Maria CavagnoDie Beziehung zwischen Vernunft und Sinnen in der Tugend nach Thomas von Aquin und Karol Wojtyła

About this book deutschenglish

How a person forms virtues with the use of reason and the senses and thereby aims at relational happiness, specifically based on the thinking of the great philosophers and theologians Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) and Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005), is the topic of this study.

An important aspect of Thomas's virtue ethics – the way in which moral virtues are formed through reason and the senses – is placed within the framework of Wojtyła's personalist philosophy: The formation of virtue, described by Thomas Aquinas as a process between reason and feelings, is a personal act. Reflection therefore begins with the relationship between the person and mental nature with its free will, as well as with how the person integrates his or her psychological nature to form moral virtues, and the personal dignity of the psychic nature.

Both thinkers understand the human being as a noopsychosomatic unity. Reason, as light and compass, and the human mind with its own sensitivity, is by nature in conflict with the senses and feelings due to differing tasks and nature. In the formation of virtue, the right mind (prudence) directs the senses towards the good, ordering desire towards the good goal.

Feelings help reason; the sensory level participates in reason and forms itself according to it, striving out of love for conformity with reason, but must retain its own characteristics. Feelings serve reason, but not only through moral reinforcement – they are also indications and thus guidelines for reason; reason and feelings need each other.

Philosophical and theological considerations on the virtues of the saints on earth, reason and the senses after the resurrection of the flesh, and the feelings of God are also addressed.

The final chapter, "Strategies of Integration," applies the previous findings to the (self)education of virtue, not without first identifying the goal of the virtues: supernatural and earthly-natural happiness as fruitful activity, the relational common good and fruitfulness as the purpose and motor of the virtues. Fundamental human relationships such as marriage and family are promoted by virtues; Wojtyła applies the traditional virtue of chastity to the love between man and woman and gives it a new personal foundation.

About the author

Mag. Lic. Dr. Maria Cavagno, born and resident in Vienna, Austria, studied Catholic Theology and Latin in Vienna and Rome.

This book is her final thesis of the Licentiate in Sacred Theology of Marriage and Family at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.