Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics by J. Budziszewski

Reviewed by: Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment Fred D. Miller Jr. Charles L. Griswold . Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv + 412. Cloth, $59.95. For over a century, scholars have been vexed by the so-called "Adam Smith problem," which concerns the relationship between the two works which Smith published during his lifetime: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) in 1759, and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (WN) in 1776 (citations are to the Liberty Classics reprints of the Oxford University Press editions). Many have regarded them as discordant: while TMS is apparently concerned with classical ethics, WN seems to assume that humans are basically egoistic, although they can be directed toward the public good by means of the "invisible hand." It is tempting to view Smith as a transitional author: TMS is the swan song of virtue ethics, whereas WN is a pioneering work in a new tradition of political economy. Griswold challenges this temptation in this brilliant study, arguing that Smith had a coherent and integrated philosophical viewpoint encompassing TMS, WN, and other surviving writings. Griswold views Smith as offering a virtue ethics and "throwing in his lot with the ancient moralists" (65). He argues, "We cannot grasp Smith's diagnosis of and therapy for the modern age without devoting considerable attention to his analysis of the virtues (especially the virtue of justice) as well as to the theory of the emotions, of the impartial spectator, and of sympathy" (20). Smith tried to reconcile a traditional ethics with modern skepticism and the new values associated with commercial society and religious secularism. Griswold's book illuminates a wide range of themes in Smith's moral philosophy: his view of rhetoric, method, and system underlying TMS (chapter 1); sympathy and self-interest (chapter 2); moral psychology and the theory of the impartial spectator (chapter 3); Smith's skepticism and reservations about philosophy (chapter 4); virtue theory (chapter 5); justice (chapter 6); the relationship between TMS and WN (chapter 7); and nature versus artifice in ethics (chapter 8). The epilogue critically discusses whether Smith's moral theory falls into subjectivism, and whether [End Page 439] Smith goes too far in excluding philosophers such as Socrates from ordinary moral discourse. A brief review cannot do justice to Griswold's compelling interpretation, and I shall focus on his solution to "the old problem of how the moral theory and the political economy mesh" (21). Griswold argues, "Smith sees himself as synthesizing an ancient view about the nature of virtue with a modern approach to the problem of the source of moral value. Consequently the moral psychology (especially the notions of sympathy and the impartial spectator) and the virtue theory must be understood in light of each other" (181). Further, "The virtue theory is the moral foundation of Smith's political economy, political theory, and 'natural jurisprudence.' Hence the virtue theory is closely tied to his doctrine of liberty as well as to his views about the pursuit of wealth. However 'ancient' the virtue theory may in some respects be, Smith combines it with a modern view of the social and political institutions appropriate to virtue" (ibid.). With impressive erudition Griswold argues that "taken together . . . TMS and WN form complementary parts of a larger whole" (265), and that Smith thinks "the virtues of a free and commercial society" may be defended on the basis of views espoused in WN: skepticism of state interference in economic and social matters, anti-utopianism, and the doctrine of the invisible hand (21). Yet WN does not place blind faith in laissez faire but advocates social justice, compulsory public education and greater taxes on the rich (254, 264, 359). Has Griswold, then, finally solved the Adam Smith Problem? There remains the problem that WN apparently neglects central themes of TMS: sympathy, the impartial spectator, and benevolence. In TMS virtue has distinctive components: "Concern for our own happiness recommends to us the virtue of prudence: concern for that of other people, the virtues of justice and beneficence" (TMS 262). These constitute perfect virtue: "The man who acts according to the rules of perfect...

What place is there for virtue theory in theological ethics? Many question the normative significance of virtue theory in theological ethics today, leaving it to rule-based ethics to provide action-guidance. There are three key objections to the normativity of virtue theory: that virtue theory is about agents rather than actions, that virtue theory has nothing to say directly about the morality of actions, and that the virtues are too vague to be of normative or action-guiding significance. This essay, drawing on Thomas Aquinas’s account of virtue, challenges these perceptions and argues for a genuinely normative, action-guiding virtue theory within theological ethics. Theological ethics, in turn, can contribute to virtue theory, especially by its emphasis on the ecstatic nature of mature moral virtue, and through its reflection on the virtue of spiritual discernment.

The Thomist 73 (2009): 29-52 INFUSED VIRTUE AND THE EFFECTS OF ACQUIRED VICE: A TEST CASE FOR THE THOMISTIC THEORY OF INFUSED CARDINAL VIRTUES MICHAELS. SHERWIN, 0.P. University ofFribourg Fribourg, Switzerland SERVAIS PINCKAERS REPEATEDLY affirmed the importance of the infused cardinal virtues for the moral life.1 For Pinckaers, what is at stake in this doctrine is the difference that grace makes in the life of virtue. Grace transforms the source and character of moral excellence. "The first source of moral excellence is no longer located in the human person, but in God through Christ."2 In this reorientation, the most important moral virtues "are not 'acquired' by unaided human effort, but implanted in the human person by the Holy Spirit."3 Nevertheless, as dispositions residing in the powers of the human soul, the infused moral virtues are intimately the excellences of the agent himself. As such, they become the traits of character by means of which the Spirit teaches us the ways of holiness. "Thus, in the context of a gradual education guided by the light of the Gospel, an active cooperation between God and 1 Servais Pinckaers, Morality: The Catholic View (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2001), 71-72; The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 180; "The Sources of the Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas," in The Ethics ofAquinas, ed. StephenJ. Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 23; "The Place ofPhilosophy in Moral Theology," in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, edited by John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 6768 . 2 Pinckaers, Morality: The Catholic View, 71. 3 Ibid. 29 30 MICHAEL S. SHERWIN, O.P. the human person can develop."4 Pinckaers, therefore, did not see Aquinas's doctrine on the infused moral virtues as a Scholastic vestige, but as something rooted in the scriptural account of moral development. "Some such theory seems necessary if we are to explain what the Scriptures teach concerning the way to live as followers of Christ."5 A cursory analysis of the way New Testament authors employ the Greek terms for the cardinal virtues seems to support their status as infused by God. Ephesians, for example, describes God as having lavished upon us grace that grants us "all wisdom and prudence [phronesis]" (Eph 1:8), while 2 Timothy (1:7) tells us that "God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power, love and temperance [sophrosyne]," where "power" (dynamis) is one of the New Testament equivalents for the pagan Greek word for courage.6 It is the strength (kratos) that comes from God and emboldens us to resist the devil (Eph 6:10). Lastly, although the New Testament authors radically reinterpret the meaning of justice (dikaiosyne), they affirm that Christ is our justice (1 Cor 1:30) and that in him we become the justice of God (2 Cor 5:21). Prudence, justice, courage, and temperance, therefore, are all described in the New Testament as given to us by God. In this the New Testament authors seem to be following an Old Testament theme that portrays God, through the mysterious action of his wisdom, as teaching the cardinal virtues: "if one loves justice, the fruits of [wisdom's] works are virtues; for she teaches temperance and prudence, justice and courage, and nothing in life is more useful for humans than these" (Wis 8:7). These passages, however, while suggestive, are not of themselves probative. Indeed, many reject the doctrine of infused 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 72. 6 One explanation for the virtual absence of the classical Greek term for courage (andreia) in the New Testament is that since its etymological root is the Greek word for man (aner, andros) the New Testament authors wanted to avoid the connotations of self-sufficiency that the term normally conveys. Instead, as Ceslas Spicq notes in his classic study of New Testament morality (Theologie morale du Nouveau Testament [Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1965), 354.)), when offering their theology of courage the New Testament authors appeal to a cluster of...

Aristotle based his theory of virtue ethics on the idea that it is moral and intellectual virtues that lead people to behave well. Moral virtues are character traits that dispose people to behave ethically. The intellectual virtue of phronesis enables them to make good judgements as to how to give practical effect to their disposition. He thought it impossible to define with precision what the ethical course of action would be in any particular situation, so he had no interest in defining specific moral laws. He was concerned rather to set up a target which, if people aimed at it, would enable them to behave better than they otherwise would. Virtue ethics is highly applicable to management consulting. The intangible nature of the outputs of management consultancy work, and the reliance that clients and others, therefore, have to place on subjective impressions in evaluating the performance and behaviour of management consultants, means that the character of management consultants is a central issue in determining whether or not they can be trusted to behave in an ethical manner. Ideas from Aristotle’s theory could go far towards strengthening management consultancy firms’ typical approaches to ensuring that ethical standards are observed.

Reviewed by: Basic Works by Thomas Aquinas Thomas M. Ward Thomas Aquinas, Basic Works, ed.Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett 2014) 688 pp. Basic Works (BW) incorporates new and previously published translations of Aquinas’s works to present an excellent anthology well-suited for university courses on Aquinas’ philosophy. The translations are clear and tend to be fairly literal. Scholars who appreciate the old pre-Vatican II translation of Summa Theologiae by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province for its accuracy but not its archaisms will find this anthology refreshing. In addition to its translations, BW includes a short Introduction (four pages), a very good bibliography of Aquinas’s works and the works of those authors Aquinas cites, and a decent index. BW is divided into three parts. Part I, Philosophical Foundations, includes new translations of the two seminal works of Aquinas’s natural philosophy and metaphysics: On the Principles of Nature, translated by Eleonore Stump and Stephen Chanderbahm; and On Being and Essence, translated by Peter King. Part II, God and Human Nature, includes previously published selections from Summa Theologiae (ST): The Treatise on the Divine Nature (ST I.1–13), translated by Brian J. Shanley, OP; and The Treatise on Human Nature (ST I.75–86), translated by Robert Pasnau. Part III, Ethics and Human Action, includes two newly translated selections from ST, both translated by Thomas Williams: The Treatise on Happiness (ST I–II.1–5) and The Treatise on Human Acts (ST I–II.6–21). It also includes previously [End Page 305] published translations, by Jeffrey Hause and Claudia Eisen Murphy, of Disputed Questions on Virtue, and by Richard J. Regan, of The Treatise on Law (ST I–II.90–97). Notably absent from BW are introductions to individual selections or a glossary of scholastic technical terms. These omissions suggest the book is designed for classroom use, where the neophyte’s readings are carefully contextualized and interpreted by the master, and not for the autodidact’s library. The selections here anthologized closely track those aspects of Aquinas’s thought which have secured his contemporary relevance to academic Anglophone philosophy. The student will not find here anything on the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the sacraments—topics on which the Angelic Doctor spilled gallons of ink. This narrowness of scope is practically unavoidable in a typical modern college or university, given the sharp distinction customarily drawn between philosophy and theology, and given that we have long ceased to view philosophy as theology’s “handmaiden.” For Aquinas to have a place in philosophy curricula, he needs to be sanitized of the weirder aspects of his religious views. This is not to say that Hause and Pasnau have done to Aquinas what Thomas Jefferson did to the Bible; there is still plenty of God and even of Christian mysticism in the anthologized texts. But the selections seem designed, in part, to present an Aquinas who divided up the labor of philosophy more or less as we do and whose intellectual output was devoted to addressing the questions we continue to find important. As I said, this is probably unavoidable, but given the choice to present texts of Aquinas which present him as more philosopher than theologian, the editors might have used their Introduction to say something about the full scope of Aquinas’s oeuvre or about his conception of philosophy’s relationship to theology. A recent book with a similar aim is Timothy McDermott’s anthology, Selected Philosophical Writings. McDermott’s effort includes a much wider range of works by Aquinas, and a slightly wider range of topics addressed by Aquinas, along with a short reflection on the relationship between theology and philosophy, but, in my opinion, the book as a whole suffers from McDermott’s colloquial translation style. BW is, for this reason, on the whole, a definite improvement on McDermott’s effort. Readers who are looking for an Aquinas anthology of wider scope would do well to consider the Penguin Classics’ Selected Writings of Aquinas, edited and translated by Ralph McInerny, which, while not quite comprehensive, covers a wider range of topics than any anthology I know of except for Anton Pegis...

Linda Zagzebski argues that knowledge should be understood in terms of intellectual virtue. The kind of she has in mind is on the model of Aristotle's account of moral virtue: A virtue, then, can be defined as a deep and enduring acquired of a person, involving a characteristic motivation to produce a certain desired end and reliable success in bringing about that end. (137) Examples of such virtues are open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, intellectual thoroughness and intellectual courage. Zagzebski calls her theory of knowledge a true theory, distinguishing it from reliabilist theories of Sosa and Goldman.' These latter authors use the terminology of intellectual and but in a way that, according to Zagzebski, misuses the language of virtue. In what follows below I will argue for two theses. First, there is an important way of dividing up the landscape so that the theories of Sosa and Goldman are indeed theories. On this understanding, all three of our authors are in the same broad camp; one which can appropriately be labeled virtue epistemology, and which can be distinguished from other broad alternatives concerning the nature of knowledge. The real disagreement between Zagzebski on the one hand, and Sosa and Goldman on the other, is over the nature of intellectual virtue, or that kind of which is required for knowledge. Once the question is put this way, it is possible to argue for my second thesis. Namely, reliabilists such as Sosa and Goldman are correct in rejecting Aristotle's account of the moral virtues as the model for understanding intellectual virtue. Contra Zagzebski, the cognitive character that grounds knowledge need not be acquired, need not include the strong motivational component of an Aristotlean moral virtue, and need not be an excellence in Aristotle's sense. Rather, the essential aspect of an intellectual is its success component, or in Sosa's and Goldman's terms, its reliability.

Reviewed by: Knowledge and Faıth in Thomas Aquinas by John I. Jenkins E.J. Ashworth John I. Jenkins. Knowledge and Faıth in Thomas Aquinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xv + 267. Cloth, $59.95. There is a strong tension in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. On the one hand, he is strongly naturalist. He insists that our cognition is rooted in sense-perception and that [End Page 673] it is normally reliable. He insists that our moral life is grounded in our nature both as physical beings, able to feel pain and pleasure, and as social beings, depending on each other for our welfare. But he is also strongly supernaturalist. Human nature by virtue of its cognitive orientation toward the physical is not able through its own powers to know God. Still less is human nature able to achieve moral virtue by its own powers. This is not just because we are cut off from God by original sin; rather, there is a primal lack that was there even before the Fall. To achieve our true end, both cognitive and moral, we depend on God’s free gift of grace which elevates our nature and renders it able both to know God through the beatific vision in Heaven and to respond to God through loving, virtuous action. The gift of faith becomes central to human nature and destiny in a way that was to worry later thinkers such as Duns Scotus, who pertinently asked how our intellect can have the ultimate end of knowing God if it has to be made a different intellect before it achieves that end. Jenkins does not worry about the point raised by Scotus. Instead, he sets out to give an interpretation of the Summa theologiae which will help us understand more deeply the interplay between the natural and the supernatural in Aquinas. He begins by taking advantage of new readings of Aristode’s Posterior Analytics which present Aristode’s account of the demonstration which moves from cause to effect, not just as a pedagogic device for presenting material obtained by moving from effect to cause, but as a recipe for cognitive restructuring. Certainly we have to begin with mere observation, and with the piecemeal discovery of causes, but to achieve true scıentia (to use the medieval Latin term for organized, necessary knowledge) we need to acquire a new vision of how reality is structured and to see how effects flow necessarily from their causes. True demonstration is an expression of this new vision. Jenkins applies this reading of Aristotle to Aquinas. He takes with absolute seriousness Aquinas’s claim at the beginning of the Summa theologıae that theology too is an Aristotelian scientıa, and he sees the work as presenting a recipe for the cognitive restructuring of apprentice theologians (those to whom the work is addressed). The scientıa of the Summa theologiae differs from the scientia of the Posterior Analytics in two ways. First, Aquinas allows the term scientia to have an extended sense, so that God too can have scientia, even though he does not move from principles to conclusions by a process of syllogistic demonstration, but instead grasps all that is knowable in one simple act. Second, the basic principles which are the foundation of theological demonstration are the articles of faith, especially those of the creeds, which cannot be known by us in any naturalistic way. It is through God’s infused light that we assent to these articles as divinely revealed. After a lengthy examination of the role of faith in Aquinas’s account, Jenkins describes the epistemology involved as supernatural externalism. Although Jenkins’s presentation of the relationship between scientıa and faith in the Summa is carefully and lucidly argued, there are two aspects of the book that I would question. First, while it is true that Aquinas does present theology as an Aristotelian scientia, I doubt that this single fact “determines the purpose and structure of the Summa theologiae” (15) in any very detailed way. Jenkins further claims that the structure of the Summa is determined by the structure of God’s knowledge (220), but if God is truly [End...

Medical specialists in training not only develop competences, but also personal qualities. These are known in moral philosophy as virtues. They enable a person to decide and to do the right thing in each situation anew. It is generally assumed in virtue ethical and medical educational literature that people develop virtues and character through experience in practice. Yet, how this process takes place during postgraduate medical education has hardly been investigated. An empirically informed account of this development may support further improvement in medical specialty training. We conducted a qualitative, multicenter, longitudinal study of otolaryngology residents and their educators. Fifteen residents were interviewed twice (semi-structured). In between the interviews, residents were observed during various daily activities. After coding and analysis, a group member check was carried out. Thirteen educators were also interviewed (semi-structured). Using virtue ethics as a broad conceptual framework, thematic analysis was employed to describe residents' development and learning strategies related to virtues. Results were clustered in 4 themes. Residents appear to develop their virtues in phases. In an early phase, they develop mainly cardinal and intellectual virtues. Further along training, professional and moral virtues come to the fore. Residents, often implicitly, change their conception of their professional goals over time. Role models, and context and culture at the workplace appear to influence residents' virtue formation. Our findings indicate that ENT residents implicitly develop virtues in distinct phases throughout their training, transitioning from cardinal and intellectual virtues to professional and moral one as they progress. Understanding these developmental trajectories and the influential role of role models and workplace culture offers important insights into developing desirable attitudes such as context-sensitive judgement in surgical education. Supporting discussions about personal views and purposes with peers and surgeons could further enhance this development.

BOOK REVIEW: edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro.<i>ENVIRONMENTAL VIRTUE ETHICS</i>. New York and Oxford: Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2005.

Firmly grounded in Christian theological spirituality (Evagrius Ponticus) and doctrine (Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas), the concept of the seven deadly sins, although the exact sequence and names may differ slightly, can be traced from Dante’s Divine Comedy and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to David Fincher’s famous film Se7en and multiple video games, such as The Binding of Isaac, Dante’s Inferno, and the already mentioned Darksiders III. An interesting ingredient of the several cultural depictions of the seven sins in past and present, is that the presentation of their physical form (aesthetics) and the words they utter (rhetoric) is very often closely connected to the specific sin they are supposed to represent. In this process of representation, and especially personalisation, the sins are made into characters with specific traits that mirror their theological identity. Lust, for example, is commonly presented as a beautiful woman, while gluttony is represented as an individual indulging in gastronomical orgies, and so forth. In this article, I want to argue that, within the specific field of digital games, the seven deadly sins are personalised on two levels: (1) essential personalisation – the presentation of the sins reflects their own immoral identity; and (2) characteral personalisation – the presentation reflects the protagonist’s negative character traits. To do so convincingly, I will start with introducing the concept of the seven deadly sins within their proper context of the Christian (theological) tradition. Next, I will introduce and analyse the four case studies – Diablo III, The Binding of Isaac, Dante’s Inferno, and Darksiders III – focusing on the topic of the representation and personalisation of the seven deadly sins within the games. After building a synthesis based on the analysis of the case studies in order to illustrate the two levels of personalisation, I will finish with some final remarks.

Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas's Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul1 Kendall A. Fisher THE HUMAN SOUL is something of an ontological anomaly for St. Thomas Aquinas. It is the substantial form of the human being and so serves as her principle of existence and organization.2 But it is also a subsistent part of the human being—specifically, the part with which she understands. As subsistent, it is not merely the formal principle by which she exists; it exists in its own right, per se, akin, in this respect, to body parts like the hand or eye.3 Yet unlike these body parts, it is a subsistent substantial form, and Aquinas argues that this [End Page 185] ontological status renders it incorruptible. Consequently, it survives death to exist in a disembodied state. Such implications render Aquinas's commitment to the soul's subsistence—and his argument to that end—central to his philosophy of the human person.4 For Aquinas, the soul owes its subsistence to its rational nature. He argues that our intellective acts, unlike sensitive or nutritive ones, cannot be performed by something corporeal, like a bodily organ. Instead, they must be performed by something incorporeal. Aquinas locates these operations in the soul, apart from the body.5 In his view, this renders the soul a per se operator, which in turn entails its subsistence, that is, its existence per se. He holds that "[i] "nothing operates per se unless it exists per se, [ii] for, indeed, nothing operates except a [End Page 186] being in act, [iii] whence a thing operates in the way it exists."6 Since the soul operates per se, it must exist per se. Aquinas's argument rests on the correspondence between a thing's mode of operation and its mode of existence. This is explicit in [i] and [iii]. Yet he does not take this correspondence as primitive. Instead, he justifies it with [ii], nothing operates except a being in act. This requirement that agents be "in act" in order to operate underlies the correspondence between operating and existing per se. Aquinas makes similar moves in other contexts, appealing to variations of [ii] to support correspondence claims regarding operation and existence.7 In fact, [ii] is an instance of a pervasive principle in Aquinas's thought, which frequently appears as "nothing acts except insofar as it is in act" or, "each thing acts insofar as it is in act."8 He employs this principle, which I will call the in-act principle, in myriad contexts. It features in his arguments that God alone creates,9 that all creatures produce their like,10 that incorporeal creatures are incorruptible,11 that the intellective powers are formally in us,12 and others.13 Yet what the principle means and how it serves its justificatory role in the subsistence argument are not immediately clear. Indeed, despite the in-act principle's prominence in Aquinas's thought, it has received relatively little attention in the literature. Perhaps this is because it has sometimes been taken as the truism that agents must exist simpliciter. John [End Page 187] Wippel, for instance, explains the principle by noting that "nonexisting agents do not actually produce effects."14 And, while discussing its role in the subsistence argument, Robert Pasnau explains that what does not exist independently cannot operate independently because "existence is a pre-requisite for operation."15 While true, this reading of the principle is unhelpful for understanding it within the context of Aquinas's subsistence argument. His aim is not simply to establish that the soul exists simpliciter, but to establish that it exists per se and not as a mere formal principle. Other interpreters have taken the principle to be little more than a restatement of one of the correspondence claims regarding mode of operation and mode of existence.16 Norman Kretzmann notes that things that depend on matter (i.e., nonsubsistent forms) cannot act on their own.17 But again, this does little to explain why something nonsubsistent cannot operate per se, and leaves the in-act principle's role in the argument largely obscure. If we can illuminate the...

Spiritualis Uterus:The Question of Forced Baptism and Thomas Aquinas's Defense of Jewish Parental Rights Matthew A. Tapie1 On June 23, 1858, Pope Pius IX ordered police of the Papal States to remove a six-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his home, in Bologna. Edgardo had been secretly baptized by his Christian housekeeper after allegedly falling ill as an infant. Since the law of the Papal States required that a person baptized must be raised Catholic, Inquisition authorities forcibly removed Edgardo from his parents' home and transported him to Rome in order that he receive a Christian upbringing.2 'Worldwide protests followed. Thousands of people—from American protesters to the French emperor Napoleon III—demanded the child's return.'3 Along with assurances that the boy would be well taken care of, Pius IX insisted, Non possumus. Controversy over the Mortara affair in the United States emerged once more, in January 2018, with the publication of Dominican theologian Romanus Cessario's essay defending Pius IX's decision.4 In order to forestall anti-Catholic sentiment in reaction to an upcoming film based on David Kertzer's 1997 book on the Mortara case, Cessario argues that the separation of Edgardo from his Jewish parents is what the current Code of Canon Law, and Thomas Aquinas's theology of baptism, [End Page 289] required.5 If one accepts the Catholic Church's teaching on the efficacy of baptism, Pius IX's decision is not only just, it is an act of piety, and strength. In Cessario's view, one must look beyond the human pathos of the Mortara case to see that what was required by the law of the Church, and the Papal States, concerned the deeper realities of the power and permanence of baptism, and the logical, political consequences of receiving this sacrament. Cessario's argument is as follows:6 1. An infant in danger of death can be baptized licitly even against the will of non-Catholic parents. Cessario cites the 1983 Codex iuris canonici 868, and explains that § 2 affirms that 'an infant of Catholic parents or even of non-Catholic parents is baptized licitly in danger of death even against the will of their parents.' 2. Baptism seals a person with an indelible spiritual mark that configures a person to Christ. 3. The law of the Church and the civil law of the Papal States require that legitimately baptized children receive a Catholic education (expressed today in the Codex iuris canonici 868 § 2). 4. Therefore, Pius IX was right to relocate Edgardo from his family and raise him Catholic. Cessario appeals to Aquinas's theology of baptism in the second premise of his argument but does not cite to a text. He is likely referring to Aquinas's discussion of baptism in the Tertia Pars of the Summa theologiae. For Cessario, if one conceives of the Mortara case as a kidnapping, one has fallen victim to modern indifference to theological claims, and anti-Catholic prejudice.7 Outraged scholars and writers criticized Cessario's essay. Some charged that the essay damaged Catholic-Jewish relations.8 Others criticized theological aspects of Cessario's argument, and [End Page 290] a few of these authors cited Aquinas's teaching against forced baptism of Jewish children.9 Cessario and his critics appeal to Aquinas's teaching to argue for and against Pius IX's decision to remove Edgardo Mortara. However, this contemporary debate has overlooked the fact that the question of Aquinas's teaching on forced baptism was at the center of a rather extensive theological exchange between the Mortara family, and the Vatican's papal counsel, in 1858. Soon after Edgardo was abducted, the Mortara family, with the assistance of the Jewish community in Rome, submitted a formal document (referred to as Pro-memoria and Syllabus) that argued that the child must be returned because the Church, according to Aquinas, prohibits baptizing children of unbelievers without the consent of their parents. The Mortara family's document appealed to the same teachings in Aquinas cited by critics of Cessario. Yet the Vatican's refutation also appealed to Aquinas's teaching in order to defend the decision to separate...

Reviewed by: Thomas Aquinas on the Jews: Insights into His Commentary on Romans 9–11 Michael B. Lukens Thomas Aquinas on the Jews: Insights into His Commentary on Romans 9–11. By Steven C. Boguslawski, O.P. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. 2008. Pp. xviii, 145. $18.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-809-14233-0.) In the compelling dialogue today between Jews and Christians, the long and devastating tradition of contempt for Jews within Christianity is a persistent preoccupation. In recent decades, this has prompted historical reexaminations to understand more fully this onerous tradition, with special interest in those who challenged it. Commonly, such treatments have integrated social and theological analyses, but this has often meant modest theological analysis at best. Boguslawski seeks to correct this problem in reference to the leading theological voice in the matter in the medieval period, St. Thomas Aquinas, and to do so on the basis of the central theological source for this relationship, St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Through a close scrutiny of Aquinas’s seldom examined Commentary on Romans (Super epistolam ad romanos), Boguslawski develops a thesis against the grain—namely, that Aquinas did not in fact perpetuate the dominant adversos Judaeos tradition in presumed continuity with Augustine, but rather substantially corrected that tradition in a positive soteriological assessment of the covenantal role of Judaism and, even more remarkably, a theological basis for a continuing one. In recent decades, there has been no dearth of scholarship on Aquinas and his understanding of Jews and Judaism, portraying consistency with the Augustinian tradition to which he was so indebted. But Boguslawski has two particular scholars in mind here, arguably the two most important recent interpreters in this area: Jeremy Cohen (The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism, Ithaca, NY, 1982) and especially John Y. B. Hood (Aquinas and the Jews, Philadelphia, 1995). Both Cohen and Hood focus on the social-historical context in assessing Aquinas’s view of the Jews as thoroughly consistent with Augustinian supersessionism and depreciative of Judaism and Jewish status. This is the traditional view that sets up Boguslawski’s counterassessment in a theological reinterpretation through Aquinas’s exegesis of Romans. Boguslawski’s thesis is precise and provocative in a threefold sequence. First, he exposits the traditional assessment of Aquinas’s view on the Jews in his own social context and in the Summa Theologiae. Second, he asserts that this analysis needs to be reframed on the basis of Aquinas’s Commentary on the Romans, which presents not only a substantial agreement between the two contemporaneous textual treatments but also posits the stronger influence of the biblical text. Third, from such an exegetical analysis, he claims that Aquinas clearly has a central and positive understanding of the role of the Jews that has not previously been adequately understood. [End Page 603] The key interpretive basis for Boguslawski is a reframing of Aquinas’s perspective in terms of the concept of God’s providence as the key in Romans 9–11, placing the essential focus in an emphasis on election and predestination. Aquinas, in this Commentary and reflectively in the Summa, asserts a foundational understanding of the Jews as a permanently valued element in divine design and continually essential for Christianity. This thesis runs counter to later Reformation views and much of modern interpretation on the Pauline focus in Romans 9–11 as grounded in the sequential history of salvation and issues of justification rather than providential design. Boguslawski extends his discussion into the area of contemporary traditional and revisionist Romans interpretation but complicates the analysis of the primacy of providence by his citation of a supplemental soteriological key in Aquinas’s focal use of John 4:22 (“. . . for salvation is from the Jews”). Nonetheless, the reframing here in Aquinas’s providential understanding of covenant asserts a most valuable broader biblical agenda. Boguslawski has provided an important and necessary corrective from a historical-theological perspective. He presents a valuable shift from a social-historical perspective that sees Aquinas as a traditional Augustinian in his view of the Jews, hence a passive voice in the rising hostility of the Church and society against Jews in the thirteenth century, to...

The Ethics of Surgical Interventions for Body Integrity Identity Disorder and Gender Dysphoria Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. Introduction On May 20, 2009, Fox News featured a report that described the life of a man named "John" who had spent his life struggling with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID).1 In a phone interview, John admitted that he remembers wanting to amputate his leg when he was between seven and eleven years of age, by sticking his leg under the rear wheel of a bus. He never went through with it but continued to experience an intense desire to amputate his healthy limb for the following fifty-plus years. Described for the first time in 1977 as apotemnophilia, BIID was originally thought to be a psychological disorder characterized by sexual arousal associated with the desire to be an amputee. However, it was renamed when Dr. Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, proposed that the primary motivation behind the condition was an issue of identity rather than of sexual desire.2 This proposal is controversial.3 Despite much [End Page 1003] debate, BIID was not included in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which was published on May 18, 2013. In this essay, we will consider the ethics of surgical interventions for BIID and Gender Dysphoria (GD).4 We begin with a discussion of the principle of totality that distinguishes ethical from unethical modifications of the body. We will refer specifically to the latter category of surgical interventions as "mutilations," though the Catholic moral tradition's use of the term is itself ambiguous.5 This is followed by an extensive moral discussion of (1) amputations of healthy limbs for patients struggling with BIID and (2) sex reassignment surgeries for those who identify themselves as transgender persons. I will propose that an ethical argument can be made to justify the former but not the latter. The Principle of Totality Because of the goodness of the human body, its integrity is a good that has to be protected and preserved. The ethical principle that is used to judge the morality of bodily interventions that impinge upon this bodily integrity is the principle of totality.6 It was articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologiae as follows: Since a member is part of the whole human body, it is for the sake of the whole, as the imperfect for the perfect. Hence a member of the human body is to be disposed of according as it is expedient for the body. . . . If, however, the member be decayed and therefore a source of corruption to the whole body, then it is lawful with the consent [End Page 1004] of the owner of the member, to cut away the member for the welfare of the whole body.7 Over the centuries, Catholic moral theologians appealed to the principle of totality to justify three different scenarios that involved the sacrifice of a bodily organ for the sake of the whole human organism. The first case involves a diseased organ that has to be removed to save the life of the soldier wounded on the battlefield—say a gangrenous, decaying limb as in the example of Aquinas. The second case involves the healthy foot of a man who is trapped on a railroad track that has to be amputated to save his life from a collision with a train, and the third case involves the healthy limb of an individual that has to be amputated in response to a tyrant who orders him to cut off his own hand or lose his head to the executioners instead. In these cases, the sacrifice of the part would be morally permitted as a necessary means of preserving the life of the individual. As Fr. Gerald Kelly, S.J., points out, this final case is particularly significant because it involves a healthy limb whose very presence—and not its diseased or trapped condition—becomes a source of vital harm for the organism.8 How does one justify the principle of totality? In 1944, Pope Pius XII explained it this way: "Man's power over his...

Traditionally Christian ethical reflection has taken the form of what is called nowadays ‘virtue ethics’. This article compares the approach to virtue ethics in the Byzantine thinker, Maximos the Confessor, and the Western thinker, Thomas Aquinas. They both share the heritage of Plato and Aristotle. Maximos develops a concern for the virtues that is practical and ascetic; although he recognizes and uses the traditional classical terminology, he prefers a new Christian terminology, based more directly on the Scriptures. In contrast, Aquinas accepts and uses the classical terminology, adding to it Christian ‘theological’ virtues. His concern is much less directly practical than Maximos, and more directed to the kind of society in which the virtues can flourish. This contrast between the ascetical and political (which should not be overdrawn) is manifest in Dumitru Stăniloae and Josef Pieper, introduced as modern interpreters of Maximos and Thomas respectively.