Evaluation

Aquinas and Aristotle both recognize that virtue is not its own
reward and has little meaning apart from an ultimate goal. A man is
virtuous because his actions correspond to an objective norm, which
for Aristotle was knowable by reason and for Aquinas by reason and
faith.

But where Aristotle almost identified morally good conduct with an
aesthetic mean between opposite extremes, Aquinas saw the good man
with a vision that Aristotle never enjoyed. For Aristotle a man was
basically virtuous because he displayed a beautiful balance in his
moral actions, not unlike the harmony displayed in a work of art.
Hence the attractive aspect of virtue is often stressed by Aristotle
and his modern imitators, at the expense of morality proper. What was
missing were two dimensions of morality that only the Christian
religion brought into full light: that internal dispositions and
their consequent actions are virtuous not mainly because of an
aesthetic harmony of agent, conduct and environment, but because they
advance their possessor in the direction of his final destiny to
eternal life after death; and that virtue is more than a reasonable
balance between behavioristic extremes, since it postulates a primal
obligation to a divine Lawgiver, whose will is manifest in conscience
and faith, and to whom obedience is due as man's Creator and Lord.

Taken from the "Great Catholic Books Newsletter" Volume II, Number 1.

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