06/15/2007
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, A. McGrade ed.
Author begins paper with discussion of ancient virtue theories and the changes they underwent in the middle ages. The difficulty with virtue theory is that they appear circular-- in order to get virtue you need to perform right actions and get the right 'habitus', but in order for an action to be right you need to have virtue. This circularity was not lost on the medievals, who also made the entire virtue theory far more complex by adding religious virtues, ones only granted by god's grace, and by adding the concept of the Will, which could do whatever it pleased, regardless of virtuous 'habitus'.
Author gives summary of history of the thinking from the Medievals. Virtues became classified as a 'habitus' in the 12th century, a word for which there may not be a good english translation. It roughly approximates 'habit' or 'disposition'. This may have helped the Medievals distinguish between the habitus and the will. (pg 8)
Aquinas talked about two sets of virtues, 'civic' ones and 'divinely infused' ones. These were challenged. (pg 10) Divinely infused virtues were in many ways similar to civic ones, but they lacked being divinely inspired, gifts from God's charity. But even these divinely given virtues could be countermanded by an act of the free will, so what good were they anyway? Medievals began to even question this. Author believes that John Buridan rightly avoided the circularity that threatened virtue theory in his own commentary of Aristotle's Ethics. (pg 15)
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