Virtue Ethics in the Thomistic and Augustinian Traditions

Catalog description

Contemporary moral philosophers and theologians have increasingly turned to ancient conceptions of the virtues in order to provide a framework for addressing the variety of moral experiences that compose a human life. Advocates of this turn to virtue tend to express a dissatisfaction with modern accounts of personhood, and to use conceptual frameworks rooted in historical moral traditions as a foundation for engaging contemporary questions and concerns. This class provides an overview of the broad contours of two trajectories in virtue ethics central to Christian moral theology: twentieth century efforts to recover the work of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas for contemporary ethics, and more recent efforts to shape a view of virtue that is informed by Augustine and by later Christians (particularly Protestant authors) writing in the Augustinian tradition. Through reviewing and critically assessing these two traditions, students will explore the issues at stake in retrieving different philosophical and theological conceptions of the virtues for contemporary ethics.