The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas's Ethics - Virtues and Gifts (Hardcover)

Thomas Aquinas devoted a substantial proportion of his greatest works to the virtues and associated matters, yet despite the availability of these vast texts and centuries of commentary, Aquinas's virtue ethics remains mysterious, raising questions to which satisfactory answers have not yet been given. In this book, Pinsent argues that the key to understanding Aquinas's work is to be found in an association between attributes he appends to the virtues and certain interpersonal capacities revealed recently by the scientific study of social cognition. This book shows that Aquinas's approach to the virtues is radically non-Aristotelian and founded on the concept of second person relatedness. To highlight the explanatory power of this principle, Pinsent demonstrates how the second person perspective provides a coherent interpretation of Aquinas's descriptions of the virtues in general and offers a key to long-standing problems, such as the reconciliation of magnanimity and humility. The principle of second person relatedness also provides a way to interpret those actus or operationes that Aquinas describes as the fruition or realization of the virtues.Pinsent concludes by considering how this approach may help to shape future developments in virtue ethics.