Thomas Aquinas on Virtue and Human Flourishing

Thomas Aquinas offers teleological systematisation of the habits needed for human flourishing. His metaphysical jurisprudence remodels ethics upon this, rather than on a moral precept. Eternal law governing the world determines natural law , reflected in human legislation (a variety of the anthropic principle ). Finally, law, unwritten, is infused spirit as self-consciousness, universal of universals . Acquired virtues elicit this, become effusion, represented in religion as gifts or graces. But mind’s or spirit’s omnipresence, necessarily closer to me than I am to myself , supersedes the abstractions of heteronomy versus autonomy. The habitual well-being brought by prudence, justice, courage and temperance prompts this picture of gifts and graces. The theological virtues , faith (explicit or implicit) and hope fulfilled in love, crown our natural rationality, set toward as being the universal. Become what you are . Heteronomous law is thus defused at root by grounding it entirely upon immovable spiritual (mental) inclination towards universal fulfilment as naturally desired, reflection shows. Virtue, finally, is best assessed as a capacity for the individually beautiful yet habit-based action, Aristotle’s to kalon. Aquinas puts this picture as summed up in the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount .