FOR THE GREATER GLORY: COURAGE, DEATH AND VIRTUE IN AQUINAS AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL INHERITANCE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Patrick Mahaney Clark _________________________ Jean Porter, Director Graduate Program in Theology Notre Dame, Indiana July 2009 © Copyright by PATRICK MAHANEY CLARK 2009 All rights reserved FOR THE GREATER GLORY: COURAGE, DEATH AND VIRTUE IN AQUINAS AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL INHERITANCE Abstract by Patrick Mahaney Clark In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that most deaths are contemptible and offer no opportunity for the exercise of virtue. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, considers the publicly shameful death of the martyr to be not only the highest exemplification of the virtue of courage, but also the greatest proof of moral perfection more generally. What accounts for this substantial divergence from Aristotle on the possibilities of virtuous action in death? This dissertation inquires into this question by examining and contrasting the noble death tradition of classical antiquity with Thomas Aquinas’ account of courage and its exemplary act of martyrdom. It investigates the theologically informed metaphysical and anthropological framework within which Aquinas situates his claims, and then explores the implications of these claims for his broader ethical appropriation of Aristotelian virtue theory. This project ultimately intends to show the extent to which Aquinas’ conception of virtue depends upon a theological, and specifically Christological, understanding of the relation between death and human perfection. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...............................................................................................vi PART ONE COURAGE, VIRTUE AND NOBLE DEATH IN THOMAS AQUINAS’S ANCIENT SOURCES...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE ACHILLES AND SOCRATES: INITIAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE WARRIOR HERO PARADIGM OF NOBLE DEATH.........................................................................3 1.1 Achilles, the Homeric Warrior Hero....................................................................... 3 1.1.1 The Homeric Warrior Ethic.........................................................................4 1.1.2 Achilles’ Confrontation with the Warrior Ethic........................................ 12 1.1.3 Breaching the Question of Happiness........................................................25 1.2 Socrates, the New Achilles....................................................................................30 1.2.1 The Rise of the Polis and Athenian Civic Heroism: Pericles’ Funeral Oration....................................................................................................... 31 1.2.2 The Interrogation of Athens: Socrates’ Apology.......................................36 1.2.3 Socrates contra Athens...............................................................................48 CHAPTER TWO SOCRATES AND ARISTOTLE: ANCIENT ATTEMPTS TO INTEGRATE VIRTUE, DEATH AND HUMAN PERFECTION...........................................................................54 2.1 Felix Socrates: Happiness and Virtue in and after Death......................................54 2.1.1 Toward a Conception of Human Happiness Independent of the Polis...........................................................................................................54 2.1.2 Socrates on the Good Life and Beyond.....................................................63 2.1.3 Socrates on Wisdom, Fortune and Happiness........................................... 70 2.1.4 Death as the Fulfillment of the Philosophical Life.................................... 80 2.2 Achilles or Socrates? Heroism, Philosophy and Noble Death in Aristotle............84 2.2.1 Aristotle, the Polis, and the Diverse Species of Human Excellence......... 85 2.2.2 Aristotle on Virtue’s Relationship to Pleasure.......................................... 96 2.2.3 Aristotelian Courage................................................................................ 100 2.2.4 Is Socrates’ Death Virtuous according to Aristotle?................................106 ii PART TWO PRACTICAL REASON, PERFECTION AND FINITUDE IN THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS......................................................................................................115 CHAPTER THREE THE PERFECTION OF HUMAN NATURE IN AQUINAS......................................... 118 3.1 The Metaphysical Framework of Human Perfection...........................................118 3.1.1 Divine and Human Intelligibilities...........................................................119 3.1.2 Measured Freedom...................................................................................122 3.1.3 Participated Perfectibility, Rational and Nonrational.............................. 125 3.1.4 Eternal Law, Natural Law, and Human Self-perfection.......................... 131 3.2 Human Perfection and the Moral Virtues............................................................ 134 3.2.1 Aquinas’ Effort to Define Virtue as Such................................................136 3.2.2 The Connection of the Virtues.................................................................138 3.2.3 Human Goodness and Complete Virtue.................................................. 140 3.3 Human Perfection in Broader Context.................................................................144 3.3.1 Human Perfection and the Perfection of the Universe.............................145 3.3.2 Human Perfectibility and Divine Likeness.............................................. 150 3.3.3 The Fragility of Human Perfection and the Stoic Alternative................. 157 CHAPTER FOUR DEATH AND HUMAN PERFECTION IN AQUINAS.................................................166 4.1 The Paradox of Human Mortality........................................................................ 166 4.1.1 Returning to Aristotle on the Relation of Fortune and Perfection........... 169 4.1.2 Aquinas’ Via Negativa toward the Final Object of Human Happiness... 175 4.1.3 Aquinas on Natural and Supernatural Virtue...........................................181 4.1.4 The Roadblock of Death..........................................................................189 4.2 The Self-surpassing Teleology of Human Perfection..........................................192 4.2.1 Human Nature as Self-surpassing............................................................193 4.2.2 Acting for Ends beyond Our Nature........................................................198 4.2.3 Supernatural Virtue..................................................................................205 4.3 Aquinas’s Theological Reformulation of Death’s Relation to Human Perfection.............................................................................................................208 4.3.1 Prelapsarian Virtue and Human Perfection..............................................211 4.3.2 Original Justice and The Non-Inevitability of Death...............................215 iii PART THREE ST. THOMAS AQUINAS ON COURAGE, DEATH AND MARTYRDOM...............220 CHAPTER FIVE THE ROLE OF COURAGE IN AQUINAS’S ACCOUNT OF HUMAN PERFECTION.................................................................................................................223 5.1 Difficulty, Danger and the Imperfect Sovereignty of Reason............................. 223 5.1.1 The Difficult Good...................................................................................224 5.1.2 Reason and the Passions I: the Aristotelian Analogy of the Principatus Politicus et Regalis.................................................................................. 230 5.1.3 Reason and the Passions II: the Pauline Analogy of the Lex Peccati......238 5.2 Preserving the Viability of the Human Pursuit of Perfection.............................. 247 5.2.1 Courage and the Passions.........................................................................248 5.2.2 Endurance versus Aggression: Rival Paradigms of Courage.................. 257 5.2.3 Courage as the Ordered Conflict between Reason and the Passions....... 261 CHAPTER SIX AQUINAS ON COURAGE, MARTYRDOM AND THE COMMON GOOD............. 269 6.1 The Natural Roots of Self-Sacrifice.....................................................................271 6.1.1 Courage and the Primary Inclinations......................................................272 6.1.2 Courage and the Natural Love of God over Self..................................... 279 6.2 Enduring with Hope: the Motivational Structure of Courage’s Exemplary Act..291 6.2.1 Courage, Original Justice and Providence............................................... 292 6.2.2 The Martyr’s Exemplification of Courage...............................................303 6.2.3 Aquinas versus the Stoics on Suffering and Invulnerability....................315 CHAPTER SEVEN RECONCILING ALL THINGS THROUGH HIS BLOOD: THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CORE OF AQUINAS’S CONCEPTION OF COURAGE............................................. 322 7.1 The Redeemer of Human Nature......................................................................... 323 7.2 The Courage of the New Creature....................................................................... 329 7.3 Suffering Love in a Suffering World..................................................................