Virtue/Vice in the Middle Ages

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Our focus is on accounts of virtue and vice in Christian writers of the 13th and early 14th centuries. We begin with a look at some key foundational texts, especially Augustine's Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Charity) and Gregory the Great's Moralia in Iob (Moral Reflections on the Book of Job), and then turn to a careful study of vice and virtue in university-based theologians (e.g., Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William Ockham) and contemplative writers (e.g., Julian of Norwich, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Catherine of Siena). We will also read extensively from Dante's Purgatorio alongside other representatives of the seven-capital-vices tradition. Questions to be explored include the following: What is a virtue (or vice)? How does one acquire virtue? What human capacities ("powers of the soul") can be molded by virtue? What does virtue contribute to moral goodness? Are the virtues connected in such a way that having one requires having them all? Is Aristotle's picture of virtue, or of a given particular virtue, compatible with Christian accounts? We will try as far as possible to bring recent writers on virtue ethics into conversation with our medieval authors.