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The Virtue of Humility: Interpreting the Summa Theologiae’s ‘Minimalist Approach’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2024

Emma Newgarden Open the ORCID record for Emma Newgarden [Opens in a new window]
Emma Newgarden*
Affiliation:
Seton Hall University Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, South Orange, NJ, USA
*
Email: emmanewgarden@gmail.com
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Abstract

This paper argues, in response to scholarly criticism, that Thomas Aquinas’s account of the virtue of humility in the Summa Theologiae does not undermine the importance of humility in the Christian moral life. While the Summa’s classification of humility as a ‘potential part’ of temperance, which results from Thomas’s reliance on classical sources, has been blamed for this work’s perceived belittling of humility, an understanding of the Summa’s overall scope and Aquinas’s system of organizing virtues therein helps demonstrate that this categorization does not imply a lesser significance of humility either than other virtues in the Summa or than humility as treated in his Bible commentaries. Furthermore, even if the Summa’s structure creates limited space for an extensive discourse on humility, the establishment of humility’s reciprocity with magnanimity and absolute contradiction of pride leave no doubts as to the magnitude of this virtue. Thus, the ‘humble’ portrayal of humility in the Summa not only adequately but aptly expresses this uniquely Christian virtue, capturing the way it disposes human beings to ‘creaturely’ reverence before the Creator, and invites a more holistic understanding of Aquinas’s virtue ranking in the Secunda Secundae.

Keywords

AquinasAristotleCicerohumilityStoicstructure of the SummaSumma Theologiaevirtue
Type
Article
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New Blackfriars , First View , pp. 1 - 14
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.

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References

1 Pope Francis, ‘The golden rule of humility’, Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, 8 April 2013. By L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly ed. in English, n. 16, 17 April 2013.

2 Jim Fair, ‘Pope Francis: “Humility Is the Only Way That Leads Us to God”, General Audience Catechesis: The Birth of Jesus’, Exaudi Catholic News, 24 December 2021.

3 Thomas M. Osborne, Thomas Aquinas on Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), p. 67.

4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 161, a. 1, ad. 5: The Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, at New Advent, www.newadvent.org. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1920.

5 ST II-II, q.83, a. 15.

6 ST II-II, q.161, a. 3, ad 1.

7 ST II-II.162.3 ad 2.

8 ST II-II.161.2 ad 2.

9 ST II-II.161.5 ad 4.

10 ST II-II.161.5 ad 2.

11 Sheryl Overmyer, ‘Exalting the meek virtue of humility in Aquinas’, Heythrop Journal, 56 (2015), 650.

12 Overmyer, ‘Exalting the Meek Virtue of Humility in Aquinas’, p. 651.

13 Ibid.

14 Overmyer, p. 661.

15 Ibid.

16 Overmyer, ‘Exalting the Meek Virtue of Humility in Aquinas’, p. 652.

17 Ibid.

18 Quoted above, footnote 14.

19 Ibid.

20 ST I-II.68.1.

21 Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), pp.142–45.

22 Torrell, Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, p. 145.

23 Torrell pp. 151–53.

24 Osborne, Thomas Aquinas on Virtue, p. 8.

25 Gregory Pine, ‘Magnanimity and humility according to St. Thomas Aquinas’, The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review, 82 (2019), 263–86.

26 Osborne, pp. 102–03.

27 Servais Pinckaers, The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), p. 13.

28 ST II-II.160.2.

29 Cicero, De Inventiones, trans. by C. D. Yonge (London: Bohn,1853), Book II, section 54.

30 Pinckaers, The Pinckaers Reader, p. 13.

31 Overmyer, ‘Exalting the Meek Virtue of Humility’, p. 651.

32 Overmyer, p. 652.

33 Osborne, pp. 4–5.

34 Osborne, p. 108.

35 Osborne, Thomas Aquinas on Virtue, p. 116.

36 Osborne, p. 67.

37 Ibid.

38 ST II-II.143.1.

39 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, t. 2: Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus cardinalibus, ed. by E. Odetto (Taurini-Romae: Marietti, 1965), pp. 813–28.

40 Osborne, pp. 117–18.

41 Osborne, p. 118.

42 Osborne, p. 68.

43 ST II-II.143.1.

44 ST I-II. 66.4. It should be noted that this is only considering the cardinal virtues in an unqualified manner. Thomas is open to considering the same virtues as greater or lesser in a different order in a certain respect [secundum quid].

45 Osborne, Thomas Aquinas on Virtue, p. 99.

46 Osborne, p. 95.

47 Osborne, p. 100.

48 Osborne, p. 94.

49 ST II-II.161.2.

50 ST II-II.161.2. ad 2.

51 ST II-II.161.2.

52 ST II-II.161.6.

53 ST I-II. 58. 3 ad 3.

54 ST II-II. 25. 1.

55 Osborne, Thomas Aquinas on Virtue, 199.

56 ST II-II. 161. 4.

57 ST II-II. 23. 3.

58 ST II-II. 161. 4 ad 1.

59 ST II-II. 30. 3.

60 Osborne, Thomas Aquinas on Virtue, p. 118–19.

61 Osborne, p. 198.

62 Osborne, p. 118.

63 ST II-II.161.5.

64 ST II-II, q.136, ar. 4, ad. 2.

65 ST II-II, q.136, ar. 4.

66 ST II-II, q.136, ar. 2.

67 ST II-II, q.161, ar. 5.

68 Ibid.

69 Overmyer, ‘Exalting the Meek Virtue of Humility in Aquinas’, p. 650.

70 ST I, q. 5 ar. 6.

71 ST II-II, q. 145, ar. 1.

72 ST II-II, q. 145, ar. 4.

73 Pine, ‘Magnanimity and Humility According to St. Thomas Aquinas’, p. 279.

74 Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), p. 189.

75 Pine, ‘Magnanimity and Humility According to St. Thomas Aquinas’, pp. 283–85.

76 Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, p. 190.

77 Overmyer, ‘Exalting the Meek Virtue of Humility’, p. 652.

78 Matthew Levering, ‘On humility’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 19 (2017), p. 479.

79 Levering, pp. 473.

80 Levering, p. 470.

81 Levering, p. 477.

82 Pine, ‘Magnanimity and Humility According to St. Thomas Aquinas’, p. 275.

83 Levering, ‘On Humility’, p. 486.

84 Levering, p. 491.

85 Levering, p. 468.

86 Levering, ‘On Humility’, p. 479.

87 Matthew 23:12.