Ambrogio, Agostino, Abelardo e Tommaso: lineamenti sintetici della loro aretologia

The essay reconstructs four significant medieval conceptions of virtue. Ambrose christianizes the virtues, conceived as roads to beatific life. For Augustine virtues are will’s qualities that predispose to the good, especially to the absolute Good; they are also love’s expression, ordo amoris, that only Christians can achieve. Abelard distinguishes (on one side) virtues (also accessible to non-Christians) and vices, which are propensities, and (on the other side) the corresponding acts: vice is not sin, because sin is rather the inner voluntary consent to vice, and merit consists in the inner voluntary consent to virtue. For Thomas we must distinguish natural virtues (which can be achieved by anyone) and the infused ones, the ethical and the dianoetic. Ethical virtues realize the synergy between affect, reason and will. They imperfectly anticipate the eschatological happiness.