The Perfection of Desire: Habit, Reason, and Virtue in Aquinas's Summa theologiae
By Jean Porter
ISBN 9781626005082
The Père Marquette Lecture in Theology for 2018
Volume 49
Hardcover
160 pages
4.5 x 7.0
$15.00
Aquinas claims that the virtues are habits, that is to say, stable dispositions oriented towards desires of a certain kind. As such, like all habits they presuppose rationality and enable a distinctively human way of feeling and acting. Thus, if we want to make sense of what Aquinas says about rationality and the virtues, it makes sense to turn first to the more fundamental ways in which habits generally speaking are shaped by, and responsive to reason.
Author Bio
Jean Porter is the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of over thirty articles and six books on the history of the Christian moral tradition and contemporary Christian ethics.
Marquette University Press
