Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology/Health as a Virtue: Thomas Aquinas and the Practice of Habits of Health

Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology. Edited by Nancy E. Snow. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. xii + 349 pp. $105.00 (cloth); $36.95 (paper).Health as a Virtue: Thomas Aquinas and the Practice of Habits of Health. By Melanie L. Dobson. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2014. 170 pp. $20.00 (paper).What does it take to cultivate virtue in oneself, ones children, and one's community? Editor Nancy Snow suggests in Cultivating Virtue that in the recent resurgence in virtue ethics, "little attention has been paid to the question of how virtue is developed" (p. 1). The book aims to fill this presumed gap, bringing together philosophers, theologians, and moral psychologists to reinforce what each field contributes (p. 16).Yet while a gap in reflecting on the cultivation of virtue may exist in some circles of discussion, that gap does not quite exist in theology. Cultivating Virtue presumes a very broad understanding of theolog/ (Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity), yet its conversation comes mostly from philosophers of religion whose entry points (history, culture) are distinct from those with theological concerns from those same traditions. Granted, theology necessarily includes historical and cultural work, and granted the work of philosophers of religion is important; still, the fact that most of the authors in this book directly use the word "philosophy" or "philosophers" to refer to the book's audience is suggestive of the particular conversations that are engaged here.Thus, for the audience of this journal, some of the conversations in Cultivating Virtue will show noticeable gaps. As one example, another book recently published, Melanie Dobson's Health as a Virtue: Thomas Aquinas and the Practice of Habits of Health, is one of many books in the Christian theological tradition that stem from a robust Christian theological conversation about virtue and its cultivation. In this review, I will show some points where Dobson's book might demonstrate precisely some of the conversations the authors in Cultivating Virtue advocate. That said, of course neither book is dealing directiy with the other and some of the unique conversations in both books are important, though they do not bear on each other, and so I aim to account for those conversations as well.Accordingly, if readers look a bit past Cultivating Virtue's central organizing question, they will find some weighty essays by an array of notable scholars. Moreover, these scholars often draw on each other's work, which makes for a kind of consistent conversation in these essays that is sometimes lacking in essay collections.The first essay, by Daniel C. Russell, closely examines Aristotle's understanding of virtue in light of the moral psychological research done on what it takes to develop a skill. Russell suggests that too often philosophers take a view of Aristotle's ethics as suggesting too lofty a picture of humanity. This then suggests that all we need to do is a kind of computation, plugging in variables of environment, who a person's moral exemplars have been, and the circumstances of the present situation, to arrive at an understanding of perfect development. Contrarily, Russell argues for a pathcentered focus on virtue, borrowed from moral psychology: to start with what we know about human development and improvement, and then "extend this knowledge to an account of improving in character in particular" (p. 19). Russell argues that cultivating virtue is messy, and there is no neat philosophical theory we can indulge in order to cultivate virtue. Nor is there a perfect community that will definitively cultivate the kind of people we want to be (p. 40).Russell's argument provides good potential grist for a central problem in theological virtue conversation, namely the question of whether and how the Christian community called "church" helps form Christian character. …