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Thomas Aquinas took much of the direction of his work on virtue

from his understanding of Aristotle.

But Aquinas had some challenges or advantages

that Aristotle did not. Aquinas had August challenges or advantages that Aristotle did not.

Aquinas had Augustine as an important predecessor,

and in Augustine we confront an extraordinary thinker

who was already intellectually and psychologically mature

before a conversion experience altered his understanding of good and bad

in human life fairly dramatically. If you're accustomed to Aristotle's ethics, you're accustomed

to this idea that either you're properly brought up or you're deeply unfortunate. So you've got somebody here who's properly brought up and undergoes this dramatic change.

That's a huge, huge shift from Aristotle.

I like using Augustine because he looks like somebody who might have been in the constituency for Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics.

I mean, he is this kind of upright, bright sort of individual man.

Now, although Aquinas recognizes the importance of childhood moral education in the cultivation of virtue, he can't hold that things

are going to be pretty well separate us by the time we're young adults. In addition, the cast of

various morally exemplary figures available to Aquinas included a great many saints who were neither especially

privileged nor especially intellectually inclined. Very few were the cherished sons of undeniably

...