The Cardinal Virtues: Pillars of the good life

A significant disproportion

Before dealing with the individual cardinal virtues, I had the opportunity to address the subject of the deadly vices. It was clear to see the great interest in  the themes, especially as found among the humanities, philosophy, art, literature and spirituality. Such a multiplicity of approaches is an indication of the richness and complexity of human actions. It is essential to understand the seriousness of their consequences, but above all the good sought in them, even if inadequately. Indeed, the variety of situations shown in each of them could be considered a true compendium  of human actions.[1]

However, at the end of that journey, the basic question remains: how to identify the good that is pursued in vain by those many, and in many ways fascinating, efforts? This was, in other words, a question about virtue, the ability to recognize and implement our own good, which can give taste and fullness to life.

If the theme of vice fascinates, unfortunately the same cannot be said for the contrasting  theme of the cardinal virtues, the properly ethical virtues that make the one who practices them better. The most extensive treatment remains that of St. Thomas, who took up and integrated Aristotle’s analyses from a theological perspective. A number of valuable writings that have appeared over the past decades are also in fact a commentary on the text of Thomas.[2] The number of Italian texts, other than the brief entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias, does not exceed the fingers of one hand.[3] The reasons for this scarcity may be several. One, which is not unique to the present topic, is that the good does not make the news, and is difficult to sell, especially in advertising.

But there are other more relevant factors. The treatise on the cardinal virtues rests on two great pillars, which hold up the edifice of ethical thought: the end and the passions. The end is the good proper to the actions not only of humans, but of every being: “Rightly it has been declared that the good is that to which everything tends.”[4] And good, like being, exists in multiple ways, which do not have the same importance, but stand to each other in a relation of analogy.[5] Every being therefore has a good proper to it.

The human end, or purpose, in the classical and medieval perspective, is the fullness of living, that is, life in God, a meaning already present in the Greek term by which Aristotle designates happiness: eudaimonia, the gift of a good demon.[6] But the moment the theological perspective is dropped, the purpose of human life becomes unclear and with it the very possibility of recognizing a foundation for ethics.

One of the most important works on this subject, After Virtue by Alasdair Macintyre, is devoted to the consequences of such a loss. As the title states, the book’s leading thesis is that ours is the age after virtue. In other words, a philosophical treatment of it is no longer possible, because values cannot be identified by a merely rational method. This was the failure of the Cartesian enterprise, looking to discover them within a tradition, set in a communal context.[7] This narrating character, spokesperson for a communal tradition, also emerges from the Nicomachean Ethics, in which the author speaks in the first person plural: “Who is this ‘we’ in whose name he writes? Aristotle takes himself not to be inventing an account of the virtues, but to be articulating an account that is implicit in the thought, utterance and action of an educated Athenian.”[8]

On this point  there are notable differences from later thinking. The modern era shows itself to be increasingly concerned with defining the scope and rules of behavior, articulating norms and definitions. All this has contributed to making it distant from life, from what can be found in it that is beautiful and engaging, thus announcing  its crisis.[9]

The text  of the Nicomachean Ethics shows a freshness and relevance that contrast with the abstractness of many modern texts, because they do not present rules and definitions: morality is understood in Aristotle as the art of living well. He highlights aspects that are decisive for the recognition and choice of the good, which one would look for in vain, for example, in Spinoza’s Ethica more geometrico demonstrata, such as poetry, mythology, people’s opinions (the endoxa, education, relationships and the integration of reason and affections.[10]

The horizon of thought envisaged by virtue ethics, and subsequently lost, also allows us to understand the severity of the current crisis: “I have remained of the view that we can only understand the genesis and stalemate of moral modernity from the point of view of a different tradition, whose beliefs and assumptions Aristotle collected and analyzed, elaborating them theoretically in his well-known classical theory.”[11]

Reflection on the cardinal virtues also thinned out, effectively focusing on a single virtue, justice, a virtue considered above all in its political dimension, making explicit its characteristics, but also precluding the close link it had with the other virtues, which aimed to educate a good person, capable therefore of fulfilling the demands of justice in a way that the juridical-normative order is unable to satisfy.[12] Indeed, in such a perspective, the question par excellence of ethics – “why choose good?” – fails to find a convincing answer on the basis of a mere rational criterion.

Virtue ethics makes it possible to move beyond certain moral principles that had dominated philosophical reflection that were based on duty, usefulness or mere feeling, the moral focus  most in vogue today, but which marks the end of any approach that purports to be philosophical, and where the very distinction between good and evil ultimately dissolves.[13]

Having already dealt with the individual cardinal virtues, I would now like to try to clarify why they are considered the pillars of the moral life and why they stand or fall within a specific framework of thought, as the subsequent course of history has shown.

What is virtue?

For Aristotle, echoed by Thomas, virtue is a positive habit.[14] Their understanding of the “habit” (aret?, habitus) does not in itself correspond to our current usage, although it is possible to find common elements, such as the facility in performing an action, a learning consolidated by frequent use, leading to the formation of character (ethik?, in Greek), understood as a stable dimension of the person. The habitus concerns the whole person, his or her deepest aspects from the psychological, moral and spiritual points of view.  It is something that is acquired, that one has, thus becoming a second nature, the result of knowledge and education. And it enables one to act well consistently, not accidentally or fortuitously.

Both habitus and habit are the result of repetition accomplished over time, and this differentiates them from a single action, good or bad. In the moral field, a single bad act does not destroy virtue, nor is a good action sufficient to eradicate a vice. Similarly, a single good deed does not make one virtuous, just as one swallow does not make a summer.[15]

Aristotle defines the exercise of ethical virtue as the ability to achieve one’s proper end. In a memorable image, he compares it to an arrow hitting its target. Thomas and Dante take up the same example, but apply it to the relationship between God and the world.[16]

The terms “vice” and “virtue” emphasize the historicity and continuity of human action; they outline a path, a basic orientation of existence that leads to opposite outcomes. Virtue leads to achieving one’s goal more easily, as noted, by perfecting oneself, living with freedom and experiencing genuine pleasure. In fact, every activity has a pleasure proportionate to it and, when done in an orderly manner, it delights. It may be manual activity, study, sports, a relationship… Desire, when it finds an adequate expression, manifests what Thomas, taking up St. Augustine, calls ordo amoris, whose characteristic is circularity, that is, of being the cause and effect of love.  The purification of desire becomes energy and knowledge aroused by love, and these in turn enable the ordering of love, loving the object in proportion to its importance.[17] Desire is the expression of a balanced and free love, the love of charity, the only one capable of involving the whole person.

Vice disregards all this, leading to the moral, mental and physical destruction of the subject. It is also a way of punishing oneself. Just as the capital vices are the source of vicious behavior, the root of other vices, so the cardinal virtues are the source of virtuous behavior, generating in turn the other moral virtues, enabling one to recognize and implement the good.

Virtues can be intellectual or moral. The intellectual ones indicate the criteria and norms of action, and indicate  the rule of behavior; the moral virtues recognize and implement not the good in general, but what is good for me here and now. They can do so because they integrate knowledge and affection, what classical and medieval philosophy call “passions” (or appetitive powers, related to a tendency, an appetitus), which can obey reason but also hinder it. That is why they must be educated. But without passions there can be no virtuous action. In fact, they are the indispensable energy for accomplishing good.[18]

Passions, energy for good

Another characteristic aspect of classical and Christian ethical reflection is the close link between evaluation and affection. The ancients identified the basis of moral life  in the “passions.” This term, which is associated with  the Greek pathos and the Latin pati, indicates something that one undergoes, that one receives from something else, but that at the same time deeply engages (cf. the term “passionate”) and impels one to action. Passion refers to one’s inner world, which does not coincide with rationality, but neither does it oppose it, revealing the profound unity of the human being. Passion has often been compared to animal instinct; however, when one considers things a little deeper, one notices how instincts and emotions present completely different characteristics, as I pointed out when reflecting on the virtue of prudence.[19]

Thomas, taking up Aristotle’s analysis, first of all emphasizes the prompt and personal character of passion, which is not contrary to, but rather antecedent or consequent upon reason. When one is guided by reason, it becomes an aid to doing good, implementing its teachings rather than hindering them. Passions arise from sensibility, but they are also a motion of the soul. They are the result of an evaluation and decision that influences the body – such as voluntarily aroused anger – leading to a twofold movement: of attraction-repulsion toward something regarded as good-evil, and of struggle to overcome obstacles to its attainment.

The first group of passions is called the concupiscible and the second the irascible. The concupiscible includes six types of passions: love-hate; desire-repulsion; pleasure-pain. There are five passions of the irascible: hope-despair, fear-audacity and wrath, which has no contrary passion because it encompasses a spectrum of different passions: anger, sadness, sorrow, demand for justice, hope.[20] The passions of the irascible are derived: they arise when the desired good cannot be achieved; they arise and end in the concupiscible. The passions have a cognitive dimension and participate in reason; therefore they can be shaped by virtue.[21] Intellect and will in turn can intervene with  the passions to best achieve the desired good. Without passion, one falls into the vice of insensitivity, which makes its agent inhuman, incapable of pity, tenderness, mercy; without passions, virtue would not be possible.[22]

Thomas’ treatise on the passions shows the admirable harmony of human action, to the point that it has been compared to a musical score: “The first theme, in soprano voice, is sung by love, which is soon followed by desire. Then enters the tenor of hope or despair, foreseeing the possibility or lamenting the impossibility of obtaining good. The bass line, always slow and somber, is represented by wrath, slow to consume itself and ready nevertheless to achieve its very particular ‘good.’ And then the conclusion: rest and pleasure.”[23] Thomas respects the complexity of the person, showing, in addition to a benevolent understanding of affectivity, a greater confidence in the power that reason has to govern the passions. All this has remarkable consequences for human and spiritual life.

The different human faculties find their perfection in their respective cardinal virtues. Practical reason is perfected by prudence, the will by justice, the irascible passions by fortitude, those concupiscible by temperance. These distinctions also show the presence, within them, of a hierarchy. The most important virtue is prudence, because it acts as a hinge between knowledge and affection, moving one’s sensibility to accomplish what reason has glimpsed. The other virtues enter into the different aspects of the realization of the good.[24]

A lost unity

In modern times, a strong suspicion regarding the passions has emerged. One of the reasons for this undoubtedly lies in the scientific revolution, which envisaged the possibility of certain, clear and distinct knowledge (Descartes). Hence the attempt to work out a mathematical approach to all reality, including human reality, theorizing a geometric ethics (Spinoza), a “geometry of the passions” (Bodei), capable of “scientifically” programming the moral life. Descartes tried to frame the passions in a mechanistic perspective; but if they arise from the body, it is not clear how they can influence the soul, remain in the memory and impart intensity to thoughts. They reveal a close unity between body and soul, as against anthropological dualism. Most importantly, Descartes did not consider the passions proper to the soul, arising from knowledge, influencing corporeality and enabling reason to master them and put them at the service of good and moral growth (something in which Descartes deeply believed).[25] The subsequent history of philosophy would increasingly tend to see the passions as an obstacle to knowledge and morality, and therefore something to be fought or ignored.

For Kant, to include passions and happiness in the moral life would be to reduce it to a subjective pursuit of gratification, incompatible with the characteristics of a good action, which has no other motivation than the will to do good. That is why one criterion of right moral behavior  is the exclusion of all passionate aspects, which must be decisively excluded. The reason for such a contrast is clearly stated: “To be subject to emotions and passions is always a disease of the soul, because both exclude the domain of reason.”[26] While Kant’s attempt to guarantee dignity and universality to moral action is admirable and ingenious, one cannot fail to notice the paradoxical consequences of such an approach.

All this contributed to impoverishing reflection on the cardinal virtues, and to giving a false account  of human passion. Hence the dualist approach to human beings, divided between reason and passions, intellect and will, duty and pleasure. Such an approach, however, proved to be highly abstract and unable to account for the actual employment of human intelligence. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, studying people who had been lobotomized – that is, who had had the frontal lobes of the brain, the seat of emotions, removed – noted how such deprivation radically affected their cognitive and volitional abilities, to the point of their being unable  to learn values, to lead a regular social life, to complete any work, but also to appreciate  leisure, to enjoy their lives in some way: “Altered feelings and imperfect reason presented themselves together, as consequences of a specific brain lesion, and this correlation suggested to me that feeling was an integral part of the way reason operates.”[27]

Another important point that emerged on the psychological side, in line with Thomas’ analyses, is the relationship between passion and reflection, recognizing how evaluation and cognition can modify the passionate response, for good or ill.[28] Wrath can be voluntarily aroused and carefully prepared, e.g., to fulfill justice (such is the wrath of Jesus described in John 2), just as hatred expresses its greatest destructive potential, not at the moment of the action  (rather brief, though intense), but especially at the cultural level, when it is systematically cultivated, instilled, until it becomes ingrained in the collective imagination. And it can be countered above all by wisdom, the most intellectual of practical virtues.[29]

The crisis of moral philosophy

The devaluation of the passions ended up having unfortunate consequences for philosophy itself. This approach was behind Freud’s ruthless critique of morality, understood as synonymous with a constricted view of life, aimed at repressing passions and desires and making people not good, but unhappy and neurotic. The negative implication that moralism takes on in today’s collective imagination, expressed so effectively by Freud in his analyses of the obsessions caused by guilt, even in its one-sidedness, hits the mark when it points to the dangers of a pathology of duty that imprisons and deadens human desire to live, excluding happiness.[30]

And so virtue, too, was downgraded from reflection on living well. To be a virtuous person meant to follow society’s rules concerning good living, without passion, a kind of “obnoxious toothless old maid of yesteryear,” to borrow a telling  description by Max Scheler.[31]

It is a judgment that certainly reflects the devaluation of the affections for the moral life, and consequently leads to the consideration of virtue in terms of mere toil and opposition to the desire to live. It leads to considering vice as something attractive and capable of giving relish to choices. This is a dangerous reversal of the criteria of evaluation.[32] In fact, as we have had the opportunity to see, reflection on virtue should be  an aid to achieving such a desire for fullness.

The return of the virtues

It is also for these reasons that contemporary philosophy has returned to the subject of virtue, rediscovering its original meaning, thus giving new impetus to moral reflection and also restoring its essentially communal dimension.

The rediscovery of this theme comes from post-World War II Anglo-Saxon philosophy, especially from the 1958 work,  Modern Moral Philosophy by Elizabeth Anscombe, a student and translator of Ludwig Wittgenstein. According to the author, this discipline could rediscover its value by engaging with research in the field of psychology and with the Aristotelian tradition, definitively distancing itself from the then-dominant approaches of an ethics based on duty (deontology), emotion (emotivism), cost-benefit calculus (utilitarianism), or the mere exposition of rules and definitions (rationalism).[33]

The essay sparked a heated debate, with several contributions appearing on the subject, and the possible relationship between ethical life, virtue and happiness from a theist perspective.[34] Some of these authors, such as Peter Geach, Alasdair MacIntyre and Anscombe herself, through this intellectual journey have come to religious conversion. But even on the side of non-belief or agnosticism such a proposal fascinates, as in the case of Anthony Kenny and Philippa Foot. The latter observes in this regard, “It is my opinion that the Summa Theologiae is one of the best sources we have for moral philosophy and, moreover, that the writings of St. Thomas on ethics are just as useful for the atheist as for the Catholic or other Christian believer.”[35]

To affirm this is not to summarize a historical period, but rather to recover a methodological approach whose value can be confirmed by subsequent attempts to identify other avenues for understanding ethical action. Virtue ethics has thus once again become a focus of  contemporary philosophy, which takes up the approaches of analytic philosophy and human praxis, confronted by the metaphysical approach, neuroscience and the human sciences, which have noted the cognitive contribution of the emotions and their influence on reasoning and decision-making processes in regard to happiness.[36]

It is an approach capable above all of speaking of the good and ethics in terms of desire and beauty, which are the motivations par excellence of the virtuous life: “In a world without beauty even the good has lost its force of attraction, the evidence of its ought-to-be-done. In a world that no longer believes itself capable of affirming the beautiful, the arguments in favor of truth have exhausted their force of logical conclusion.”[37]

DOI: La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 6, no.9 art. 5, 0922: 10.32009/22072446.0922.5

[1].    Cf. G. Cucci, Il fascino del male. I vizi capitali, Rome, AdP, 2012

[2].    Cf. J. Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, Notre Dame, University Press, 1959; D. Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994; R. Cessario, Le virtù, Milan, Jaca Book, 1994; C. Kaczor – T. Sherman (eds), Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues, Edited and Explained for Everyone, Ave Maria, FL, Sapientia Press, 2009; I. P. Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages. A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century, Leiden – Boston, Brill, 2011.

[3].    Here are some titles: J. Eckert, Piccolo breviario delle virtù. Prudenza, giustizia, fortezza, temperanza, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 2009; R. Bodei – G. Giorello – M. Marzano – S. Vega, Le virtù cardinali. Prudenza, temperanza, fortezza, giustizia, Bari, Laterza, 2017; V. Mancuso, La forza di essere migliori, Milan, Garzanti, 2019; A. Bellon, Le virtù sono il frutto delle sue fatiche. Trattato sulle virtù cardinali, Brescia, Independently published, 2021.

[4].    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a 3.

[5].    Ibid., 1096b 28.

[6].    Cf. G. Cucci, L’arte di vivere. Educare alla felicità, Milan, Àncora, 2019.

[7]  .   “We become just or courageous by doing just or courageous actions; we become wise in theory or practice as a result of systematic instruction” (A. MacIntyre, After Virtue. An essay on moral theory).

[8]  .   Ibid. Cf. Id., Giustizia e razionalità. 2. Dall’illuminismo scozzese all’età contemporanea, Milan, Anabasi, 1995, 153.

[9]  .   “The original decision to be moral, to follow practical rules, is a radical option, which finds no motivation capable of going beyond the subjective plane of personal decision. A morality of norms seems to us insufficient to explain the norms themselves, which, instead, acquire meaning in function of an end, of a good superior to them […]. Ethical reflection, then, must concern ‘how we should live,’ rather than ‘what we should do’” (M. Matteini, MacIntyre e la rifondazione dell’etica, Rome, Città Nuova, 1995, 79). Cf. A. MacIntyre, “Practical Rationalities as Forms of Social Structure”, in Irish Philosophical Journal 4 (1987) 3-19; G. Abbà, Felicità, vita buona e virtù, Rome, LAS, 1989; A. Da Re, L’etica tra felicità e dovere. L’attuale dibattito sulla filosofia pratica, Bologna, EDB, 1986.

[10].   Cf. R. Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, 3.

[11].   M. Matteini, MacIntyre e la rifondazione dell’etica, op. cit., 79.

[12].   Cf. G. Cucci, “Justice. An uncomfortable virtue”, in Civ. Catt. English edition 2021.

[13].   Sofia Vanni Rovighi wrote, “. . .  the statement that murder is evil would only express the horror of the speaker for murder and thus would in no way be rationally justifiable, just as a sense of horror is not rationally justifiable,  being neither true nor false” (S. Vanni Rovighi, Elementi di filosofia, Brescia, La Scuola, vol. III, 19765, 195).

[14].   “The virtues are habits that perfectly dispose a person to perform well” (Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 58, a. 3).

[15].   The example is from Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a 19.

[16].   Cf. ibid. 1094a 24; Sum. Theol. I, q. 2, a. 3; Dante, Paradiso, VIII, 97-105.

[17].   Cf. Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 55, a. 1, ad 4um ; q. 62, a. 2, ad 3um.

[18].   “Therefore, in order for one to act well, it is not only required that reason be predisposed by the habits of the intellectual virtues, but also that the appetitive powers be well disposed through the habits of the moral virtues. Therefore, just as the appetite is distinct from reason, so the moral virtues are distinct from the intellectual virtues. Therefore, just as the appetite is the principle of human acts insofar as it participates in reason, so the moral habits are human virtues insofar as they conform to reason” (ibid., I-II, q. 58, a. 2).

[19].   Cf. G. Cucci, “Emozioni e ragione: due mondi antitetici?” in Civ. Catt. 2015 III 139-150; Id., “Prudence. A forgotten virtue?”, Civ. Catt. English edition, August 2021.

[20].   Cf. Id., “Passioni”, in P. Benanti et al. (eds), Dizionario di teologia morale, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 2019, 735-742.

[21].   Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De malo, q. 12, a. 1; Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 46, aa. 1-3; q. 56, aa. 3-4.

[22].   “The mode of virtue, which consists in perfect will, cannot be without passion, not because will depends on passion, but because to a perfect will in a  nature capable of passion, it necessarily follows” (De Veritate, q. 26, a. 7, ad 2um ; cf. Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 142, a. 1).

[23].   B. H. Rosenwein, Generazioni di sentimenti. Una storia delle emozioni, 600-1700, Rome, Viella, 2016, 147.

[24].   “The human good is that which conforms to reason […]. And that good belongs essentially to prudence, which is a perfection of reason. Justice, on the other hand, has the task of realizing it: for it is up to it to impose the order of reason in all human actions. The other virtues have the task of preserving this good, in that they moderate the passions, so that they do not divert us from the good of reason. And among the latter, fortitude occupies the first place: for fear of the danger of death is the passion most effective in diverting us from the good of rational order. Next comes temperance: for even the pleasures of touch hinder the good of reason more than any other pleasure” (Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 123, a. 12; cf. q. 141, a. 8).

[25].   Cf. R. Descartes, Le passioni dell’anima, Milan, Bompiani, 2003, §§ 74 and 211. On the central problem that the passions pose to the soul-body relationship, cf. P. D’Arcy, “Introduction”, in R. Descartes, Le Passions de l’âme, Paris, Flammarion, 1996, 42-59.

[26].   I. Kant, Antropologia pragmatica, Bari, Laterza, 1993, § 73, 141; cf. Id., Critique of Practical Reason, ibid., 1986, 90. Remo Bodei notes in this regard, “The discovery of the positivity of the passions is quite recent, taking place mainly in the contemporary age” (R. Bodei, Geometria delle passioni. Paura, speranza, felicità: filosofia e uso politico, Milan, Feltrinelli, 2003, 10).

[27].   A. Damasio, L’errore di Cartesio, Milan, Adelphi, 1995, 18.

[28].   Cf. D. Goleman, Intelligenza emotiva, Milan, Garzanti, 1999, 85 f.

[29].   Cf. G. Cucci, “L’odio. Un sentimento complesso e potente”, in Id., La forza dalla debolezza. Aspetti psicologici della vita spirituale, Rome, AdP, 20183, 369-399.

[30].   Cf. S. Freud, L’Io e l’Es, in Id., Opere, Turin, Boringhieri, vol. IX, 1977, 514; Id., Il disagio della civiltà, ibid., vol. X, 1978, 258.

[31].   M. Scheler, “Riabilitare la virtù”, in Id., Il valore della vita emotiva, Milan, Guerini e Associati, 1999, 157.

[32].   As Maurizio Chiodi notes, “Today, in fact, we struggle in morality with the eternal problem of a rigorism that separates morality from happiness and a laxism that opposes happiness to morality. The   recurrent demand for new norms, after past ones that no longer seem applicable today, is confirmation that nothing but an ethics of duty and obligation is expected from the moralist. And this same conception of ethics is evident in those who oppose any moral duty” (M. Chiodi, Il cammino della libertà. Fenomenologia, ermeneutica, ontologia della libertà nella ricerca filosofica di Paul Ricœur, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1990, 334, note).

[33].   Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, in M. Geach – L. Gormally (eds), Human Life, Action and Ethics, Exeter – Charlottesville, Academic Imprint, 2005, 169-194; G. Abbà, “L’originalità dell’etica delle virtù”, in F. Compagnoni – L. Lorenzetti (eds), Virtù dell’uomo e responsabilità storica. Originalità, nodi critici e prospettive attuali della ricerca etica della virtù, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 1998, 135-165.

[34].   See, for example, G. H. von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness, New York, Humanities Press, 1963; P. Geach, The Virtues, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977. For a historical overview, see M. Micheletti, Filosofia analitica della religione. Un’introduzione storica, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2002; G. Filoramo, “Filosofia e religione”, in G. Cambiano – L. Fonnesu – M. Mori (eds), Storia della filosofia occidentale. 7. Problemi d’oggi, Bologna, il Mulino, 2015, 193-215.

[35].   P. Foot, Virtù e vizi, Bologna, il Mulino, 2008, 4. Cf. M. Micheletti, Tomismo analitico, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2007; G. S. Lodovici, Il ritorno delle virtù. Temi salienti della Virtue Ethics, Bologna, Esd, 2009.

[36].   Cf. A. Da Re, “Il ritorno dell’etica nel pensiero contemporaneo”, in Etica oggi: comportamenti collettivi e modelli culturali, Padua, Gregoriana, 1989, 105-233; E. Berti, Nuovi studi aristotelici. Vol. IV/2. L’influenza di Aristotele. Età moderna e contemporanea, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2010; M. Nussbaum, L’intelligenza delle emozioni, Bologna, il Mulino, 2008; I. Boniwell, La scienza della felicità. Introduzione alla psicologia positiva, ibid., 2015.

[37].   H. U. von Balthasar, Gloria. Una estetica teologica. I. La percezione della forma, Milan, Jaca Book, 1991, 11.