Ep. 381: Aquinas on Ethical Psychology (Part One)
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On selections about virtue and moral action from the Summa Theologica (1268). Aquinas defines virtue, tells us how it metaphysically fits us into the universe, and discusses how it actually works in us to make us perform moral acts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey all, I again am teaching my big books in continental philosophy online class, but only if I get |
| 0:06.6 | enough people now telling me that they want to do it, please see details at partially examined |
| 0:12.4 | life.com slash class. |
| 0:28.3 | You're listening to Partially Exam examined life, a podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. |
| 0:31.7 | Our question for episode 381 is, What is Virtue? |
| 0:44.7 | And we are returning to selections from Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, written around 1268 as selected from the Oxford's Thomas Aquinas-Selected philosophical writings compiled by Timothy McDermott in 1993. |
| 0:48.9 | For more information about the text and the podcast, please see Partially ExamineLife.com. |
| 0:53.8 | This is Mark Linson-Meyer with affections ruled democratically by my reason in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 0:59.5 | This is Seth Paskin, a reasoning creature sharing in the eternal law in Austin, Texas. |
| 1:04.0 | This is Wes Alwyn, doing the right thing for the wrong reason in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 1:09.9 | This is Dylan Casey reflecting on the notion of purity implied by things and actions being good if they exist fully and bad if they're incomplete |
| 1:13.8 | in Madison, Wisconsin. All right. So the long-awaited return of Dylan and the return to |
| 1:19.4 | Thomas Aquinas, are you so grateful that we waited for your return to keep going on this? |
| 1:24.0 | I am truly blessed to have had this hold off for me. |
| 1:31.1 | Per our last Aquinas episodes, he doesn't just say what his philosophy is. He considers specific |
| 1:37.0 | questions. So our main focus today, the thing that we know that we're going to get through |
| 1:40.4 | is this section of virtue, which was only about 20 pages. And, right, he could have just |
| 1:45.7 | said, here's my definition of virtue. And he gets around that actually around the fourth question. |
| 1:51.2 | How can we define virtue? There are good qualities of mind which dispose us to live rightly, |
| 1:55.4 | which we cannot misuse and which God works in us without our help. But he works up to that. |
| 2:01.7 | Is it a disposition? Aristotle says the disposition he works up to that. Is it a disposition? |
| 2:07.5 | Aristotle says it a disposition. What does that mean? Is it a disposition to act? Is it a good disposition? And there are ways of disputing each of these questions, you know, to say, well, |
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