 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, What Comes Naturally? Ethics in Albert and Aquinas. Down through the ages there haven't been many things upon which philosophers agreed, but nearly all of them have been willing to admit that Socrates was a pretty great guy. Seen as a paragon of virtue in antiquity, he was still admired in medieval times, especially by such boosters of classical philosophy as Peter Abelard. Nor was Socrates the only hero of pre-Christian times. There was Cato, for instance, who heroically killed himself when Julius Caesar destroyed the Roman Republic. Dante duly praised Cato in his Convivio and placed him among the saved in his Divine Comedy. Likewise, the 14th century English thinker Robert Holcott allowed that Socrates was saved and given eternal life. These posthumous tributes show how difficult some medieval found it to accept that Christians had a monopoly on virtue. But from a theological point of view, this was rather inconvenient. How did Socrates and Cato manage to be so virtuous, given that they were pagans who lacked belief in the Christian God and lived too early to receive Christ's offer of grace? Augustine's view on this matter was a strict Though pagans may on occasion seem virtuous, their virtue is in fact false. For their actions, no matter how admirable they may seem, are not directed towards the true goodness of the Christian God. In his City of God, Augustine argued at length that the courage, integrity, and justice displayed by famous Romans were grounded in the wrong motives. Even Cato's suicide was a prideful act, undertaken out of resentment against Caesar. Following Augustine's lead, medievals often distinguished the apparent wisdom and virtue of pagans from the real wisdom and virtue of the followers of Christ. John of Salisbury, himself quite a booster of ancient culture, qualified his praise of Socrates and other ancient philosophers with the remark, Why would Augustine and his successors have taken such an extreme stance? One factor may have been the need to ward off Pelagianism. As we know from previous episodes, the Pelagians held that humans can be saved without the need for grace, a view deemed heretical in the wake of Augustine's thunderous denunciations. And if Socrates could be genuinely virtuous without even being a Christian, then surely Pelagians would have been right to say that it is possible to merit salvation using nothing more than our natural resources. Yet one could admit the possibility of pagan virtue while avoiding Pelagianism. It is one thing to say that everyone will if left to their own devices sin at some point or other, and another to say that no one can ever be truly virtuous without God's help. So we need to seek a deeper explanation of the medieval denial of pagan virtue. The Augustinian position was not based on simple opposition to Pelagianism, but on the conviction that God is the source of all goods in human life and the ultimate goal of all good human action. This is why we see early medieval thinkers giving God at least part of the credit for every case of human virtue. In that indispensable textbook of the medieval universities, The Sentences of Peter Lombard, we read that, "... virtue is a good quality of mind that God alone works in us." There's a parallel here to the Augustinian theory of knowledge. We've seen how medieval proponents of the illumination theory argued, again following Augustine, that God must be somehow involved every time a human achieves genuine understanding. Likewise, on the ethical front, divine help was needed if humans were to be capable of genuine goodness. It was often said that virtue is infused into the human by God much as the mind is illuminated with knowledge by the divine light. A good example is Philip the Chancellor, whose ethical teachings we looked at back in episode 229. He shows his Augustinian credentials by suggesting that all real virtues come from God. Natural virtue, such as was possessed by the pagans, would not be virtue in the true sense of the word. Philip also calls this natural kind of moral excellence political virtue because it is expressed in our this-worldly life and in our dealings with other people, rather than having to do with our relationship to God. For Philip, even the so-called cardinal virtues, namely courage, temperance, prudence, and justice, have to be infused by God and not naturally acquired, if they are to be virtues in the true sense of the word. And the best examples of full-blown virtue are the so-called theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. This position had the advantage of agreeing with Augustine and Peter Lombard, two of the pillars that supported early 13th century scholasticism. But it had disadvantages too. For one thing, it seems frankly implausible. Are we really to believe that Socrates was not showing real courage when he unflinchingly drank the hemlock? That not a single decision reached by pagan judges had ever been truly just? For another thing, there was Aristotle. As we also saw in episode 229, it took a while for his Nicomachean ethics to become available in a complete Latin version. Once it did, the medievals were confronted with Aristotle's lengthy and sophisticated explanation of how virtue is acquired through moral education, which leads to the cultivation of good habits. How could his readers continue insisting that true virtue must be infused and never acquired through natural means? It would be like discovering how your parents go about buying and wrapping your Christmas presents, yet stubbornly maintaining that the presents are really brought by Santa Claus. I hasten to reassure any children who may be listening that of course some Christmas presents are brought by Santa Claus. He came down the chimney with that toy you really wanted, whereas it was your parents who brought you that itchy sweater. When it came to the gifts of the spirit, a similar compromise was reached by Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. Albert was the first 13th century thinker to engage seriously with the whole ethics, teaching lectures on the basis of Robert Grossetet's translation. He also composed another, shorter exegesis of Aristotle's ethics, plus a free-standing work entitled On the Good. In these writings, Albert sought to reconcile Aristotle with the Augustinian moral worldview of his predecessors. As if that wasn't tricky enough, he also had to reconcile tensions within Aristotle's own ethical teaching. Notoriously, the Nicomachean ethics lavishes a tension on the practical virtues, explaining that they are dispositions to choose the ideal mean between extremes, dispositions that we acquire through training and repetition. Then, in the final chapter, Aristotle adds that pure contemplation is to be preferred to virtuous practical activity. Is he telling us to spend our time doing philosophy in addition to being practically virtuous, or telling us to forget practical virtue if circumstances allow and spend all our time contemplating? As we saw in the previous episode devoted to his metaphysics, Albert does think that humans achieve perfect performance in the world, and that the human race is a natural It is a contemplation available to us in the afterlife, when the blessed will behold God face to face. That is impossible in our current earthly life, but we can start working towards that goal in the here and now. Like Santa, God knows who has been naughty or nice, and He'll reward the deserving. In this sense, Albert's teaching conforms to what we've found in every book of the book. He has a sense of self-confidence, and a sense of self-confidence. Like Peter Lombard and Philip the Chancellor, he tells us to Perfect virtue requires that when we perform good actions, we are striving to reach the perfect good, which is God Himself. Albert here exploits an idea that was often emphasized in medieval guidelines for administering the sacrament of confession. Whether an action is sinful or evil, is it a good thing? Or is it a good thing? It may seem that helping old ladies across the street is always good, but if you help an old lady across the street because you want to impress the married person you are hoping to seduce, you aren't being virtuous. Likewise, our conception of life's ultimate end makes a difference to the goodness of our actions. If we just seek worldly virtue, that's less perfect. If we just seek worldly virtue, that's less perfect. Albert still admits that worldly virtue is a kind of happiness, even if it is a lesser one. Where Augustine said that only false virtue was available to the pagans of Rome, Albert thinks that even a pagan can become genuinely, if imperfectly, virtuous. For pagans too, can acquire the so-called political virtues through the process of life. The idea of a world that is perfect is a kind of happiness. Furthermore, the happiness of contemplation can be achieved in this life. Such earthly contemplative happiness trumps the happiness of acquired political virtue, though it falls short of the perfect beatitude of the blessed in heaven. The upshot is that Albert's ethics envisions three possible degrees of human happiness, lying respectively in the same way Albert's ethics. The first two were already described by Aristotle in his ethics, but the third is known only in Christian theology. Ideally, the lesser kinds of virtue and happiness are stages on the way to ultimate beatitude. Acting virtuously towards our neighbors is a kind of preparation for the life of the person who is in the present. The second is that the person who is in the present is the person who is in the present. This nuanced theory, drawing together ideas from both Aristotle and the Augustinian tradition, was itself a preparation and stepping stone towards the more celebrated ethics of Thomas Aquinas. With Albert, he holds that our ultimate happiness can lie in the beatific vision alone. No creative thing can satisfy the human will, but the fact that we are in the present is a very important thing. The second is that the person who is in the present is the person who is in the present. No creative thing can satisfy the human will, because no matter how good a created thing may be, it is good only by participating in God's more perfect goodness. On this point, by the way, Albert and Aquinas agree with their fellow Dominican, Robert Kilwardby. He too emphasized the difference between the mere felicity of this life and the full happiness or beatitude available in the afterlife. But, as in other areas of his philosophy, Kilwardby leans more towards the present than the present. For him, all philosophical speculation is justified by its contribution to our moral development. Whereas Albert, following Aristotle, made contemplation an end in itself and one that trumps the life of practical virtue. Characteristically, Aquinas splits the difference. He agrees with Albert that contemplative vision is our ultimate end, but adds the more authentic and more authentic. He agrees with Albert that contemplative vision is our ultimate end, but adds the more authentic and more authentic. He agrees with Albert that contemplative vision is our ultimate end, but adds the more Augustinian point that the vision of the divine essence involves not just knowledge of God, but also love and the delight one has in beholding Him. Yet, Aquinas was keenly aware of the tensions between Aristotelian and Augustinian ethics, as is abundantly clear from a set of disputed questions that he devoted to the topic of the virtues. His attempt to resolve those tensions begins with the question of the divine. He asks whether virtue is correctly defined as This definition was offered by Peter Lombard as a summary of Augustin's teaching on virtue, and Aquinas can hardly deny that it hits the mark. So, he goes on to agree with the definition, adding just one more thing. He says that virtue is the most important thing in the world. He says that virtue is the most important thing in the world. So, he goes on to agree with the definition, adding just one apparently innocuous remark, that the definition would still be accurate without the last bit about God working virtue in us without our help. That part of the definition applies only to infused virtue, and not to the kind of virtue we acquire by developing our natural capacity for goodness. Now, Aquinas is not sliding into Pelagianism here. Aquinas does not hotly deny that natural virtue is enough to merit salvation and hence ultimate happiness. But the fact remains that virtuous acts can be performed and virtuous character cultivated with no special help from God. When we speak of such natural virtue, we do not mean that a virtuous character is born in us by nature, as if babies come into the world already honest, courageous, and generous. Rather, babies come into the world with a natural ability to acquire these traits. Acquiring them takes training and practice, which is why parents coach them to perform the right kind of action repeatedly until it becomes, as we might aptly put it, second nature. Aquinas's explanation of this point is a wonderful example of his writing method. He is trying to steer a course between Augustine and Aristotle, and is honest enough to quote precisely the most awkward passages for his solution. He is trying to steer a course between Augustine and Aristotle, and is honest enough to quote precisely the most awkward passages for his solution. Thus, he admits that Augustine seems to deny the possibility of natural virtue. The life of all those without faith is sin. Wherever knowledge of the truth is lacking, their virtue is false, even if one's behavior is excellent. Since Aquinas believes, following Aristotle, that we can indeed acquire virtue naturally, through habituation, he has to defuse this quotation. He does so by replying tersely, and unconvincingly, that such Augustinean remarks were meant to apply only to the higher virtues that lead us to true beatitude. In the next article, Aquinas tacks back in the other direction. Now, he asks whether virtue is always naturally acquired, or can also be infused by God. Of course, he thinks it can be infused, despite evidence in Aristotle to the contrary. Aquinas is not a true person, but a true person. Of course, he thinks it can be infused, despite evidence in Aristotle to the contrary. But it is too simple just to shrug and say that there are two kinds of virtue which arise in different ways. For one might wonder, if we can acquire some virtue naturally, why is this not enough? Why is divine infusion also needed? Aquinas poses the objection in the terms of traditional ancient ideas about virtue. Acquiring good dispositions means that our will is guided by sound rational judgement, rather than by the lower appetites for such things as pleasure and wealth. The catch is that there's more to the good life than eating moderately and being generous with your money. Nor is it enough to fight bravely for your country, be kind to your friends, and do all the other things that naturally virtuous pagans like Socrates or Cato were able to manage. Naturally acquired virtue is like the bus that takes you to the airport. It does get you somewhere, but not to your ultimate destination. In the journey of life, that destination is God, and it is the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity that enable us to order our choices to that most final events. So, a higher virtue, like charity, does not supplant natural virtue, it rather perfects the limited virtues we can acquire through our natural resources. What could Aquinas say to a pagan, or atheist, who claims they are happy to settle for a life of natural virtue? Basically, that they cannot hope to be truly happy that way. We are born not only with a disposition to acquire earthly virtue, but also a natural yearning for the good that can be satisfied fully only by the supreme good, which is God. Like the airport shuttle, human nature points beyond itself, having the built-in resources to pursue and attain limited good, but the purpose and desire for unlimited good. It's no good objecting that we can know God even in this life, so that a taste of the supernatural is already available to us in the here and now. The world is grounded in sensation, and on that basis, we can only reason to the existence of God, not to an understanding of what He is in His essence. This may still seem to paint a rather rosy picture of naturally acquired morality. Aquinas doesn't seem to be coming anywhere close to Augustine's condemnation of pagan courage and justice as false virtue. Yet, Aquinas would add a more damning point of his own. In Aristotle's own conception, a virtuous person is someone who has the habit of discerning and choosing the good. The well-behaved atheists and pagans aren't just falling short, but making a colossal error, one with moral and not just abstract philosophical implications. For they are failing to discern and choose God, the greatest and most perfect good of all. One could with some justice accuse Albert and Aquinas of framing Christian happiness in a rather Aristotelian way. For both, contemplation in this life is better than virtuous practical action, and for both, the beatitude that some will attain in the next life centers on an even better sort of contemplation. The salvation we are promised through grace looks suspiciously like the theoretical activity celebrated in the last book of Aristotle's Ethics. Yet, one can with equal justice say that Aquinas works Christian values into the fabric of Aristotelian ethics. A nice example is his handling of the virtue of courage. Aquinas follows Aristotle in thinking of the courageous person as the one who can face danger, especially death, with steadfastness. But this is praiseworthy only if one faces danger for the right reason. His favorite example of courage is the strikingly Christian one of the martyr who endures torment and death for the sake of his faith in God. Whereas for Aristotle, the paradigm case was fighting bravely in war. This also helps to explain a feature of Aquinas' ethics that I haven't mentioned yet, which is that the virtues we can acquire naturally, like courage and justice, can also be infused by God. You might imagine God bestowing courage on a martyr who is faced by a gruesome death without the martyr having had the long moral education needed to produce this virtuous character trait naturally. Before I let you go, I want to return briefly to a parallel I drew at the start of this episode between morality and knowledge. This is a parallel that Aquinas draws too. He points out the similarity between thinking that all knowledge is granted by divine illumination, and thinking that all virtue is infused by God. In both cases, Aquinas moves away from the strict Augustinian position common in his day. Knowledge and virtue can both be acquired, with some difficulty, as the realization of naturally inborn capacities. But in neither case is it enough to have what comes naturally. Natural reason is enough for philosophy, but not enough for theology. The life of natural virtue is better than nothing, but infinitely inferior to true happiness. This same pattern plays out in another area of his thought, political philosophy. With his famous and influential conception of natural law, Aquinas once again seeks to give credit to human nature where it is due. And we're due to discuss that next time, as we place Aquinas's doctrine of law in the context of 13th century political philosophy, here on The History of Philosophy, without any gaps. God be with you.