Early medieval thinkers knew that ancient philosophers classified virtue as a psychological disposition (habitus), not as a kind of passion or mental act. Whether Augustine also regarded virtue as a disposition, albeit one given by God, became a topic of dispute in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. But by the mid-thirteenth century the idea that God infuses virtuous dispositions into human adults, perhaps even into baptized babies, was well entrenched. As a result, the first Latin commentators on Aristotle’s Ethics saw no conflict between philosophers and theologians about classifying virtues as dispositions. They did, however, see a major conflict between the structure of pagan and Christian ethics. The anonymous commentator of the Paris arts faculty and Robert Kilwardby (d. 1279) both explained it in the same way. Philosophers teach that our own good actions precede and produce virtuous dispositions; theologians teach that virtuous dispositions are infused by God, so that the disposition precedes and causes good actions. Philosophers think that actions are worth more than dispositions, whereas theologians take the opposite view (Buffon 2004).
Do naturally acquired dispositions suffice to ensure morally good actions? Even scholars who studied the complete Ethics resisted its suggestion that truly virtuous people are beyond the reach of temptation. As they saw it, even the best disposition never ensures that someone will act well; it only inclines him to do so. The virtuous person can fail to choose good actions, even choose bad ones, so that his character gradually degenerates.
Is a virtuous disposition at least necessary for morally good acts? In Article 1 of On the Virtues in General (De virtutibus in communi), Aquinas says that we should distinguish between what someone does and the way in which she does it. Someone without a virtuous disposition can indeed choose morally good acts for good reasons. However, she cannot choose such acts consistently, easily, and with pleasure. According to Aquinas, these are the three reasons why people need virtuous dispositions.
Discussion in the early fourteenth century turned to a different problem: what virtuous dispositions explain about morally good actions - not whether they benefit us but why it is necessary for a theorist to posit such
Dispositions. Working to develop a naturalistic account of ethics, masters took a closer look at Aristotle’s theory. Does it avoid circularity? If only someone with a virtuous disposition can choose a morally good act for the right reason, how can anyone choose the kind of actions he must in order to acquire a virtuous disposition? On the other hand, if virtuous dispositions do not account for the moral goodness of a person’s actions, what do they explain?
If we must posit dispositions in order to explain how someone can choose morally good acts, consistently, easily, and with pleasure, do these factors make the chosen acts better in moral terms, or do dispositions figure only in psychological explanations? Are consistency, ease, and pleasure even features of actions, or rather features of agents? Scotus pioneered this line of reasoning in Book I, Distinction 17 of his Ordinatio. Durand took it farther, developing it into a full-scale assault on Thomistic ethics. His objections were not soon forgotten. A century later, when Capreolus penned his Defenses, he casts Durand as Aquinas’ chief critic on this topic (Kent 2005, 2008).
Fourteenth-century debate about virtuous dispositions can be perplexing, for virtually all participants agree that an action is morally good only if the agent’s choice accords with ‘‘the dictates of right reason.’’ By this they mean a correct judgment by the agent herself about what she should do in this particular situation, including the appropriate end of action. For example, it is not enough that she choose to return money she borrowed from Joe when she promised to return it; she must choose to return the money because she owes it to Joe, not because she hopes to be praised or fears that he might harm her. On what issue, then, did fourteenth-century scholars divide? Some, such as Gerald Odonis (d. c. 1349), endorsed what they took to be Aristotle’s position: only people with virtuous dispositions can make morally good choices, because they alone can have the right motivations. Others, including Scotus and Durand, insisted that people without virtuous dispositions can have the right motivations and make morally good choices. If ordinary, non-virtuous people lack this capacity, how can they ever make the kind of choices necessary in order to acquire a virtuous disposition?
This is not to say that ordinary people are able to judge and choose correctly in all of the complex situations that a virtuous person can; nor is it to say that they will find it as easy as a virtuous person to choose the correct act for the right reason, rather than from some self-serving motivation. The thesis is more modest: it is possible for ordinary people to make morally good choices in some situations, however seldom they do. This is the very position that Buridan attributes to Aristotle in Question 4 of his commentary on Book VI of the Ethics. On his view, Gerald’s interpretation leaves Aristotle with a circular account of the relation between virtuous dispositions and morally good actions.
Philosophers still worry that Aristotle’s Ethics looks circular, just as they still wonder whether various premises in his arguments are meant to be conceptual truths or claims about empirical psychology. The range of interpretations is no smaller than it was in the fourteenth century, when scholars of the West began arguing about the place of virtues in the overall structure of Aristotle’s theory.
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