The Order of Charity and Political Life | Prof. Thomas Osborne

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on October 24, 2020 as part of "The Bonds of Love" Intellectual Retreat at the University of Texas, Austin.

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Prof. Osborne is the chair of the philosophy department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His research focuses on medieval, late scholastic, and contemporary philosophy. He is particularly concerned with the way in which philosophical concepts are changed and created historically. His research focuses on Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Ethics, and Metaphysics. He also has related interests in Philosophy of Religion and Political Philosophy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, so the topic of the conference is the order of charity.
0:07.0	The order of charity generally involves the supernatural virtue of charity, the theological virtue of charity.
0:14.0	It's directly about loving God and our neighbor for God's sake.
0:19.0	The political community is not an individual that we love in this way.
0:27.5	But it's relevant to the order of charity for several reasons. And for one obvious reason,
0:35.4	charity orders and commands the other virtues, including the virtues
0:40.3	of justice and general justice, which concerns the political common good.
0:47.3	And also St. Thomas very often uses the political common good as an analog for talking about God as the object of charity.
0:58.2	God is our supernatural and natural common good, naturally the common good of the universe,
1:03.6	supernaturally the common good of all of those who have beatitude or participating in
1:10.6	beatitude or ordered there.
1:14.3	And so he often discusses one in the light of the other.
1:25.6	The political common good is, with the possible exception of Mary, and I don't know how that works,
1:32.2	but I think John of St. Thomas claims that the only thing or the only object of love where we can love something greater than ourselves.
1:42.5	It's not an individual that we can love more than our own spiritual good, but it is an object
1:50.2	of love which is stronger and greater than the love that we can have for our own selves.
1:57.9	So justice, general justice orders the acts of other virtues to the common good.
2:03.5	So we've got justice, the common good.
2:07.2	Charity is like that, but in the supernatural order.
2:10.7	It orders all the virtues to God as the source of supernatural goods.
2:18.2	Okay.
2:19.6	So there'll be three points that I'm going to stress.
	...

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