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Author: J. Warren Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199708541
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Ambrose of Milan (340-397) was the first Christian bishop to write a systematic account of Christian ethics, in the treatise De Officiis, variously translated as "on duties" or "on responsibilities." But Ambrose also dealt with the moral life in other works, notably his sermons on the patriarchs and his addresses to catechumens and newly baptized. There is a vast modern literature on Ambrose, but only in recent decades has he begun to be taken seriously as a thinker, not just as a working bishop and ecclesiastical politician. Because Ambrose was one of the few Latin Christian writers in antiquity who knew Greek, another major area of Ambrose scholarship has been the study of his sources, notably the Jewish philosopher Philo, and Christian writers such as Origen of Alexandria. In this book, Warren Smith examines the neglected biblical, liturgical and theological foundations of Ambrose's thought on ethics. Earlier studies have found little that was distinctively Christian in Ambrose's image of the virtuous person. Smith shows that though, like the pagans, Ambrose emphasized moderation, courage, justice, and prudence, for him these characteristics were shaped by the church's beliefs about God's salvific economy. The courage of a Christian facing persecution, for example, was an expression of faith in Christ's resurrection and the church's eschatological hope. Eschatology, for Ambrose, was not pagan wisdom clothed in pious language, but the very logic upon which virtue rests.
Author: J. Warren Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199708541
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Ambrose of Milan (340-397) was the first Christian bishop to write a systematic account of Christian ethics, in the treatise De Officiis, variously translated as "on duties" or "on responsibilities." But Ambrose also dealt with the moral life in other works, notably his sermons on the patriarchs and his addresses to catechumens and newly baptized. There is a vast modern literature on Ambrose, but only in recent decades has he begun to be taken seriously as a thinker, not just as a working bishop and ecclesiastical politician. Because Ambrose was one of the few Latin Christian writers in antiquity who knew Greek, another major area of Ambrose scholarship has been the study of his sources, notably the Jewish philosopher Philo, and Christian writers such as Origen of Alexandria. In this book, Warren Smith examines the neglected biblical, liturgical and theological foundations of Ambrose's thought on ethics. Earlier studies have found little that was distinctively Christian in Ambrose's image of the virtuous person. Smith shows that though, like the pagans, Ambrose emphasized moderation, courage, justice, and prudence, for him these characteristics were shaped by the church's beliefs about God's salvific economy. The courage of a Christian facing persecution, for example, was an expression of faith in Christ's resurrection and the church's eschatological hope. Eschatology, for Ambrose, was not pagan wisdom clothed in pious language, but the very logic upon which virtue rests.
Author: J. Warren Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195369939
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Warren Smith examines the neglected biblical, liturgical and theological foundations of Ambrose's thought on ethics. Earlier studies have found little that was distinctively Christian in Ambrose's image of the virtuous person. Smith shows that, although like the pagans he emphasized moderation, courage, justice, and prudence, for Ambrose these characteristics were shaped by the church's beliefs about God's salvific economy.
Author: David Decosimo
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9781503600607
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Most of us wonder how to make sense of the apparent moral excellences or virtues of those who have different visions of the good life or different religious commitments than our own. Rather than flattening or ignoring the deep difference between various visions of the good life, as is so often done, this book turns to the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas to find a better way. Thomas, it argues, shows us how to welcome the outsider and her virtue as an expression rather than a betrayal of one's own distinctive vision. It shows how Thomas, driven by a Christian commitment to charity and especially informed by Augustine, synthesized Augustinian and Aristotelian elements to construct an ethics that does justice—in love—to insiders and outsiders alike. Decosimo offers the first analysis of Thomas on pagan virtue and a reinterpretation of Thomas's ethics while providing a model for our own efforts to articulate a truthful hospitality and do ethics in our pluralist, globalized world.
Author: John Casey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198240037
Category : Cardinal virtues
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
Dr Casey argues that the classical virtues of courage, temperance, practical wisdom, and justice, which are largely ignored in modern moral philosophy, centrally define the good for Man. The values of success, pride, and worldliness remain alive, if insufficiently acknowledged, part of ourmoral thinking. The conflict between these values and our equally important Christian inheritance leads to tensions and contradictions in our understanding of the moral life.
Author: Justin M. Anderson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108617824
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Throughout his writings, Thomas Aquinas exhibited a remarkable stability of thought. However, in some areas such as his theology of grace, his thought underwent titanic developments. In this book, Justin M. Anderson traces both those developments in grace and their causes. After introducing the various meanings of virtue Aquinas utilized, including 'virtue in its fullest sense' and various forms of 'qualified virtue', he explores the historical context that conditioned that account. Through a close analysis of his writings, Anderson unearths Aquinas's own discoveries and analyses that would propel his understanding of human experience, divine action, and supernatural grace in new directions. In the end, we discover an account of virtue that is inextricably linked to his developed understanding of sin, grace and divine action in human life. As such, Anderson challenges the received understanding of Aquinas's account of virtue, as well as his relationship to contemporary virtue ethics.
Author: J. Warren Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108846602
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Since Aristotle, the concept of the magnanimous or great-souled man was employed by philosophers of antiquity to describe individuals who attained the highest degree of virtue. Greatness of soul (magnitudo animi or magnanimitas) was part of the language of Classical and Hellenistic virtue theory central to the education of Ambrose and Augustine. Yet as bishops they were conscious of fundamental differences between Christian and pagan visions of virtue. Greatness of soul could not be appropriated whole cloth. Instead, the great-souled man had to be baptized to conform with Christian understandings of righteousness, compassion, and humility. In this book, J. Warren Smith traces the development of the ideal of the great-souled man from Plato and Aristotle to latter adaptions by Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch. He then examines how Ambrose's and Augustine's theological commitments influenced their different critiques, appropriations, and modifications of the language of magnanimity.
Author: John Marenbon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
An ambitious history of how medieval writers came to terms with paganism From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers—philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci—tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter in Western intellectual history, Pagans and Philosophers provides a new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the classical and the modern world.
Author: David Decosimo
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804791708
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 373
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Book Description
Most of us wonder how to make sense of the apparent moral excellences or virtues of those who have different visions of the good life or different religious commitments than our own. Rather than flattening or ignoring the deep difference between various visions of the good life, as is so often done, this book turns to the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas to find a better way. Thomas, it argues, shows us how to welcome the outsider and her virtue as an expression rather than a betrayal of one's own distinctive vision. It shows how Thomas, driven by a Christian commitment to charity and especially informed by Augustine, synthesized Augustinian and Aristotelian elements to construct an ethics that does justice—in love—to insiders and outsiders alike. Decosimo offers the first analysis of Thomas on pagan virtue and a reinterpretation of Thomas's ethics while providing a model for our own efforts to articulate a truthful hospitality and do ethics in our pluralist, globalized world.
Author: Jennifer A. Herdt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226327191
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 467
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Book Description
This work reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought. The author's broad historical sweep takes in the Aristotelian tradition as taken up by Thomas Aquinas and has chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Hume, and others.
Author: Nancy E. Snow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019938519X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 905
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Book Description
The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a renaissance in the study of virtue -- a topic that has prevailed in philosophical work since the time of Aristotle. Several major developments have conspired to mark this new age. Foremost among them, some argue, is the birth of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that focuses on virtue in place of consequentialism (the view that normative properties depend only on consequences) or deontology (the study of what we have a moral duty to do). The emergence of new virtue theories also marks this new wave of work on virtue. Put simply, these are theories about what virtue is, and they include Kantian and utilitarian virtue theories. Concurrently, virtue ethics is being applied to other fields where it hasn't been used before, including bioethics and education. In addition to these developments, the study of virtue in epistemological theories has become increasingly widespread to the point that it has spawned a subfield known as 'virtue epistemology.' This volume therefore provides a representative overview of philosophical work on virtue. It is divided into seven parts: conceptualizations of virtue, historical and religious accounts, contemporary virtue ethics and theories of virtue, central concepts and issues, critical examinations, applied virtue ethics, and virtue epistemology. Forty-two chapters by distinguished scholars offer insights and directions for further research. In addition to philosophy, authors also deal with virtues in non-western philosophical traditions, religion, and psychological perspectives on virtue.
