ABSTRACT
Aquinas famously insists that the most important moral virtues cannot be acquired by one’s own efforts but must be infused by God. Yet, at the same time, he also devotes a considerable amount of attention to the cultivation of Aristotelian, “acquired” virtue. Aquinas’s apparent recognition of two very different kinds of virtue is perplexing. If true perfection cannot be achieved by our own efforts, why does Aquinas spend so much time describing how it is that one cultivates Aristotelian natural virtue? The traditional response by Thomists has been to focus on how Aquinas believes Aristotelian natural virtues are related to the supernatural virtues that God bestows along with grace. In this chapter, I approach this question from a different angle, by examining how Aquinas thinks that the gift of grace affects the very principles that allow us to cultivate Aristotelian virtues in the first place. I argue that we can understand the effect of grace on these principles in two very different ways. On the most coherent interpretation, we are no longer left with the problem of carving out a role for nature and natural virtue in the life of grace, because nature is accommodated even while it is transcended.
