Foundations of Moral Selfhood: Aquinas on Divine Goodness and the Connection of the Virtues

Foundations of Moral Selfhood addresses the general issue of ethics and religion by examining the connection between the natural and theological virtues in the moral thought of Thomas Aquinas. While Aquinas is often invoked in contemporary discussions of virtue ethics, the interpenetration of the secular and religious dimensions of his thought is not often appreciated. Andrew J. Dell'Olio shows how Aquinas's metaphysics of goodness allows him to harmonize secular and religious virtues within the individual so as not to compromise the unity of the moral self. Aquinas is seen as presenting a theory of self-perfection that requires both self-development and self-abnegation, depicting each as ways of participating in the divine. The significance for contemporary virtue ethics of what Dell'Olio calls a «deep conception of the good» is also explored. Foundations of Moral Selfhood is relevant to the revival of Neo-Aristotelianism and Thomism in ethics, as well as to recent attempts to articulate forms of ethical Platonism and religious morality in a pluralistic society.