Full transcript
0:00Everyone naturally admires excellence in human beings. Some people are excellent athletes, and
0:05we give them Olympic medals. Others are excellent musicians, and we give them standing ovations.
0:11Some people are excellent scientists or thinkers,
0:14and some people are just excellent overall human beings. All of these examples prompt us to ask:
0:21what is excellence? And how do human beings come to be that way?
0:35In the perennial tradition of philosophy, there are three
0:38notions that are involved in explaining what makes someone excellent at something
0:43First, we have the notion of habit. In the ordinary sense of the term,
0:47a habit is a settled or regular tendency that is hard to give up. One’s morning routine,
0:54for example, can be called a habit. Habits are commonly thought to be patterns of action that
1:00we settle into over time, often thoughtlessly, and we carry on with them more or less thoughtlessly.
1:08One’s morning routine, for example, can be a mindless routine or habit. Smoking or chewing
1:14gum is a habit in that sense too. A closely related concept is that of conditioning.
1:21If we think of Pavlov’s dog, for example,
1:24repeated instances of ringing a bell and making food available conditions the dog to salivate
1:30just upon hearing the bell. Or we might think of our reaction to red and green lights when driving.
1:38Now, when Thomas Aquinas uses the term habit he means something quite different. In St. Thomas’s
1:44usage, a habit is a specific kind of quality that today we ordinarily call a dispositional property,
1:53and when he is discussing human arts and virtues, he means something even more specific. A habit,
2:00in St. Thomas’s sense, is a fully personal disposition to make things well or act well.
2:08The disposition to make things well is an art, the disposition to act well is a virtue. What makes a
2:16person to be excellent at something is either an art or a virtue, so let’s consider each in turn.
2:23An art is a fixed and stable disposition, acquired by practice, for making external things well,
2:30and the one who possesses it does so easily and peacefully. Cooking, carpentry, and violin
2:37playing are all arts in this sense of the term. Good cooks make nutritious and delicious meals,
2:44carpenters make items out of wood, and violinists make melodies on the violin. Each of these
2:50activities has its purpose, to make this or that, and the more completely fulfills the purpose the
2:57better one is at the activity. Arts like these are acquired over a period of time through practice,
3:05and when someone has mastered the art, the person has a fixed and
3:10stable disposition or ability to make such things. The act comes easily and joyfully.
3:18Virtues are similar to arts, but different in kind. Like the arts, virtues are fixed and
3:24stable dispositions. And like the arts, virtues are acquired through practice.
3:31But virtues differ from the arts in two ways. First, virtues are not for the sake of making
3:37things, but just acting well for example in conversation or in doing business. Second,
3:45arts make their possessor good at being a cook or a musician, but do not make their possessor
3:52good at being human. One can be a great cook or world class violinist, and be a bad human being.
4:00Virtues are what make one good precisely at being human,
4:04at living life well overall, and that consists of freely choosing reasonable
4:10courses of action on a consistent basis. So, no one can be virtuous and be a bad human being.
4:18Honesty, for example, makes someone a good person. An honest person is someone who tells the truth,
4:25not just once in a while, but consistently – even when it is hard to do so. The virtue of
4:31honesty is a fixed and stable disposition to tell the truth. It is an excellent trait of character.
4:37And one becomes honest by actually telling the truth over and over, not in a mindless way like
4:44carrying on one’s morning routine or chewing gum, but doing so on purpose, deliberately.
4:50Now, all of this the ancient philosophers discovered by rational reflection
4:54upon common human experience. But Thomas Aquinas went much further.
5:00For God has revealed to us something more than what the philosophers knew about art and virtue.
5:06God has given us his grace in Christ Jesus. In our baptism, we receive God’s grace,
5:13and with his grace comes a whole new host of supernatural or infused virtues. The virtues that
5:21come to us by grace in our baptism are nothing less than a share in the virtues of Jesus Christ,
5:28and by these virtues we can live as Christ lived. It is crucial for one to practice acting according to these
5:37virtues so that they might grow and develop. But when they do, the person who lives by them
5:43is truly another Christ in the world, and lives as he lived on the way to true happiness in God.
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