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The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

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When Thomas Aquinas first considers virtue

in his Monium Opus, the Summa Theologi,

he treats virtue as a kind of habitus or habit.

A habitus or a habit is a stable disposition that gives some specificity to our

human capacities. Human beings, like other living creatures, are endowed by God with a nature

that's oriented towards certain kinds of activities, and we engage in those properly human

activities by means of particular powers or capacities that we naturally possess.

For example, we are the kinds of creatures that are naturally oriented toward pursuing knowledge of the truth,

and we undertake this activity by means of our intellect, a certain capacity that we possess for seeking and knowing the truth.

Similarly, we are by nature inclined toward the pursuit of certain kinds of physical pleasures,

like those of food and drink.

And we are drawn to those things by means of what Aquinas calls our appetites.

Although our human capacities are by nature oriented towards specific kinds of activities and toward the attainment of certain kinds of goods, Aquinas also acknowledges that these capacities are also underdetermined by human nature.

As free and rational creatures, we're capable of engaging our human capacities in any number of different ways.

We do not engage the world, as one scholar puts it, in causally fixed ways,

as if we are animals responding to our environments purely by instinct,

or computers that move from inputs to outputs algorithmically.

...