The Cardinal Virtues and Living Life Well I Prof. Raymond Hain

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prof. Raymond Hain examines the four cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance—tracing their philosophical and theological roots while exploring their essential role in living a morally excellent and flourishing human life.

This lecture was given on March 27th, 2025, at University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speaker:

Raymond Hain is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Humanities Program at Providence College in Providence, RI. Educated at Christendom College, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Oxford, he is the founder of the PC Humanities Forum and Humanities Reading Seminars and is responsible for the strategic development of the Humanities Program into a vibrant, world class center of teaching, research, and cultural life dedicated to the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. His scholarly interests include the history of ethics (especially St. Thomas Aquinas), applied ethics (especially medical ethics and the ethics of architecture), Alexis de Tocqueville, and philosophy and literature (especially Catholic aesthetics). His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Templeton Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Charles Koch Foundation. His essays have appeared in various journals and collections including The Thomist, International Journal of Applied Philosophy, and The Anthem Companion to Tocqueville. He is the editor of Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture and is currently working on a monograph titled The Lover and the Prophet: An Essay in Catholic Aesthetics. He joined Providence College in 2011 and lives just across the street with his wife Dominique and their five children.

Keywords: Aquinas' Moral Philosophy, Cardinal Virtues, Common Good, Formation of Virtue, Les Misérables, Moral Exemplars, Peter Geach, Prudence and Practical Wisdom, Smith of Wootton Major, Virtue Ethics

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.5	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:24.6	So I'm going to talk here about the four cardinal virtues this evening,
0:28.6	and a fair bit of what I had to say is going to be philosophical,
0:33.6	and at times a little dense, but I promise I'm going to end with a story by J.R.R. Tolkien.
0:39.3	And if you fall asleep before that, ask someone next to you to poke you when I start retelling.
0:45.2	Now, may I ask, how many of you have heard of the cardinal virtues before this evening?
0:49.7	Okay. How many of you could name all four of them?
0:53.4	Oh, all right. I see you in the back. Okay, good many of you could name all four of them? Oh, alright.
0:55.0	I see you in the back.
0:56.0	Okay, good.
0:57.0	So I'm going to give you an overview of all four virtues.
1:01.0	Then I'm going to talk about a couple striking features of them, two especially that I'm most interested in.
1:07.0	And then I'll turn a little bit to Tolkien at the end.
1:10.0	Okay, so what makes a
1:11.9	person good? This question confronts us immediately with a beating heart of the moral
1:17.4	life. It's dark mysteries and terrifying joys. I suppose my title this evening
1:23.4	suggests an answer, an answer that's very old. The cardinal virtues make us live well.
1:29.2	They're not the only things we need to live well. The three theological virtues, faith, hope,
1:33.7	and love that I'm not going to talk about this evening, have to be added to the cardinal
	...

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