Virtue (Lat. virtus, Gr. aretē) is the moral perfection of the person, the lasting habitus of the good. It belongs to the qualitatively perfected existence of the human person and unfolds in the third dimension of personhood (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 271 ff.). Aristotle defines virtue as a settled disposition (hexis) that enables a person to do the good and to do it gladly. Thomas Aquinas systematizes the doctrine of the virtues and distinguishes the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Their opposite is vice, the lasting inclination to evil, the curvatio in se ipsum.
Virtue presupposes freedom: only one who acts freely can be virtuous. It likewise presupposes reason and cognition, for the insight into the good guides virtuous action. In virtue the person transcends mere self-centeredness (self-transcendence). The virtuous person acts not merely out of duty, but out of love of the good. Hengstenberg sees in this the vocation of the human being: as a being called to love, to realize the good.
Responsibility and virtue are closely connected. The affirmation of the other for his own sake is the highest form of virtuous action. Virtue perfects the person, but dignity is not grounded in virtue but in personhood itself. Even the person who lacks virtue remains a person with dignity (agere sequitur esse, substance-ontological concept of person).
Chapter reference: Chapter 4: What is human personhood? (esp. 4.7.5)
Self-Mastery
Self-mastery (Gr. enkrateia, Lat. temperantia) is the capacity and disposition of the person to govern her somatic and psychic dynamisms, so that these are integrated into the free personal act. Wojtyła describes a sequence of stages: self-possession (samopanowanie) leads to self-mastery (samoopanowanie), this to self-determination (autodeterminacja), and finally to self-gift.
Self-mastery presupposes the free will and is in turn the precondition for the self-gift to the personal Thou. Without self-mastery the person cannot truly give herself, because she does not have command over herself. The integration of the person and spousal love are built upon self-mastery: only one who possesses himself can give himself.
See also: Integration of the Person, Spousal Love, Freedom, Person, Personhood, Body, Love
Moral Perfection
Moral perfection is the highest form of the actualization of the Third Dimension of personhood. It designates the complete formation of personal life through adequate value-responses. According to Dietrich von Hildebrand, it is not a static condition but the dynamic flourishing of the entire life of value-response.
As a state, moral perfection constitutes the goal of personal self-realization in the Third Dimension: the free and complete turning of the person toward the good and toward the other someone. It presupposes freedom, cognition, and love, and is the opposite of the oblivion of the person: in moral perfection the personhood of the other is recognized and affirmed in its whole depth.
Ontological Classification
Superordinate concept: State
Ontological relations:
- highest form of actualization of: Third Dimension
- presupposes: value-responses
Wisdom
Wisdom is the highest form of knowledge: the insight into the ultimate grounds and highest principles of being. It joins intellectual cognition with moral maturity and thus belongs to the third dimension of personhood. Wisdom is not mere erudition but the living penetration of what is known by what is morally lived.
As a subordinate form of knowledge, wisdom presupposes education (German) and cognition, yet goes beyond them by aiming at the ultimate connections and the meaning of the whole. The wise person recognizes not only individual truths but understands them in the light of the highest principles. Wisdom stands in close connection with metaphysics as the question of being qua being.
See also: Knowledge, Insight, Cognition, Education (German), Third Dimension, Metaphysics, Personhood, Truth
Ontological Classification: Superordinate concept: Fundamental Disposition (German); subordinate concepts: Reverence (German), Chastity (German)
Ontological relations:
- distinct from: Practical Oblivion of the Person
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, II, 1–6 (virtue as hexis, a settled disposition toward the good)
- Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I-II, qq. 55–67 (systematics of the cardinal virtues)
- Hildebrand, Dietrich von (1972): Ethics. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. (moral perfection and value-response)
- Hengstenberg, Hans-Eduard (1957): Philosophische Anthropologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. (German) (the vocation of the human being to love)