FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES

Burdette, Charm Capul, Claire Gonzales, Mitch

PRUDENCE

PRUDENCE: First of the Cardinal Virtues

Mother of all the other cardinal virtues. A good man is good as long as he is prudent. Prudence is the cause of other virtues being virtues at all. Prudence is the measure of justice, of fortitude, or temperance.

PRUDENCE: First of the Cardinal Virtues

What is prudent and what is good are substantially one and the same. Whatever is good must first have been prudent. Every sin is opposed to prudence. Everyone who sins is imprudent. Prudence is the cause, root, mother, measure, precept, guide, and prototype of all ethical virtues; it acts in all of them.

KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY AND THE REALIZATION OF THE GOOD

KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY AND THE REALIZATION OF THE GOOD

One can do good when he knows what things are like and what their situation is. Prudence is the mold and mother of all virtues, the circumspect and resolute shaping power of our minds which transforms knowledge of reality into realization of the good.

JUSTICE

JUSTICE: ON RIGHTS
Man s greatest and most frequent troubles depend on man s injustice more than on adversity. Kant The many forms of injustice make the many forms of justice quite clear. Aristotle Plato on Justice: It is the notion that each man is to be given what is his due (suum cuique)

Justice is a habit (habitus), whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will.

Justice is that whereby what is one s own is distinct from what belongs to a stranger. St. Thomas Aquinas Justice is that ordering of the soul by virtue of which it comes to pass that we are no man s servant, but servants of God alone. Augustine

 Therefore: Justice is the virtue which enables man to give to each one what is his due. If the act of justice is to give each man his due, then the act of justice is preceded by the act whereby something becomes his due. * There are rights which do not arise out of one s work; in other words, that man has a right to some things as his due, which has no basis in any action of his. * It is through creation that the created first being first comes to have his rights.

Therefore, creation itself is not an act of justice; creation is not anyone s due. St. Thomas Aquinas * For being due means something like belonging to or being the property of someone. Whatever is due to a person, the suum, is something that one man may demand of another as owing to him, and him only. The man who does not give a person what belongs to him, withholds it or deprives him of it, is really doing harm to himself; he is the one who actually loses something, he even destroys himself. Justice belongs to a man s true being.

On the one hand a thing might be due to a man on the basis of agreements, treaties, promises, legal decisions and so on; on the other hand, it might be due to him on the basis of the nature of the thing, ex ipsa natura rei. St. Thomas Aquinas We cannot state the basis of a right and of a judicial obligation, unless we have a concept of man, of human nature. Man is a person, a spiritual being, a whole unto himself, a being that exists for itself and of itself, that will its own proper perfection.

 Man has inalienable rights because he is created a person by the act of God, that is, an act beyond all human discussion. We have a divine Sovereign, and his divine gift to man is man s right. Kant A thing is just not only because it is willed by God, but because it is a debt due to a created being by virtue of the relationship between creature and creature. The act of justice not only presupposes that act through which a man comes to have his due; it also presupposes the act of prudence , which means that the truth of real things is transposed into a decision.

JUSTICE: DUTY IN RELATION TO THE OTHER

Justice is directed toward the other man. In the relationship of justice, men confront each other as separate others, almost as strangers. To be just means to recognize the other as other; it means to give acknowledgment even where one cannot love. Justice says: That is another person, who is other than I, and who nevertheless has his own peculiar due. A man is just, therefore, because he sanctions another person in his very separateness and helps him to receive his due.

 Justice consists in living one with another ; the just man has to deal with the other. To be just means to owe something and to pay the debt. The distinguishing mark of justice is that some debt is to be paid.

Who is that other one ?

-community or the social whole -God

 Justice is realized above all in an external act; in the realm of what is just or unjust, what man does externally is the main point at issue. The other person may be in need or not, he may be in distress or not; but if it is a question of his right, then I am obliged to satisfy it. Kant Only by an external act will the other receive what is his, his due. The mode of doing acts of justice, which falls under the precept, is that they be done in accordance with right; but not that they be done from the habit of justice St. Thomas Aquinas

Thomas quotes the Nicomachean Ethics: It is an easy matter to do what the just man does; it is difficult, however, for one who does not possess justice to do the just thing in the way the just man does it. That is, with promptitude and pleasure.

THE RANK OF JUSTICE

Justice is the highest of the three moral virtues: justice, fortitude and temperance. Justice is the fundamental virtue. Justice claims a higher rank because not only orders man in himself but also the life of men together St. Thomas Aquinas Not only do the object and material of justice (objectum sine material) establish its higher rank, but the subject does so too.

 The demands of justice beset man at his spiritual core. The good of reason shines more brightly in justice than in any of the other moral virtues; justice is closer to reason. St. Thomas Aquinas Iustitia est humanum bonum Justice is the human good. Justice simply means doing one s own work and fulfilling one s own task Plotinus

THE THREE BASIC FORMS OF JUSTICE

Firstly, the relations of individuals to one another (ordo partium ad partes); Secondly; the relations of social whole to individuals (ordo totius ad partes); Thirdly, the relations of individuals to the social whole (ordo partium ad totum)

THE THREE BASIC FORMS OF JUSTICE

1. Reciprocal or mutually exchanged justice (iustitia commutative) orders the relation of individual to individual partner 2. Ministering justice (iustitia distributiva) brings order to the relations between the community as such and the individuals who are its members 3. Legal or General Justice (iustitia legalis, iustitia generalis) orders the members relations to the social whole

It is not justice that orders. It is the just man, it is man who orders.

FORTITUDE

READINESS TO FALL IN BATTLE

Fortitude presupposes vulnerability; without vulnerability there is no possibility of fortitude. Fortitude is basically readiness to die, or more accurately, readiness to fall, to die, in battle. The essential and the highest achievement of fortitude is martyrdom, and the readiness for martyrdom is the essential root of all Christian fortitude.

Man must be ready to let himself be killed rather than to deny Christ or to sin grievously. The pain of martyrdom obscures even the spiritual joy in an act pleasing to God, unless the overflowing grace of God lift the soul with exceeding strength to things divine. St. Thomas Aquinas

FORTITUDE MUST NOT TRUST ITSELF

It is for the sake of the good that the brave man exposes himself to the danger of death. Fortitude must not trust itself St. Ambrose Only the prudent man can be brave. Fortitude without prudence is not fortitude. Fortitude becomes fortitude only through being informed by prudence.

 The nature of fortitude is not determined by risking one s person arbitrarily, but only by a sacrifice of self in accordance with reason, that is, with the true nature and value of real things. Prudence-gives the inner form to all the other cardinal virtues: justice, fortitude, and temperance. Fortitude is less directly informed by prudence than justice.

 Justice is the first word of prudence, fortitude the second; prudence informs fortitude. Justice is based upon the recognition of reality achieved by prudence; fortitude is based upon prudence and justice together. The actual good of man is his self-realization in accordance with reason, that is, in accordance with truth of real things. St. Thomas Aquinas Without the just cause, there is no fortitude.

Not the injury, but the cause makes martyrs. St. Augustine Man does not expose his life to mortal danger, except to maintain justice. Therefore, the praise of fortitude depends upon justice. St. Thomas Aquinas Fortitude without justice is a lever of evil. Ambrose St.

ENDURANCE AND ATTACK

Fortitude recognizes, acknowledges, and maintains the natural order of things. Fortitude presupposes in a certain sense that man is afraid of evil; its essence lies not in knowing no fear, but in not allowing oneself to be forced into evil by fear, or to be kept by fear from realization of good.

TWO BASIC ACTS OF FORTITUDE

1. Endurance 2. Attack Endurance is more of the essence of fortitude than attack.

 Patience is a necessary component of fortitude. The patient man is not the one who does not flee from evil, but the one who does not allow himself to be made inordinately sorrowful thereby. Patience is the radiant embodiment of ultimate integrity. Patience is the pillar which nothing can soften Hildegard of Bingen Through patience man possess his soul St. Thomas Aquinas