and virtue.[37] Augustine realized in his Confessions that free will is the cause of injustice and doing evil.[38] Humans are made by “Goodness itself” who wills no evil but who is perfectly just in judgment and allows a man to suffer the consequences of his choices and of humanity’s choices in general, that is, of original sin. Justice presupposes that rights come from God and that man only serves another man in service to God.[39] It also demands that humans acknowledge the humanity of others, and as such honor what is owed to one another justly. Every act has a social and objective consequence. “We do not speak without being heard; we do not make use of a thing without using our own or another’s property.”[40]
There are two basic forms (species) of justice: commutative justice and distributive justice, which Aquinas identified in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.[41] The hallmark of each is some kind of indebtedness, but to different subjects. In the first (commutative justice) indebtedness is owed to another person or group of person, and in the second (distributive justice) indebtedness is owed to society as a whole.[42] Whereas commutative justice can be settled by an agreement or contract between individuals about what is justly due to one another, an “arithmetical proportion,” no such agreement can ever exist with distributive justice because the “social whole” is greater than any individual can account for.[43] However, just rulers and leaders, entrusted with the distribution of goods for the whole, seek to fulfill the responsibility equitably, while, obviously, unjust rulers and leaders violate equitable distribution.[44] Even with these distinctions, there is no sharp division between commutative and distributive justice because in reality the individual who confronts the social whole is at the same time a member of it.[45] If abstractly a stable equilibrium of justice is conceived, it can be understood that every act of any individual disturbs the equilibrium, and in so doing turns the actor into either a debtor or creditor.[46] It is never possible to realize an ideal condition in human society, in the affairs of the world “everything depends on the rulers being just.”[47] Justice depends on the respect for the reality of the human person, which necessitates love to be rooted firmly in the hearts of men. For Augustine, justice is “love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man.”[48]
“Fortitude presupposes vulnerability.”[49] Because humans have bodies, they are vulnerable to suffer injury. Everything done to a human person against his or her will is an assault, whether the injury is spiritual or physical. The deepest injury is death, and therefore, every courageous action is rooted in a readiness to die.[50] This is the reality of the virtue of fortitude. Martyrdom is the essential root of Christian fortitude, and a person needs overflowing divine grace to endure such great suffering.[51] The Christian loves life, but is willing to sacrifice the temporal one for the greater good, or for the greatest good which is God.[52] It is a paradox. “Whoever loves his life will lose it.”[53] Herein lies the reality and the mystery of the human person, an existence as bodies with souls, created but elevated, fallen but redeemed.[54]
Fortitude comes third in the order of cardinal virtues, a meaningful gradation. Without prudence and justice, there can be no fortitude because only a just and prudent person can be authentically courageous. Justice and prudence necessitate faith, hope, and love.[55] Fortitude cannot excel among the other virtues; it cannot “trust its own limits” and operate according to the truth of real things on its own.[56] To be brave requires an ability to discern when to endure an injustice or when to attack and defend the good.[57] Authentic fortitude rules out a swaggering and imprudent fearlessness.[58] Fortitude requires an unrelenting confrontation with reality, for without knowledge of possible perils and honesty about one’s abilities, the decisions and actions will be founded on falsity.[59] Like the other virtues, fortitude is founded on love, and because of the love of one’s self, of others, and of life, fear accompanies fortitude because fear is born of love.[60] What matters is the truth of things, the reality of eternal life.[61] According to Augustine, fortitude is “love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object,” which ultimately means “bearing everything readily for the sake of God.”[62]
Temperance, the fourth of the cardinal virtues, does not refer to mere quantity as if intemperance meant to indulge in excess. Rather lack of moderation toward sensitive appetites refers more broadly to passions and desires, and the sorrows that arise from absence of pleasures.[63] Where fortitude is about “fear and daring with respect to the greatest evils,” temperance is about “desires and pleasures” with respect to what is good.[64] God has established a natural harmony in the human body, therefore, it not evil to desire food and drink or touch and intimacy.[65] The virtue of temperance is to realize this order within the self, and to practice “selfless self-preservation.”[66] Chastity, for instance, resides in the soul but is expressed by the act of the body.[67] Temperance is distinguished from prudence, justice, and fortitude because it refers exclusively to the act of the individual.[68] Augustine said temperance is “love giving itself entirely to that which is loved;” it is “love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God.”[69]
The Human Ought to Act Like a Human
If the reality of reality is not obvious enough in the discussion of this sevenfold hierarchy of virtues, it is instructive to consider how human beings and, for instance, hydrogen differ. Hydrogen is what it is. For the element or the molecule or the compound, there is either existence or non-existence, which depends on a certain unity and orderliness of matter. The same is true for computer chips and rocket ships. Between those inanimate objects and the human person there is a chasm because the human being exists as a being in a radically different manner than matter exists. Even the noblest creatures under man with vegetative and sensitive souls are what they are independent of their own reason or will, even in a state of unrealized potential. No one can convince a dog he ought to act like a real dog.[70] This is not so with humans. Virtue convinces the human that he ought to act like a human.
First, the human person, in realizing meaning and purpose, ought to be open to hearing the voice of God in faith. Second, the human person ought to be true to himself by reaching beyond himself in hope. Third, the human person ought to become more perfected through love (caritas), by pursuing excellence, ultimate happiness, and fulfillment, and by partaking in the power of his Creator. With his whole being, the human person ought to find the goodness in the existence of God, the universe, others, and himself. Fourth, the human person’s life ought to be authentically prudent because he has an openness to reality and accepts the unveiling and revelation of reality through reason, be it natural or supernatural. Fifth, the human person ought to be just because he respects and loves others, understands relationship and that he ought to give others their due. Sixth, the prudent and just human person ought to be brave and act to realize the good in his world, willing in his fortitude to accept injury for the sake of truth and justice. Seventh, the human person ought to practice self-discipline so as to protect himself in his temperance from self-destruction.[71] This is how a realistic anthropology leads to a proper understanding of the authentic meaning of virtue.
Notes
[1] “Virtue,” Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[2] Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, parenthetical comment in II-II, q. 139, a. 1, in Summa theologiae : Complete English Edition, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Coyote Canyon Press, 2010), electronic version.
[3] “Horsepower,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online (Last updated July 8, 2013), http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/272384/horsepower.
[4] ST, II-II, q. 139, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[5] Josef Pieper, An Anthology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), p. 3.
[6] ST, II-II, q. 139, a. 2, trans. English Dominican Province.
[7] ST, I-II, q. 62, a. 4, trans. English Dominican Province.
[8] ST, I-II, q. 62, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[9] Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, translated by Robert Rosthal (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002) pp 42-43.
[10] ST, I-II, q. 62, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[11] The Holy Bible: Msgr. Ronald A. Knox Translation (Westminster: Baronius Press, 2013), Sirach 2:7-9.
[12] ST, I-II, q. 62, a. 4, trans. English Dominican Province.
[13] Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae (Of the Morals of the Catholic Church), translated by John Kevin Coyle (Augustinus, 1991), Chapter 15.
[14] Donald DeMarco, The Heart of Virtue: Lessons From Life and Literature Illustrating the Beauty and Value of Moral Character (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), Epilogue.
[15] 1 Corinthians 13:2, Knox.
[16] “Person,” OED.
[17] Tertullian, Adversus Praxean, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, translated by Peter Holmes (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885); Boethius, De Duab. Nat. as referenced by Aquinas, ST I, q. 29, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[18] ST, I, q. 27, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province; John 8:24, Knox.
[19] ST, I, q. 33, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[20] ST, I, q. 34, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[21] Avery Dulles, Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992), p. 38.
[22] Dulles, 38; ST, I, q. 27, a. 3, trans. English Dominican Province.
[23] Genesis 1:26, Knox.
[24] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), §1702.
[25] CCC, §1706.
[26] CCC, §1706; Pope Paul VI, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (December 7, 1965), Section 16, §1.
[27] CCC, §1703-1704; Gaudium et Spes, Section 15, §2.
[28] Gaudium et Spes, Section 14, §2.
[29] Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1959), 3.
[30] ST, I-II, q. 68, a. 4, trans. English Dominican Province.
[31] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 13-22; Aquinas, ST, II-II, q 48, a. 1.
[32] ST, I-II, q. 48, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[33] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 16-17.
[34] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 18.
[35] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 22.
[36] Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, Chapter 15.
[37] ST, II-II, q. 57, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province; Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 53.
[38] Augustine, Confessions, Book 7, Chapter III in Augustine Confessions, 2nd ed., translated by Frank Sheed (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993).
[39] ST, II-II, q. 57, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[40] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 62.
[41] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 5, Chapter 2, translated by W. D. Ross at Constitution Society, http://www.constitution.org/ari/ethic_05.htm; ST, II-II, q. 61, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[42] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 72.
[43] ST, II-II, q. 61, a. 2, trans. English Dominican Province.
[44] ST, II-II, q. 61, a. 3, trans. English Dominican Province.
[45] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 73.
[46] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 80.
[47] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 89.
[48] Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, Chapter 15.
[49] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 117.
[50] ST, II-II, q. 123, a. 2 and 4, trans. English Dominican Province.
[51] ST, II-II, q. 139, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[52] ST, II-II, q. 124, a. 2, trans. English Dominican Province.
[53] John 12:25, Knox.
[54] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 121.
[55] ST, II-II, q. 123, a. 12, trans. English Dominican Province.
[56] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 124.
[57] ST, II-II, q. 123, a. 6, trans. English Dominican Province.
[58] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 126.
[59] ST, II-II, q. 123, a. 3, trans. English Dominican Province.
[60] ST, II-II, q. 123, a. 4, trans. English Dominican Province.
[61] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 141.
[62] Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, Chapter 15.
[63] ST, II-II, q. 141, a. 3, trans. English Dominican Province.
[64] ST, II-II, q. 141, a. 4, trans. English Dominican Province.
[65] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 146.
[66] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 147.
[67] ST, II-II, q. 151, a. 1, trans. English Dominican Province.
[68] Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 147.
[69] Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, Chapter 15.
[70] Pieper, Anthology, p. 6.
[71] Adapted from Pieper, “Ought To” and “Seven Statements” in Anthology, pp. 6-8.
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