Can Humans Be Happy Without Virtue?

Can Humans Be Happy Without Virtue? With these words, a university priest-philosophy professor, teaching the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, gives us his answer from the Philosopher's chair of the Korea Times.

Nietzsche declared, “Virtue is a word people can no longer conceive of, an antiquated term that provokes laughter.” Indeed, since the modern era, discussions of virtue—once the most crucial ethical standard in traditional philosophy—have vanished, replaced by utilitarianism and sentimentalism. 

Enlightenment thought and modern natural science excluded the concept of purpose from nature and humanity, relegating associated virtues to mere incidental or personal inclinations. Consequently, while language related to morality persisted in modern life, the common foundation for ethical judgment collapsed.

The situation began to change after the mid-20th century, with scholars like E. Anscombe and A. MacIntyre emphasizing the importance of studying virtue for moral living. Alongside this, the theories of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, representing virtue ethics, gained renewed attention. However, despite this shift, unlike the era when the classical virtue tradition functioned as a moral standard encompassing actual life, in modern society, virtue ethics itself is treated merely as one ‘competing theory’.

Modern people, as Nietzsche put it, view virtue like forced domestication or an athlete's excessive training, treating it as something suitable only for monasteries. According to G. Achenbach, the founder of philosophical counseling, where virtue disappears today, vices grow rampant like weeds. Yet virtue is neither special nor mysterious; it is ordinary. Without virtue, we might not even be able to live our ordinary daily lives.

So what does Thomas Aquinas, who discusses virtue in greater detail than anyone else in the Summa Theologica, explain virtue? Before delving into a thorough reflection, let us first sketch the broad outline of how theories of virtue developed within the history of philosophy and how Thomas assimilated them. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas embraces the tradition of the cardinal virtues in the Summa Theologica, stating, “Human virtue, as an active habit, is a good habit that produces good.” The concept of virtue developed over the course of history. Socrates already emphasized that virtuous habits aid in consistently performing actions aimed at achieving the right purpose. However, he did not arrive at a precise definition of what virtue is and how its elements relate to each other. Plato famously asserts that virtue is knowledge  suggesting that what is good, once known, one will  naturally act accordingly.